>Many, many people already do this on public transport
Total fantasy. Virtually nobody uses public transport. 5% of commuters use public transport. Relative to the car-pooling, who sees double the volume of users as public transport, 10%.
Total fantasy. Virtually nobody uses public transport. 5% of commuters use public transport. Relative to the car-pooling, who sees double the volume of users as public transport, 10%.
The question is: if that changes, what might people choose to do? The example of large cities like NYC at least teaches us that the American preference for solo car travel is not fixed.
[0] http://ns.umich.edu/new/releases/21923-hitchin-a-ride-fewer-...
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census-analysis/di...
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/2011-census-analysis/di...
These are not insignificant figures.
If you say "people don't want to do X" when millions of people in my country already do a more extreme form of X, then I think you're wrong.