Public transit is for dense cities. Works brilliantly on Manhattan; can't be made reasonable in Houston.

Western Europe is densely populated and has passenger railways since 19th century. Bus service (of sorts) started in Paris in mid-17th century.

That isn't true. Houston has okay transit, and could have much better with some small investment. It won't be ask brilliant as Manhattan, but it can be a lot better. And Houston unlike most cities will allow you to build transit friendly (though they do need to get rid of their excessive parking requirement to really make transit useful)

Talk is cheap. Most people talking though don't actually believe that as we can tell by their actions: they support politicians who don't do anything about the bad state of alternative means of transportation. In fact many of the politicians they support are doing more harm to alternative transport than those politicians who honestly believe alternative transport is a bad idea and oppose it.

This too. What you're suggesting requires completely changing our way of life from how we gather food to how we design housing and communities.

I'm not saying you're wrong, it's just going to be nearly impossible to convince people when lunking masses of steal around for no good reason is such a large part of their life.

In France that's a fact of life and significant improvements are underway. Public transit is very good in most bigger cities, bike lanes are plentiful, high speed rail is available for most intercity travel, and all of those are actively being improved.

So the math is for an already decently non-car centric country.

As someone who doesn't want to own a car I am biased, but to me there are still a few usecases where a car still makes sense:

- If you don't live in a big city, public transportation is far from enough

- When you want to go on vacation you not only want to travel from A to B, you also want to be able to transport all your stuff and not be bound by infrequent scheduling, and you want some kind of mobility freedom at your destination

- For your bi-weekly grocery shopping you need to be able to haul a few dozens of kg of stuff that takes something like half a m^3

For all of those, there's no easy alternative, and I understand why people used to this way of life don't really want to change. Bikes can replace some of it, electric bikes even more, and why not electric cargo bikes. But it's still very expensive, especially when you can't totally replace your car. I think the intermediate solution will be some carsharing solution, where 1 car is not owned by 1 person or 1 family but shared on average with a few families, accross a whole city.

Public Transport outside of big cities: a problem that shows that we have to look far beyond the question electric vs ICE cars. Back when nobody owned a car, even small villages had their own schools, shops, government offices. When everybody got a car, those were considered ineffective and consolidated in bigger cities. The long term solution is a return to decentralized structures.

Vacation: hobbies that require hauling a lot of gear to remote areas only became feasible with a car and might become a thing of the past, like hunting from horseback. Maybe you can rent a SUV only for those time you need it instead of using it for bringing kids to school.

Bi-weekly shopping: before corona, I walked to the nearby shops every 3 days or so. To limit exposure to mask-less shoppers I am now using a hand cart for bi weekly shopping. If you live farther away from shops, a cargo bike might be an alternative.

You're touching on the hidden part of the iceberg indeed: transportation doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's both a cause and a consequence of the organization of our cities, our shops, our jobs, and all of those: since we'll need to reduce the quantity of energy we use, we'll also need to redefine how our cities are organized

That's only possible if you change zoning and people are against changes in zoning to increase affordability. They won't change their mind for something "optional" like walkability.

They are building their very own doom.