Even if we accept that the personal vehicle provides a better experience for an individual in a vacuum compared to ideal public transit, we're left with the critical problem that if a significant number of people choose to use personal vehicles instead of public transit, then there will be so much traffic that the experience will be awful for everyone. This traffic will cause travel delays, noise, pollution (from exhaust, brake dust, tire dust, etc.), and create an unpleasant dangerous environment for pedestrians and cyclists.

> "It also means people have to live in dense apartments instead of spread out suburbs and semi rural living." > "I mean not having to be in close quarters with other humans."

Suburbs tend to be sterile and devoid of character, but I do agree that they promote living in a bubble away from other humans.

Why that is desired or a widespread model for living needs more explanation. Sure some people like to be hermits, but as a social species it seems odd and also a highly inefficient way to accommodate a larger population. Also peculiar if one likes true "wilderness", because more suburban sprawl means less of that.

And suburbs have got to be one of the key factors in the reported loneliness epidemic. With the reports of increasing prevalence of loneliness, seems odd to want the default way of life to be one that we both agree means living spread out and not close to one another.

And yeah some people do like suburbs. On the other hand, Irvine ca despite being such an upscale and model suburb, is like living in the set of the truman show: artificial feeling and boring. People often describe it as sterile or like living in an office park. The landscaping of suburbs, such as irvine, also tend to be environmental disasters on top of being utterly bland. It's lose lose.

Not to mention, car transport being the paramount design concern makes for truly miserable pedestrian life and running trails. Running next to 6 lanes roads with 55 mph speed limits is just a terrible experience - irvine is crisscrossed with them.

Not sure how one can have a better road system than irvine - but it doesn't end up saving the residents time - things are just more spread out and they have to driver further between them and then fight for parking.

We've tried a car oriented transportation plan for decades - it gets one LA traffic. Parts of the 405 have 12 lanes. If you build it, congestion comes. We've tried it for decades, it's horrible. What is it they say about trying the same thing over and over and expecting another outcome? Oops actually the i5 - 405 merge near irvine has 26!!! lanes amongst all the ramps and truck bypasses. Needs more, right?