Your first suggestion Is what I hate about the car hating crowd. Remove that from your agenda. Make your alternatives better than a car without screwing over the car drivers. You will make more people accept your changes that way. Light rail in San Jose is a disaster, it does not go to useful places, and it gets there slowly. It should have been a subway so it could be independent of surface traffic.
No. Making the cars go somewhere else is the most important thing. It wouldn’t screw over car drivers, because car drivers wouldn’t need cars to get everywhere. If there are fewer cars, then all other traffic is faster. Even if a train only moves at the speed that a car would have moved at, it still moves more people. The same goes for buses and trams. Bicycles and walking will still be slower than it’s possible for cars to be, but since they take up less space, they will be faster in practice. Also, without cars, everyone will be far safer, the air will be far cleaner, and cities will be far quieter. Then, when cars are gone, you won’t need parking lots. The parking lots can be turned into something useful, whether it’s housing, stores, parks, or literally anything that isn’t an asphalt slab.
![[meme] Pedestrians shouldn't be relegated to the sidelines](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6b416d86-6a93-45bc-9275-c7c1d7a52943.webp){kind=link}
Your first suggestion Is what I hate about the car hating crowd. Remove that from your agenda. Make your alternatives better than a car without screwing over the car drivers. You will make more people accept your changes that way. Light rail in San Jose is a disaster, it does not go to useful places, and it gets there slowly. It should have been a subway so it could be independent of surface traffic.
No. Making the cars go somewhere else is the most important thing. It wouldn’t screw over car drivers, because car drivers wouldn’t need cars to get everywhere. If there are fewer cars, then all other traffic is faster. Even if a train only moves at the speed that a car would have moved at, it still moves more people. The same goes for buses and trams. Bicycles and walking will still be slower than it’s possible for cars to be, but since they take up less space, they will be faster in practice. Also, without cars, everyone will be far safer, the air will be far cleaner, and cities will be far quieter. Then, when cars are gone, you won’t need parking lots. The parking lots can be turned into something useful, whether it’s housing, stores, parks, or literally anything that isn’t an asphalt slab.