> Between the trade-off bad job, no time, and car/public transport, the car quickly becomes the best solution
If you beat public transport by using a car then there just isn't enough public transit or the city isn't dense enough (likely the former, due to the latter). If you live 3km from your job in London or NYC then at least during rush hour it's likely to be faster to use public transport than a car.
> Life becomes too busy to spend the extra 30 minutes commuting per day that public transport would cost.
This is again based on the premise that public transport costs time, rather than saves time or doesn't matter time wise.
People who work in really dense cities but live far outside it so they need to drive from home are already likely to not drive all the way into the city center but rather drive to the edge of the city center, park there more cheaply, and take a train the last 10% of the way. The key is that that traffic in the city center is slower than public transport, including the wait times and walking required. Within some distance from the city center of a city that is dense enough and has enough public transport, this holds true. And it's in this area that private car traffic make little sense at all. But that doesn't mean people can't have cars. Or that suburban people won't drive. You might still want to drive somewhere on the weekend. Or you might need to drive to even reach the public transport.
IF you live in a city with enough density that public transport beats the car most of the time, and IF your job is in that same area too, then yes, going car-free can save time. But you need several hundreds of thousands people in the same-ish spot for both those assumptions to hold true for most people. And probably also some badly designed roads.
I live in a town of 125k people, where I can reach any spot by bike or public transport in about 30 minutes. Perfectly commutable. It has a few jobs for people like me, but not enough for a decent amount of variety.
> I live in a town of 125k people, where I can reach any spot by bike or public transport in about 30 minutes. Perfectly commutable. It has a few jobs for people like me, but not enough for a decent amount of variety.
Car-free center can work there too. But for 125k people it might just be a few blocks square in the middle. The math is pretty simple. If density is so low that there can't be stations every 5 minutes of walking, or so low that businesses like large detached grocery stores, gas stations, building material stores and so on could even think of being there, then it's 100% car territory.
But one shouldn't let it become self-fulfilling. If city restaurants have parking then they need a lot of space, which lowers density, and they become unattractive to people who are walking. So a key ingredient for a car free city could be to ensure no establishments have parking lots within a specified distance of the city center. It's nearly impossible to combine parking lots with walkability.
I agree with all of that. And in fact, that is what this city has. The car-free center thing works very well. You get a few large parking garages around the center, and inside you do everything on foot.
The rest of the city is spacious and has good car accessibility, so you can also get out quickly.
> This is again based on the premise that public transport costs time, rather than saves time or doesn't matter time wise.
This is a reasonable premise. Because a car is point to point and public transport by definition is not. I agree it is possible to maneuver yourself into a situation where you live immediately next to the subway stop and your job is immediately next to the other subway stop. Public transport will save time then. But that's very rare and also a fragile setup because as soon as you change either home or job, it's no longer true.
So for most people public transport means walking to the nearest stop, taking the subway/bus and then walking to the destination. So yes it takes more time.
If you beat public transport by using a car then there just isn't enough public transit or the city isn't dense enough (likely the former, due to the latter). If you live 3km from your job in London or NYC then at least during rush hour it's likely to be faster to use public transport than a car.
> Life becomes too busy to spend the extra 30 minutes commuting per day that public transport would cost.
This is again based on the premise that public transport costs time, rather than saves time or doesn't matter time wise.
People who work in really dense cities but live far outside it so they need to drive from home are already likely to not drive all the way into the city center but rather drive to the edge of the city center, park there more cheaply, and take a train the last 10% of the way. The key is that that traffic in the city center is slower than public transport, including the wait times and walking required. Within some distance from the city center of a city that is dense enough and has enough public transport, this holds true. And it's in this area that private car traffic make little sense at all. But that doesn't mean people can't have cars. Or that suburban people won't drive. You might still want to drive somewhere on the weekend. Or you might need to drive to even reach the public transport.