[the_fonz]

Let's see: America generally has terrible public transportation and purposely laid-out most modern cities to require private car use, yet the "solution" is to ban cars. In reality, the unintended consequences are the creation of an economic apartheid because the rich won't be as affected as a proportion of income and further, it will disproportionately tax on already struggling poor people.

Layout cities and do public transportation better, policy-makers shouldn't just tax what's vital to live and work just because they think it will go away... it's BandAid, panacea mentality.

[megaremote]

This is for New York, which has awesome public transport.

And how do you get better public transport in cities? By getting cars out of them.

And we should actually start getting drivers to pay for what they use, instead of subsidising them billions.

[ars]

I think you should do the opposite: Make public transport free.

Transportation is a basic service cities should provide for free, that includes both roads and public transport.

[sethhochberg]

"Free" isn't free - road use in private cars vs shared transportation in buses or rail have dramatically different costs and returns per person in terms of pollution, percentages of public space used for vehicle storage, peak throughput for a given corridor over time, fuel cost, etc. Congestion pricing is about adjusting the incentives between road use and transit use to encourage more efficiency with the lowest overall cost to society.

[hannasanarion]

>purposely laid-out most modern cities to require private car use

This is only true of LA, Phoenix, and Tucson, cities established or seeing their principal growth after the invention of air conditioning.

Pretty much every other American city got its street plan decades or centuries before automobiles. New York's streets were drawn in 1810. San Francisco got its streets in 1840. The assertion that America is "designed for cars" is totally bunk. Cars are invaders in cities designed for walking and horse riding.