Quote Originally Posted by Detroitnerd View Post
The costs of cars are more than the oil it takes to fuel them. We have to create infrastructure for them, lay a few hundred square feet of concrete for every one on the road. More than half the energy used by cars is in their creation and disposal. Then there's run-off, tire fragments, and, foreseeably, a river of mercury, lithium, cadmium and nickel due to batteries.

The idea that MPG performance is going to make cars "sustainable" is kind of a silly gag. We'd do much better to reserve cars for emergency vehicles, police, fire, taxis and trucks and pursue a multimodal system that encourages density.
I acknowledge the ancilliary costs. Many people, throughout the world, find personal automobiles to be worth it due their their unparalleled ability to provide personal mobility. That utility is going to be a big impediment toward transitioning to the model you describe in your second paragraph.

I agree that dense clustering is more efficient in many respects and allows transit to work better. I get it. But most people prefer to make the trade-offs necessary to live the suburban lifestyle, as hard as it may be for unbanophiles to understand. That's the biggest obstacle to what you envision.