Why? Convenience, flexibility, ability to haul a family.
Cars certainly aren’t a requirement if you have good walkability and/transit, but given the choice many people prefer cars.
Of course cars are convenient for some things. I live in a city where the majority of households has access to a car, but only a quarter of the trips (accounting for 40% of the traveled distance) are made by car. I still consider the city to be built very car-centric, but it's a wholly different world from what I experienced when visiting the US.
This is a massive over-generalization that pretty much only applies to the suburbs that were built out in the 1950s and 1960s mostly in the southern half of the country. As those suburbs have densified over the decades (where allowed by law, so not the southwest) some of them have become pretty darn walk-able.
Only the rich own cars. Or those that live outside the urban core.
Welcome to our future if Strongtowns has a say.
BTW, it's already kind of true that only the rich own cars, car ownership correlates very strongly with household income.
Of course it correlates. Rich households can afford more cars per person and can indulge in specialized vehicles (e.g commuter car).
Rich families have a sedan for each commuting parent and maybe another less specialized car (e.g. minivan or 3-row SUV) that only sees weekend use. Poor families pile into a Saturn.
That the ability of the poor family to own and operate that Saturn confers a far greater standard of living jump than cars 2-N do for the rich family. It also has a much greater impact on the health of the broader economy.
To intentionally place monetary constraints on vehicle ownership would be unwise because you have to price out all the poor before you start making meaningful dents in the (relatively) wealthy professionals who commute across the inner suburbs and into urban environments.
But I hate using it for day-to-day tasks. For me, it's a machine that lets me take fun trips on the weekend, or go see family in their car-dependent towns and cities. If I want to go to a brewery, or stop by the post office, or shop for a few small items, or just go to a park, I would literally always rather do it on my bike or on foot. Driving around cities is miserable.
When given the choice between bad bike/walking infrastructure and cars, people prefer cars. But when you give them good infrastructure, many prefer bikes.
I, too, live in a country with high quality transit and also got a car when i had a family and i could afford a car.
i have about 1400 km per year on it. having a car and driving it are two different things.
And I'd probably still keep to taxis in the city, can't be arsed to drive :D
Nope.