Getting people into public transit by making car ownership worse is how you get unhappy people. That is just unproductive and destructive. Make public transit better, that is how you get people out of cars and happy.
> The people that live in the city center probably already use public transit
No they don't. The 74% of The Netherlands lives in a city yet 66% of people commute to work by car. That goes to show that even for people living in cities, going to work by car is still the preferred method. I'm one of them, in the example I gave above it was three times faster to go to work by car.
> because they actually live there, and they will vote them out
That is elitist "fuck you I got mine" mentality. Rich people in city centers able to afford expensive houses will make it harder for poor people in the affordable neighbouring cities to move around and get to work.
This is fantasy, you cannot snap your fingers and make this happen, nor are the people in charge incompetent. Never has a city "simply" made PT better at a pace that allowed for significant car reduction without making car users unhappy. Again, car users will always complain, unless the PT takes them less time to commute, which is physically impossible to accommodate for all car users.
> That is elitist "fuck you I got mine" mentality.
No, car users have the "fuck you I got mine" mentality: they have a short commute because they are rich enough to pay for car space in the city, and want a perpetual right to this.
> Rich people in city centers able to afford expensive houses will make it harder for poor people in the affordable neighbouring cities to move around and get to work.
Rich people live in the outskirts in big houses, but want to able to steamroll with their car right into the city center, regardless of the impact to people living in the center and along the way to it.
> Police officers, healthcare workers, sanitation workers, teachers. Those people don't live in the city and with their work schedules often can only go by car.
They absolutely can go by PT, or relocate, as it has been proven by all the cities that successfully have restricted cars.
We cannot increase density in cities anymore, cars are not the solution because they simply don't scale and are not actually accessible to poor people.
The top 5% earners are not the ultra rich. To even afford a 50 square meter apartment somewhat near the center of Amsterdam you need to be at least an engineer, lawyer or doctor earning six figures. Those people do not live in suburbs, that is where the people earning modal income live.
Is this some sort of American way of thinking you are projecting onto my country?
And where should those essential workers relocate to? They already live as close to the city as their lending/renting capabilities allow them. And no they can't all use public transit otherwise they likely would be using it already.
And yes we can increase density. Amsterdam only has 3700 people/km2. The metropole only has 900 people/km2.
You have a distorted view of what "modal income" is. If you can afford to live in the suburbs and drive one car (per worker) into the city, then you are rich. The poor live in the periphery and walk, use PT, or carpool. Then, the ultra-rich can afford to live in penthouses in the financial district and will always weasel a way in to be able to drive (or get driven) in a SUV, they are irrelevant to the discussion.
You are relatively rich and want to have your way with your car and driving, and are using the poor as a bad excuse.
What do you think will happen, that the system will collapse? Trains and buses spilling with people, no essential workers, police and healthcare unavailable, chaos, anarchy?
No! Everything goes on normally in cities that have restricted car traffic. Because restrictions are gradual. If a job offer in the city center becomes less competitive (considering time and money), then it will attract different workers from better locations. And same for housing.
> And yes we can increase density. Amsterdam only has 3700 people/km2. The metropole only has 900 people/km2.
Sure, if you want to make everything worse, you can keep dialing it up until it's too late. See any other major city in the world. There's an upper limit of what is acceptable, there not really a limit in decentralizing.
Every single survey I've seen across Netherlands, Slovenia, Switzerland and Germany showed big support AFTER the changes were made (but a lot of hand wringing like yours BEFORE they were made).
The people that are usually unhappy are the ones that want to drag their SUVs in front of people living in city apartments and leave them there.
Of course the people living in Amsterdam will answer the survey positively. It's not those people that are impacted. It's the poor person working at IKEA that now has an extra 30 minutes of commute because they imposed parking restrictions near their job. The rich Amsterdam city center person shopping at IKEA can take the metro because they can afford to live such a lifestyle.
Poor people will chose a job that is nearer, rents and salaries adjust to job opportunities - it's a good thing to decentralize, we cannot keep concentrating more jobs and dwellers around already problematic zones.
The inverse is also true. The public transport experience is bad now because the car experience is optimized.
That's really not universally true. If I'm going in and out during commuting hours and drive to the commuter rail station, it's about a wash whether I take the train into the city or drive depending upon where I'm going and what local subway connection/walk I need to do.
It's pretty much useless outside of commuting hours though given limited train schedule and the fact that driving is faster at those times than rush hour. So I'll basically never take the train for an evening event.
No, you can also start by imposing restrictions on cars.
> If public transit was a good option to get to work for people, more people would use it.
The people that live in the city center probably already use public transit because, for them, public transit is probably a faster commute. That means that the cars congesting the center are driven by people that live in the periphery or even suburbs outside of the city.
So these people will want those nasty cars out, because they actually live there, and they will vote them out.
You can never accommodate the people from the suburbs, unless they have a station right next to their door and their office and a train coming every 5 minutes, a car will always be faster. They live in someone else's municipality, so the mayors can just ignore them.
People in the periphery are more delicate, but usually they are also tired of congestions, and it's much easier to make at least minor improvements to public transit for them.
But again, you can restrict and make improvements in parallel, and the improvement will almost never be perceived as matching the restrictions anyway.