Beware of any history that makes the current state of affairs seem inevitable. There are always countervailing forces.

There are dozens of articles if you do a search online, but here is one article from Bloomberg.

Americans have grown up with versions of the “car culture” thesis: This is a nation that simply likes cars, and this preference is the biggest factor in the extent of car domination. Maybe clever marketing and interest group lobbying has something to do with this (the thesis concedes), and maybe the preference is not rational; still, we prefer cars, even in settings that are poorly suited to them, and even to the point of putting up with their high financial, social, environmental, and safety costs. All over America in the 1950s and 1960s, residents, particularly women, organized demonstrations against car traffic.

Anti-car protests were successful in places like New York City and Vancouver, Canada, which is why they are some of the only places in North America without highways cutting through them. San Francisco also had major protests, but highways were forced through anyways.