Florida had public transit before the 1950s. All those Northerners that came down for the winter during the 1920s land boom traveled on train. It isn't like they bought a car just for their visit. For example, Coral Gables, next to Miami, had an electric trolley system.
My aunt used busses to get around the Tampa area back in the 1960s, when Florida transit was segregated.
There's a bunch of rails-to-trails routes because many places used to have train service. Take Perry, for example. It's only a few thousand people but it's over 100 years old (with an infamous massacre of blacks in the 1920s), and you can see the old stationhouse at https://maps.app.goo.gl/NJK8B6mjJpEXRrdK6 right next to the tracks, a few blocks from the town center. (If you visit, Johnson's Bakery has some of the best donuts I've tasted, though they've changed ownership since I was last there.)
So no, Florida is not too big for Public Transit.
That there is too much sprawl is a rather different topic. A Florida developed around mass transit instead of personal car ownership would look very different even if it had the same population and area.
My aunt used busses to get around the Tampa area back in the 1960s, when Florida transit was segregated.
There's a bunch of rails-to-trails routes because many places used to have train service. Take Perry, for example. It's only a few thousand people but it's over 100 years old (with an infamous massacre of blacks in the 1920s), and you can see the old stationhouse at https://maps.app.goo.gl/NJK8B6mjJpEXRrdK6 right next to the tracks, a few blocks from the town center. (If you visit, Johnson's Bakery has some of the best donuts I've tasted, though they've changed ownership since I was last there.)
So no, Florida is not too big for Public Transit.
That there is too much sprawl is a rather different topic. A Florida developed around mass transit instead of personal car ownership would look very different even if it had the same population and area.