As a small business owner who sells a physical good, statements like this scare the hell out of me. You have no idea the kind of monopolization and losses of freedom implementing ideas like this would entail. Cars are democratic. They are a cheap, scaleable way of solving the problem of transportation. Kill cars, and you will destroy a lot of entrepreneurship in things that really matter. You will also be hurting those that start with the least most of all.
Can you explain a little more? It seems on first blush that a no-cars city with good public transport and good support for walking and cycling would be much more democratic than a city where people rely on cars to get to places. Bikes are much cheaper than cars, food is much cheaper than gas. It's much cheaper to take a public transport link to a destination than to take a taxi or rent a car. It seems very counter-intuitive to say "cars are democratic" where then are lot of people who can't afford a car. They also seem much less scalable than the alternatives.
I'm lucky enough to live in a city with lots of shops in walking distance of my apartment. There's a discount supermarket 15 minutes away where I buy most of my food.
If I lived in a city where all the big supermarkets were in strip malls or commercial estates on the outskirts of the city, I'd have to buy my food at smaller convenience-style stores with much higher prices and a poorer selection of goods.
It's hard to argue against his abstract proposition since he didnt really provide an alternative plan, but in general, there are two main factors I'd like to stress.
The first is the loss of mobility and its results. One almost universal facet of the alternatives to cars that people suggest is that they limit where you can enter and exit the system. You can't use a train to navigate to anywhere you want to go: you use it to get close and then use some other way of getting the rest of the way. Remove other transit systems, and this will effectively set property values. Want to open a store? Well, if you're an established player with easy access to capital through the investment bank that handled your last merger, than the cost of leasing or purchasing property with reasonable access via transportation is fairly easy. But if you don't, you're probably not going to be able to afford that. You're going to have to locate yourself in a far less accessible location. And the value proposition of your business now has to overcome this difference as well in addition to regular value you would offer. From a consumer standpoint, this means you have fewer alternatives. Things have to be pretty bad with your existing supplier of a good or service for you to switch if doing so is going to entail a higher inconvenience in terms of access. I saw this all the time in Chicago. People could charge a premium beyond what their higher rent would require simply because they knew that you would be reluctant to walk another 15 minutes to get to someone who was charging 10-20% less per item.
There are additional fixed costs that would go with the logistical concerns a model like this would entail. How are you going to get things to and from your business? The constructs are going to most likely favor established methods. Say we don't allow cars to drive, but we do decide that we need the infrastructure to allow 18-wheelers to get through, and you can use that method instead. Well now you need a loading dock. Now you either need to pay someone else a premium for hauling it for you or buy an 18-wheeler yourself. You can't simply use the car you were already using to commute to your day job while trying to start this new business. You can't sacrifice additional time to lower the cots. You are effectively confined to hiring other people to do it for you because of the system.
In short, it makes the system much more rigid. It leaves fewer feasible alternatives both for the consumer and the provider. It also makes barriers to entry far higher.
I don't think we should kill cars. At least not until there is something better to replace them.
You may want a car to get to other cities. But to walk around within the city with no car emissions? No cars zooming by everywhere? With an excellent mass transportation, even one with privacy for its users? I would give up a lot to live in a place like that.
cars are not democratic. They restrict freedom. Just to be able to walk around everywhere within a small city without any cars driving by would a dream for me.
