A lot of places don't have Costco or anything remotely close, and people do fine. Most European cities typically ban big box retailers within the city limits. For the occasional heavy stuff, I've been able to order groceries online for nearly 15 years.

Functioning public transit gives a lot of freedom to elderly people who cannot drive anymore. Much more than individual cars.

Nobody is against cars when they make sense.

I have an elderly mother. She uses a cargo tricycle. She can't drive.

“Some people can’t use bikes, therefore they’re dumb” is a bad argument.

Well, the actual argument is "Some people can’t use bikes, therefore banning cars is dumb".

EDIT: I made a factual statement. If you downvote me for it, at least have the courtesy to say why. If there's something dumb, it's downvoting for factual statements that aren't even expressing either opinion.

You’re probably getting downvoted for making up what people are talking about and then arguing against it, which is a straw man.

Advocating for more people to use car-less transit more often is not the same as banning cars.

Huh, what? Saying that anyone says "bikes are dumb" isn't making up what people are talking about? The argument revolves around the fact that there are a lot of situations when a car(-like vehicle) is appropriate, not that bikes are dumb as a whole. Literally no one says bikes are dumb.

Not your comment, but since you're willing to step in to defend OP:

> "or had elderly parents. When someone needs to use a walker, good luck getting them on a bicycle. Plus, where do you carry the walker?"

This is a straw man argument, since at no point was anyone saying that Grandpa has to cube the car and hop on the saddle. The fact that some people cannot use a bike is a terrible argument against using bikes in general. That's like saying "well, some people are blind, so let's just ban cars".

I agree. The problem is that these cases exist - and it can be as simple as being temporarily ill (food poisoning can really impact you). I think this argument is important to answer because if the answer is "everyone who has a disablement card can ride a car", then we need to go to the next step in the discussion - for example this summer I got so ill that I was unable to walk 700 meters to the store. IMO we should talk about all such cases before if we talk about even a partial ban because it could seriously impact someone, even if their case is only temporary.

If the main point is "we should promote using bikes/public transport instead of cars", I think no one disagrees about that - and that's why an extreme case gets mentioned, because there is no point in talking about a mild case and there is still a lot of people that want a full ban.