Yup. I’m of the opinion that cars inside cities need to be much more heavily regulated. I believe that the quality of cities would be improved hugely by providing cheap & plentiful parking on the outskirts with solid transit links into the city, and taxing people to the moon for parking inside, with very few parking spots.
This would keep cars where they make sense: inter-city and rural. Keep them out of my dense urban environment, and keep the roads free for service vehicles, buses and ambulances.
I am of the exact same opinion. I like having clean air and green spaces in my city and I’m really tired of the constant battle to walk places safely. If I am walking somewhere, I am guaranteed to have to avoid a car who didn’t care that there was a pedestrian with the right of way- or even smack in the middle of the crosswalk for that matter.
I come from a semi-rural midwestern area, and my first experience with a subway system (or really, any public transit that ran more than once every 3 hours) was in Boston.
Granted, we flew in, so other than renting a car or ridesharing, we didn’t have a choice, but other than needing to plan for the walk rather than the drive, and one very scary bridge we had to cross many times due to where the hotel was (I struggle walking on surfaces I can see through, regardless how far the drop), there was absolutely no need for a car, and indeed it would have been much worse (I dislike all driving and city driving is absolutely horrible - used to live in Houston - plus finding and paying for parking blah blah blah. No.). It was glorious to wait 5 minutes for the next train, then do whatever while getting there.
If my area even had a decent bus, I’d use it, but we don’t. In the 10 years I’ve lived in this town I’ve seen a bus a handful of times, and frankly that’s not often enough to consider relying on unless you have no choice. I do have a bike but I need an e-bike because everything is fairly distant and steeply downhill from my house (seriously, I can go further uphill, but there’s nothing there worth going for, unless you enjoy cemeteries and farm fields) and I’m not even close to in shape enough to bike it. I did get a stationary bike with the goal of getting in shape enough to bike around town, but that’s not going well at all 😅. But I could see a bike in a city. I’d even be fine with mopeds in city limits (not really that different from e-bikes, just ICE instead of battery) as long as there’s no cars. Waste of space and dangerous in cities. Plus all those heavy boxes moving single humans is horrible for air quality which primarily impacts those walking… so it’s dangerous even if you are the absolute best driver in the world.
