Have you ever lived in a city or country with a well-functioning public transportation network? It doesn't sound like it. In such a context, the only reasons 99% of people prefer cars / vans is: 1) cost, 2) if you need to transport big stuff, 3) if you need the flexibility

2) and 3) are only true for a small subset of people, e.g. for handymen or people who transport stuff regularly

1) cost is the big one, and currently a big reason that trains are sometimes more expensive than cars, at least in Germany, is subsidies and external costs. Also, that people underestimate what owning and operating a car costs, and just compare the train ticket price to the gas price for a specific trip.

> As soon as traffic becomes reasonable because of extensive public transportation...

City councils can start doing the inverse of what they’ve been doing. Traffic increases, so roads are widened, more parking is created, leading to more cars, and traffic increases.

As traffic decreases, roads can be changed to reduce the focus on cars, and increase the focus on other forms of transport / pedestrians / additional commerce, which then serves to discourage further traffic because … there’s nowhere to create more space for cars anymore.

See various European major cities (e.g. London, or less so, Madrid) for examples of this happening in real time.

You can’t zip in and park next to work if there’s only a single lane of one way traffic permitted on each road, and there’s only 100 parking spaces within a 5 min walk of your office (and about 10,000 people working in that area)

Exactly this. In London they have even reduced the number of car parks new apartment buildings are allocated. One place I looked at only had ~20 parks for ~80 flats. They can only do this because there’s a great public transport system in place.