I didn't have a stay at home parent that was able to drive me to e.g. the fabric store when I wanted to make a kite one summer, so I biked there. The public swimming pool was about a mile and a half away in the center of town, mildly long walk, super quick bike ride. Same with a lot of other stuff.
To this day, 15 years later, I deeply wish it had been much safer and made more convenient for kids and people to bike around. It was so nice to be able to do whatever without having to be driven around, but some of it definitely was not at all safe due to the car culture in the area.
I still bike a lot as a result of this and I'm about to purchase a cargo ebike to let me pick up groceries and larger packages (we have some sizeable 300ft climbs here). I can tell a massive difference between my fitness (28 years old) and my similarly aged peers because I've stayed active biking. It's really sad to see.
It's insane how much people will complain about removing a single lane of traffic on an excessively large urban "road" to make life much, much safer and healthier for kids, people walking, etc.
The first protected bike lane in my city was put in about 8 years ago and it was an insane political battle. You can see where it stops as a result here: https://www.google.com/maps/@39.1322698,-84.5316412,182m/dat...
Having a 5 lane road for the amount of traffic this road gets (very minimal) is absolutely insane, and it results in people going 50-60mph on a 35mph road on one of the most active cycle routes around. The section of road with the protected bike lane has no worse of traffic at all, and is much safer. However, due to the political bickering and car obsession about 70% of the bollards have been run over and destroyed by cars, and no one on city council will stick their neck out to get them repaired.
It's so frustrating and selfish for people to do this!!
The issue with scooters is the same with motorcycles. First and foremost is safety but quickly arriving behind that is weather. Get below 70F and it can be cold even moving only 20 to 30 miles per hour then top it off with rain or worse?
The second issue with scooters and motorcycles is that in some regions they are just too easy to make off with so in the case of scooters I could see a government just using the rental system where they are everywhere giving no value in stealing them.
There is no (reasonable) way to have cities like Tokyo, Delhi or Shanghai if each family lives in a detached home & people commute to work daily by private automobile.
And this is not even tackling having to alleviate climate change by reducing emissions.
If someone pays money to register something it shouldn't be the state's concern whether it's a car or a fork lift, moped or a bike, as long as it fits in the lanes and has the right lights they should be able to drive it on any road on which they can keep up with traffic.
Nobody wants to do 40 on a moped on the interstate with traffic speeding by. Market solutions for both these problems have been proven to work well.
Likewise your personal air pollution doesn't make a perceptible difference but if everyone is driving cleaner vehicles it benefits everyone collectively with cleaner air (this was very noticable when e.g. Delhi required auto-rickshaws to convert to natural gas).
Yes, if I live in a coastal city in the US, maybe you wouldn't need a vehicle. But everyone else...
If your trip to the doc is > 20km or > 15 miles you probably either take the car or have a lot of time on your hands. Same with family that needs your support from time to time.
Transporting even just groceries can be a problem on a bike. Sure, I said the same thing when I was a student when the next supermarket was directly next to university and I could just go there every day.