> But your comment glosses over the part about rural people though. The reason these people love them is because there is no alternative and I don't really see how we can change that. Mass transit doesn't make sense in rural areas.

I didn't gloss over it, it just wasn't relevant to the point I was making. The topic is banning cars in cities, not banning them in general.

Anyway, I don't see a reason to force rural people to not use a car. There's plenty of space out in the country, so let them have their cars. Obviously, we need to transition all cars away from combustion engines in the near future, but that is a separate issue.

But (electric) bikes do? Yeah, you will probably own a car living in a rural area, but where I was from, when you went to the city you either switched modes (car+walk/scoot) or cycled to the city. The group of people who really has no alternative is actually quite small. And over here, there is a small but growing opinion that those people maybe should live in the city in the first place? Right now they are making city life more noisy, smelly, toxic, ugly and unsafe for the city person on his cycle, and that basically for free. Is it really a right to exchange other peoples environment for your comfort?

Totally agree cars are not the right mode of transport for cities. I'm a big fan of park and ride solutions for this - drive to the outskirts, dump the car and ride the train/bus in. I don't think it is really fair however to ask people who live in rural areas to move to cities. In general rural areas are more deprived so I would hazard a guess that many of them couldn't afford to live in the city even if they wanted to. Plus we do need people in rural areas - agriculture and tourism are both important industries.

> And over here, there is a small but growing opinion that those people maybe should live in the city in the first place?

I live in central Europe and there is actually quite opposite debate: people are moving to cities in large quantities, so rural areas are becoming emptier and poorer every day. Not everyone can and should live in a big city.