[yellowapple]

Not to mention that public transport doesn't go everywhere. Even places with healthy and robust public transit networks only reach a subset of a metro area, and only a subset of that has routes that stop with acceptable frequency.

I think the answer lies in things like e-bikes, mopeds, and motorcycles. Rail as a high-speed backbone and an e-bike for last-mile sounds close to ideal - especially if I can charge the bike while on the train. Bike lanes ought to be the rule rather than the exception. Bike racks and moped/motorcycle parking spaces (ideally - again - with outlets for charging batteries) could and should be ubiquitous.

[michaelteter]

Fortunately more cities are starting to experiment with car-free zones, and they are making shared or subscription bikes (e-bikes often, at least in hilly places) more common. People in those areas report being much happier, and actual communities seem to begin to form as there are more people crossing each others' paths on a regular basis.

[dagw]

For me the weakness with public transport isn't so much getting around in the city (I basically never drive in the city), as it is getting out of the city. Getting to my favourite down town restaurant is 15 minutes by car or 20 minutes by public transport door to door, so I take public transport and don't have to worry about parking. Getting to my favourite hiking spot by the coast is 30 minutes by car or 2+ hours by public transport, so I take the car.

[acdha]

I’m hoping there’ll be a more mature rental / car share market, too. It’d make a lot of sense to have no/low-car city centers (e.g. accessibility and delivery only zones, low speed limits & non-prioritized roads, etc.) and more high speed road infrastructure on the edge of cities but the people I know who’ve had significant issues with things like Zipcar reservations seems like the greatest barrier for that. If people are use to going when they want, you need to deliver reliable availability to get them to reconsider.

[yellowapple]

Even putting vehicle storage on city edges (and/or concentrating it close to highways) would mitigate a lot of the problems we currently see with car-centric infrastructure. Even if I own my own car, I don't necessarily need it to be close by if I can rent a garage somewhere - so long as I can get anywhere in town (including said garage) easily and quickly via public transit and/or bike and/or foot.

[acdha]

This is also where I wish we’d market price it more: having to pay for street parking would make it obvious how much taxpayers have been subsidizing it, often at everyone’s expense (pedestrians stuck with narrow sidewalks, drivers using ostensibly two-way streets which are now only one-way between increasingly large vehicles).