I live in a very car-unfriendly city that invests heavily in public transport. Amongst other things, this implies that they don't invest in things like car parking space. Most residents don't have cars and cannot have cars because there are far fewer parking spaces in apartment blocks than the number of people living there. Problems include:
1. My wife (who runs a small service business) is constantly having customers miss appointments and explaining it as "I spent 30 minutes trying to find somewhere to park, failed, and had to return home". Being unable to actually use a business at all because you can't park anywhere isn't an issue you see in most cities, but here it happens all the time. You might wonder why don't they just park on the outskirts and take public transit the rest of the way, and the answer is that train stations don't have much parking either, and at any rate public transport is usually 2x or worse slower than with cars (best case), so often they just don't have enough time in their lunch breaks or after work to do that. With a car friendly city, people can pop out to a local business and back in the time they have available.
2. The city is also very keen on recycling. Bin bags are extraordinarily expensive because they are heavily taxed and it's illegal to use any other kind of bag. Fine for small objects, but what about when it's time to recycle something large like a TV or a carpet? The actual solution they push on you: there are special trams that a few times a year park at certain stops, and then you are expected to just carry the full recycling load down there with your arms. You could also buy a little trolley and use that. Is it raining that day? Maybe you're traveling and away from home? Too bad, wait another 3-4 months or so and keep the junk in your apartment whilst you do so. With a car: put the stuff in your boot and go to a fixed recycling point that's always open. Easy.
3. Car-free cities become completely dependent upon the goodwill of their public transit unions, who then exploit that dependency to earn themselves vast salaries and perks. Tube drivers in London can earn more than senior software engineers and have final salary pensions, even though the job is mostly automated and on many lines consists of pushing a button to move to the next station.
4. Transit systems are very centralized and prone to widespread system failure due to poor maintenance, e.g. if points or signaling fail at a busy junction half the city can grind to a halt. Roads are more robust because cars can normally pull over if they have problems, and people can drive around the rare car that's got stuck in the middle. Roads degrade much more smoothly than railways do.
5. Public transit systems invariably run at a loss because ticket prices are set too low for the actual overheads involved. Roads usually raise more in taxes than they cost to maintain.
6. Obviously, there's all the practical downsides that come from not having a personal space like sometimes not being able to sit together with your family, or sit at all.
Don't get me wrong, there are many positives and conveniences but it's silly to say there are no disadvantages to going all-in on public transport. There are many serious disadvantages which is why cars caught on to begin with.
This is a very late comment, but in case anyone else is looking at this thread in the future:
A quick google search [0][1] seems to prove #5 false, specifically the bit about roads bringing in more in taxes than they cost to maintain. The first article is from 2011 and is about the US.
These largely seem to be a function of how it's done where you are, not how it has to be. Your points are generally solvable.
1. Have a park-and-ride outside the urban area but with good public transport connections. These can have a lot of parking, and (at least where I live) are encouraged by the parking fee being €1 if you then use public transport into the city where cars are slow anyway.
2. Then have better recycling/rubbish systems. Here there are two options: you can call the city and they'll arrange a pickup, or you can wait until a specific day of the week when they do large items. Also, if you order something large (a new TV say) the supplier is obliged to offer to take the previous one away.
3. If they earn such, then they're clearly in sufficient demand, and are providing an important and safety-critical role. They're arguably doing a lot more good for a city than many software engineers.
4. Better maintenance. Unmaintained roads are also bad.
5. There's no problem running at a loss if it improves the overall life and economy of the city. Some places even set the price at free because of the benefits it brings (sadly not mine.)
All this said, you're not wrong in the sense that everything is about tradeoffs. If there were no tradeoffs there wouldn't be a discussion to be had and everyone would use whatever was obviously the best. For myself, I prefer a more liveable city and happily that's the way where I live leans. There's still plenty of driving (to my annoyance sometimes, cars are big, dangerous, and prone to clogging the place up for other modes of transport) but they discourage it by lowering speed limits and restricting through-traffic. So it's possible but less attractive than going by bike or tram or whatever unless you have a special case.
I live in a very car-unfriendly city that invests heavily in public transport. Amongst other things, this implies that they don't invest in things like car parking space. Most residents don't have cars and cannot have cars because there are far fewer parking spaces in apartment blocks than the number of people living there. Problems include:
1. My wife (who runs a small service business) is constantly having customers miss appointments and explaining it as "I spent 30 minutes trying to find somewhere to park, failed, and had to return home". Being unable to actually use a business at all because you can't park anywhere isn't an issue you see in most cities, but here it happens all the time. You might wonder why don't they just park on the outskirts and take public transit the rest of the way, and the answer is that train stations don't have much parking either, and at any rate public transport is usually 2x or worse slower than with cars (best case), so often they just don't have enough time in their lunch breaks or after work to do that. With a car friendly city, people can pop out to a local business and back in the time they have available.
2. The city is also very keen on recycling. Bin bags are extraordinarily expensive because they are heavily taxed and it's illegal to use any other kind of bag. Fine for small objects, but what about when it's time to recycle something large like a TV or a carpet? The actual solution they push on you: there are special trams that a few times a year park at certain stops, and then you are expected to just carry the full recycling load down there with your arms. You could also buy a little trolley and use that. Is it raining that day? Maybe you're traveling and away from home? Too bad, wait another 3-4 months or so and keep the junk in your apartment whilst you do so. With a car: put the stuff in your boot and go to a fixed recycling point that's always open. Easy.
3. Car-free cities become completely dependent upon the goodwill of their public transit unions, who then exploit that dependency to earn themselves vast salaries and perks. Tube drivers in London can earn more than senior software engineers and have final salary pensions, even though the job is mostly automated and on many lines consists of pushing a button to move to the next station.
4. Transit systems are very centralized and prone to widespread system failure due to poor maintenance, e.g. if points or signaling fail at a busy junction half the city can grind to a halt. Roads are more robust because cars can normally pull over if they have problems, and people can drive around the rare car that's got stuck in the middle. Roads degrade much more smoothly than railways do.
5. Public transit systems invariably run at a loss because ticket prices are set too low for the actual overheads involved. Roads usually raise more in taxes than they cost to maintain.
6. Obviously, there's all the practical downsides that come from not having a personal space like sometimes not being able to sit together with your family, or sit at all.
Don't get me wrong, there are many positives and conveniences but it's silly to say there are no disadvantages to going all-in on public transport. There are many serious disadvantages which is why cars caught on to begin with.