Design cities for people first and not automobiles and you'll be asking why anyone would take a car over a train/bus/bike because it's more expensive, takes longer, and is more of a hassle.
Being able to safely walk to places (work, shops, points of interests) is so often overlooked, and its super good for you! *
*Now if we could curtail cars inside cities it would be even better due to lack of emissions.
Agreed on emissions, and noise too!
And I'm not trying to be facetious, I think the theory of car-less cities is really appealing, but I honestly don't see how this is a good solution.
That being said, yes I agree. And I would not have made the same comment if I was still living in Europe where calling an ambulance is virtually free (I did it a couple of times).
So this is roughly 60 to 80 minutes, with my crying child, and all assuming a fairly efficient public transportation system. I think that's always the problem when we get pitchforks out to ban cars altogether. I'm all for "greener" cities, for bicycle lanes and all. All policies that try to make it less required to use your car are great, but a blanket ban is idiotic because sometimes, having a car can literally save your life.
It's hard to explain dry land to a fish, but life without cars is possible.
All of which are densely populated cities.
This concept simply doesn't work in majority of America, where the average city is sparsely populated and quite spread out.
People living in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Portland, Austin, Los Angeles, etc... quickly forget what life is like in say... Fiddletown, California.
Economically it doesn't work in majority of the US. Some big cities might be able to pull it off - but even those often run at a loss and are subsidized by the city.
How does a small suburban area afford trains going all over?
Note that subsidies for transit also apply to local roads. Each area is different, but in many cases gas tax doesn't reach the city and the roads are all paid for from other taxes.
The problem is getting there. It is to predict how it would work out if we there today (see my assumptions above, I think they are reasonable but you might disagree and that will of course change what you come up with). However getting there is hard. Big cities are already making efforts to get there, but they are hampered because there is a complete lack of cost control and so trains cost way more than they should for no obvious reason. https://pedestrianobservations.com/2016/01/31/why-costs-matt... has some good information (read his other blog posts for even more data)
Of course in the end all trains don't make sense in the first place. Cars and trucks are flexible and so there will always be need for them. Farmers and construction workers need to get their supplies to places without infrastructure, while dirt and gravel roads are enough. Even baring that, the flexibility of a personal car means that the end of the personal car implies the complete end of modern civilization (your new job is manual labor: running a hoe)
You seem to be assuming that every country has train systems as horrible as America's.
>and all assuming a fairly efficient public transportation system
No, you're not.
>having a car can literally save your life.
You don't need a car to save your life. This is why ambulances were invented: if you have a real life-threatening emergency, you call one of those. If you're having a true emergency, you have no business driving yourself anyway: you're a danger to everyone around you.
This at least according to one person I was on a train with. I had a reserved seat looking towards the back of the train. I (and most people) don't like those. The other person really wanted my seat because of motion sickness. So we were both really happy to switch seats :-D
We are allowed to make reasonable exceptions.
To relate to the other comments talking about health policy change; you should already be looking for a local urgent care for most issues.
And to put the question further in U.S. medical politics perspective; if you're a rural American in a state that hasn't expanded medicaid, your local Level 1 Trauma hospital is likely too far away anyway...