[acdha]

This thread is about one of the largest cities in North America and that’s the context of my comment: if gravel roads are an alternative you’re not looking at congestion tolls, and you already need to build the roads to handle things like trucks.

Re: lanes, yes, rural areas are different but if you look around suburban or urban environments there are a ton of 4-8 lane roads, complex interchange ramps, etc. which exist only because people drive solo and the resulting congestion leads to a massive amount of dedicated space. If you count the number of people on a given block, it’s usually an amount which will fit on a single bus. This is really eye-opening if you’ve ever driven in New Jersey where there are these huge congested roads full of cars and a single train goes by with more people than every car in eyesight.

[toast0]

You started with

> If you are living in a place that forces you into car ownership as a means of transportation,

Which I felt moved the topic out of NYC. Lots of people live in NYC without car ownership.

[acdha]

That was someone else, but I think the point of comparison was the New Jersey and Connecticut suburbs whose drivers are affected by this change rather than rural drivers. Those kind of places are where you see such a large amount of the local budget going to road construction and maintenance because they have the combination of high population and limited transit options.