Cars are not going away, there is one statement that ensures it:
As public transport improves, traffic decreases, and the value a car provides increases.
A 20 minute commute with no traffic and parking right in front because everyone else took the bus/train? Sign me up.
You're right that cars aren't going away, and I don't think it's a serious goal.
The point about equilibrium you're not thinking through fully. If you'd have the 20 minute commute with no traffic and parking right in front of whoever you're going, everyone would do it and you'd just wind up with, well, not that.
But as transit* improves you are able to do more with less, and instead of spending insane amounts of money on 5-lane highways and McDonald's for all and the extractive economics that come with that, you can maintain your existing infrastructure and give folks who can't, shouldn't or would prefer to not drive the option to get to whoever they are going without doing so. That frees up the existing highway infrastructure a little bit, reduces costs across the board, and has a lot of other nice benefits.
You are effectively arguing against other transit methods and models because you'd rather sit in traffic, because without the introduction of alternatives that's what you are advocating for - again because everyone will be in the car and you'll never alleviate traffic and you'll never have a 20 minute commute with free and easy parking.
* We should move away from the "public transportation" frame of reference. Highways are public transportation too, fully funded by taxpayers (in general, it maybe be uniquely different in some countries) and are an entrenched lobbying group that justify projects at the expense of the public too.
I think you're reading a bit too much into their statement. I took it as pointing out the stable equilibrium due to incentives leads to a mix of cars and public transit, not that cars are a better option overall.
You can't sign up - at least not for long. As public transit improves companies quit putting in parking places up front - they still have shipping/receiving in back, but only delivery vehicles allowed. The parking lot is sold to someone else who just wants a building, increasing density. Meanwhile all those people riding transit means there is more demand for better transit.
The above plays out over decades of course, and there are lots of competing factors.
I'm curious. Where has this played out?
Manhattan, Toyoko... People still drive in cities, but the better transit is the worse driving becomes.
I think you’re misattrubuting causation here. There are numerous factors that distinguish those two places. Chiefly, they are among the densest places in the world.
Generally speaking, cars are at odds with such extreme density, simply due to geometry (i.e. how much space driving requires); it’s super easy to saturate driving supply in such places.
Think of mass transit and driving as being in an equilibrium with each other. Depending on where the bottleneck is in driving supply, shifting driving demand to transit demand (via improved transit infrastructure) should most often improve driving.
Extreme density like the places you mentioned is challenging just because space is at such an extreme premium. I would argue (and I’m not alone here) that it’s especially challenging because driving is consistently underpriced; the fair value of driving there is likely far higher than the cost that drivers pay. In such circumstances, oversubscribed car infrastructure is the natural outcome.
I don't know any city with amazing public transport where driving a private car isn't nightmarish.
It appears that driving a private car in the Netherlands isn't near as nightmarish as elsewhere.
The Netherlands is peculiar in that cyclists reclaimed their rights to the cities by kicking cars out of them.
Cars haven't been kicked out of cities in the Netherlands.
https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...
https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2025/03/05/a-rare-glimpse...
https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/ittddm/how_a_busy_r...
https://www.iamexpat.nl/expat-info/dutch-news/history-amster...
Removing cars from a street or two and decreasing the number of lanes on many streets is a far cry from "kicking cars out of cities"
The above-linked protests led to re-drawing urban development plans for most major Dutch cities with the effect of reducing the prevalence (and necessity) of cars in city centers. Whole housing blocks were getting destroyed as to build highways, canals were dried so cars could run in their place. All that was undone, and more, and nowadays Dutch cities are a shining example of how liveable urban centers are with fewer/close to no cars. Those are well documented facts, I don't know what you are even arguing about.
Fewer cars. not no cars
So we are playing semantics. I don't think "Kicking-out" is universally understood as "getting rid of the entirety of something", you are encouraged to prove me wrong, I certainly don't care enough to die on this hill.
It doesn't matter whether it's universally understood. It matters whether it is commonly understood. You're communicating with a wide variety of readers on the internet.
You're also using the type of phrasing hyperbole that the anti-bike-lane zealots use.
Berlin has amazing public transport (I moved here in 2018, I never needed to get a car), I've not heard anyone complain about the experience of driving.
Singapore.
But anyways, the order of causation is probably reversed. Cities with high density are forced to invest in good public transport by sheer public demand and pressure.
Singapore has an expensive plate tax that has to be renewed. They make owning a private car very expensive.
The nightmare there is paying for the car.
I don't know any city with amazing public transport, except for the lucky ones that can afford to live directly into the city center.
Cars aren’t going away, but it is very easy to disincentivize their use in urban areas.
> A 20 minute commute with no traffic and parking right in front because everyone else took the bus/train? Sign me up.
Indeed. I am not a people person so the idea of a solitary commute is massively appealing to me no matter the mode.
Luckily in these situations it's likely that huge tax costs will be pushed onto private cars. Sign me up to that