AKA How to keep suburbanites out of downtown completely, lose massive amounts of business, and become a slum.
[1] https://www.citylab.com/solutions/2015/03/the-complete-busin...
Cities have enough people - we don't need suburbanites clogging up our streets with ugly cars.
Why would I do something remarkably inconvenient like taking a bus taking an hour plus when I can do the same thing directly in 5ish minutes? It's illogical. It's too much an ask. Life is too short to waste it all in transit.
If you remove parking, you remove the suburbanites. It's really that simple.
In London you've just cut out almost everywhere worth visiting.
I've flown on different airlines, but the process is still the same for arriving at the airport, checking in, boarding the plane, etc. That's because they all use the same "interface". The process is uniform across airlines. It doesn't matter if you fly United or Southwest, either way you know how to fly.
Likewise, transit systems in towns and cities need to do the same. If they focus on user-friendly design and even work with other municipalities to create a standard, they can arrive at a uniform experience no matter which system you are using.
We have this uniform experience with cars: we assume that no matter where we drive, there will always be a place to park. This is something that has become so ingrained, that the thought of removing these parking spaces is repulsive. But that's the uniform experience I'm talking about. You just assumed that parking will be available, without doing any research to actually prove it. See how natural we've made the process of driving a car? It will take effort, but we can do the same for public transit. This is a solvable problem!
Maybe you've had bad experience in the past with whatever mass transit system a town used, but there is an opportunity there for improvement. How can you make their system as intuitive as possible? How can you make these systems uniform across different cities?
If I'm meeting a friend for drinks after work I wouldn't want to spend an hour on a bus to get there when I can just drive directly to the brewery in town in a matter of minutes, or hell a suburb on the other side of the metro in 15 minutes.
I can assure you almost all suburbanites feel the same way.
But why do you think the bus takes an hour in the first place? It's probably because we've dumped so much of society's time and money into making our car-system as efficient as possible. Therefore, the public transit is terrible in comparison.
Cars have encouraged so much sprawl in our suburbs. It allows buildings to be further away, because now you can travel greater distances. Massive parking lots then need to be constructed to facilitate the placing of our cars, which again, wastes huge swaths of land, further distancing buildings from one another.
In my mind, we can't make public transportation viable while continuing to massively subsidize private car use. The latter causes sprawl, drawing us into a feedback loop of even more private ownership, which then in turn causes even more sprawl, and so on. It's a strong reinforcement cycle.
We need to break free of this cycle, and I'm afraid the short-term efforts aren't going to be enjoyable, but it's all for what's best in the long run.
I see automated electronic vehicles as the very near future solution.
Like many things, the solution is a balance of various things: private cars, public transit, and as you mention, automated EVs. It's just that I think our current system is far too skewed toward private car usage, when a healthier balance exists. Compromise is key.
Pull Kakao Metro from your device's respective app store to see what a simple a well made transit app can be like. The seoul metro is huge and at first blush unwieldly, but this app made getting around Seoul a breeze (though it was pretty easy as is). It's not hard to produce simple apps and get word out around town and cities. If you have a phone you can get the necessary information the same way you would have to look up directions on the map application anyway in an unfamiliar town. I don't see much of a difference in finding the transit app versus using maps app to find the place then struggling to find parking.
This has made me wonder: who are these people in cars? And parked up and down the street? What are their reasons for using the mode of transport they do? I ponder this regularly. Sometimes I have the most irrational urge to go around and knock on people's windows to ask. I never do, of course.
I know for most things I do, the car would be the worst possible way to accomplish them. Walking or subway are better, and biking is best. But maybe for others the story is different. There are some obvious good reasons: tradespeople, delivery trucks, taxis and ride-sharing services. But who are the rest?
That said, I don't think you can really expect people to buy this claim without providing evidence.
The outer parts of the boroughs can also be far from transit, and cars don't seem such an inconvenience to deal with.