so why not start from there and start saving up money?
Do you know
just how hard it is to cut practically any given government spending? Most spending exists because someone can make a convincing argument that it should exist. Even when there is something you are completely sure should be cut, any spending cut has people somewhere it harms, and those people and their allies will fight you tooth and nail to stop your cut.
The Tea Party are a prime example of politicians who went into office thinking that 'cutting wasteful spending' was a straightforward task, and look how far they have gotten on that account (not very far at all). Of course, it doesn't help them that many of them are idiots and/or crazy, but the point stands that cutting expenses is much harder than it seems from the outside.
Also, about the thing you said a while back about making the trains run on time, I finally realized the specific reason why it is harder than you think.
The example you gave was about subways in a city, which are indeed plausible to organize and mechanize. The real problems with making trains run on time come when you are dealing with
the entire rest of the country. A country-wide train system (unless you have a tiny country) means many miles of rail over many miles of country side. Such things don't work that well without an organized force to maintain and repair them from the inevitable wear and damage from being out in the open, and by that point you are managing a large web of infrastructure, workers, and bureaucracy, which is very difficult to do in the real world without inefficiency.