Australian researchers have found that tire wear and tear is a major contributor to urban waterway pollution, producing particulate matter that includes microplastics. But, they also found that there are effective ways of reducing this type of pollution, which can affect the health of the…
That’s my point. Cars can easily be replaced, not abandoned. In my example, trains are sufficient to get to most cities with comparable speed. With enough funding for public transport - which isn’t even that much compared to maintaining roads and bridges - you could remove 95+% of cars.
Yet even here public transport is too unreliable too little service (note that I didn’t mention buses) and apparently people will use cars as long as there is a minor time benefit.
To illustrate my point: even though the bus service is mediocre regardless of where you live in my town, you are within one mile of everything you’d need on the daily basis (supermarket, pharmacy, bank…). However, there is a roughly 50 : 1 difference in parking spaces to bicycle racks because for some reason you either walk or drive a car.