> Everyone keeps saying this is a bad idea that makes no sense, but it's exactly what I want.

My take is that the only people who ever claim that it's a bad idea happen to be US citizens who have been conditioned to see a car as a sort of extension of their own body and even a social tool, and don't have any first-hand contact with working mass transit systems operating in urban areas.

The rest of the world knows that a working mass transit network greatly improves quality of life in multiple aspects of everyone's life. Anyone who experienced the metro system in cities like Berlin or Paris or Madrid, with a city-wide network criss-crossing the city with stops every 300-500 meters and trains passing by each 2-10 minutes, knows that it works well and does wonders to everyone's life and even personal disposable income.

Well, consider me for a second and you know have met, or at least heard from, someone who massively prefers to use their own car in European cities.

I assure you there's a lot of people like me.

By the way "citizens who have been conditioned to see a car as a sort of extension of their own body and even a social tool" describes me, half my friends and most of my colleagues pretty well.

"US citizens", "don't have any first-hand contact with working mass transit systems operating in urban areas" don't apply so much to us. We're consultants and I assure you. We have first hand experience with mass transit systems in every EU capital, half the US state capitals, and a lot of others.

And none of them match having your own car. Most of us have a choice taking mass transit systems or doing an hour plus of being stuck, going almost walking pace, on the highways. When traveling public transport tends to be the easiest to find, more reliable and quickest way to quickly get to your hotel. Taking a car into a plane, while possible, is sadly not within budget limits for travel. Taxis are, but opinions are divided on them. I think they're generally more trouble than they're worth, and they make you miss all the stuff you want to look at.

I suppose my main reason is that I can actually shop where I want, and take useful quantities of food, supplies etc plus all my work stuff home with me. There is no way to do that with public transport. Aside from the comfort, this actually saves a lot of money, and more generally even allows for more economic opportunity (due to reasonable and speedy access to more goods. I help organize a music mini-festival. That's not doable without a car, mostly because I can go get needed things quickly).

Second reason is that while public transport, where it works, only connects the spokes with the hub. It does not connect neighboring small cities in any useful way, if at all. Even if public transport has connections, they run 4-5 times per day. And they're mostly empty, so every time the public transport bigwigs play with the schedule (every 6 months in France) we live in fear (or my kids do anyway), if the connection will still be there or they won't be able to visit their friends.

Public transport is -barely- tolerable to connect people to their jobs. It is unusable for almost anything else. Not even for regular groceries. Not for going to IKEA and get some furniture. Not for having a party at a friend's place. And so on and so forth ... And please don't start the argument that it's cheaper. It is not, as soon as you consider how much more a car lets you do, and that public transport just isn't a replacement.

Electrical bikes help. Or at least, they're better than bikes and sometimes more useful than cars.

That's fine when a few people want a car in the city, but when millions of people in a busy city want the same thing, then it's unsustainable, there's literally not enough room for everyone to have a car since (even ignoring the amount of road space you need for everyone to drive around after they get off the high-speed car-train) you need two spaces for every person (one at home, one at work) -- the size of a person's required parking spaces (and the travel lanes to get to them) approach the size of an urban housing unit, so parking alone cuts urban density by 1/2.

The kind of low to mid-density area that can support everyone owning a car is not the kind of high-density area that can afford to pay billions of dollars for high-speed car tunnels.

If you want to use your car, use it outside of the city, don't displace housing in the city so you can park your car for the 22 hour a day you're not using it.

I may find it very convenient to drive every where in my 40 foot motorhome so literally all of my stuff is with me at all times, but that's not going to happen.