[Someone]

But if taking a car gets cheaper, people who now walk, cycle, or take a bus will start taking cars.

Also, with self-driving cars that are cheaper, I expect that people who now drive a car to the suburbs will move further out of town to get cheaper housing because a) driving is cheaper and b) self-driving would mean they can do things on their commute (work, watch Netflix, etc)

I think the uncomfortable truth is that, to fight climate change, we must give up some luxuries. Flying, driving a car, electricity, low priced almost disposable clothing, electronics gadgets, etc. must get more expensive.

[jillesvangurp]

True, but there's a difference between owning a car and taking a car. Flying and driving will be a lot more sustainable once that goes electric. If lots of people take autonomous vehicles to get from A to B and we can find ways where that is sustainable; I have nothing against building more infrastructure to support that.

In any case this article was about road congestion; not about saving the planet. When it comes to that, I don't really believe in technical martyrdom where people voluntarily choose to not do lots of things they would like to do as a solution. And making you feel good about you through voluntarily declining to do certain things is nice and nobel but more of a form of hedonism than a practical solution. Nothing wrong with that but it's not a scalable solution in the sense that in the bigger picture of 7-9 billion people not following your lead, it's going to be statistically meaningless/irrelevant unless you convince them otherwise at unprecedented scale.