a Weberian status phenomenon about the individual over the community
This was already happening before Thatcher, otherwise Weber couldn't have pbserved it all those years ago. You can trace the influence of a number of post-war Tory (and Labour) governments who helped the rise of what Thatcher dubbed "the great car economy". Like it or not, the Tories were part of a movement in society as a whole towards these ends, they just accelerated existing trends in a particular direction for their own benefit. Gradually, the alternatives were enfeebled. In the case of transport, the bicycle was the first to suffer in the 1950s as roads became busier with motor vehicles and motorway building began: over time reduced to a rumpo of sport, leisure, and children's plaything, pretty much where it is to this day. Next were the railways, savagely cut from the 1960s onwards as a result of the Beeching report. There was a brief hiatus during the oil crisis of the mid-1970s, but then the North Sea fields came on stream. Thatcher delivered the coup de grace with bus deregulation, and Major privatised the railways.
So over 40 years transport policies stifled competition to the private motor vehicle. I daresay it will take another 40 years to change the situation.