I have no interest in banning all cars. I have an interest in making alternatives to cars lower cost and higher convenience in urban areas while making driving more of a luxury item.

Increase fuel and registration taxes. Charge congestion fees but offer free parking at outermost commuting rail stations. Use the money to fund frequent, rapid public transit, and protected bike lanes. Bring back tram suburbs. Subsidize fares and bike shares so they cost less than $1 a ride. Watch air quality improve, obesity plummet, and disposable income rise in tandum with happiness.

also, disabled, immune-compromised, competent elders etc unable to use public transit

Banning cars is stupid. The goal should be to make cars the least viable option. Plumbers, electricians and roofers might be an example of people who need cars and that's fine.

We're always going to need exceptions, look at ambulances. We need roads that go to your house because who knows what tragedy may befall you. You might only need an ambulance once every ten years, if that, but we still want high quality roads that go to your house.

I think to a large degree the Netherlands has this sorted. Zoning and traffic engineering that encourages non-automotive transport (ie direct route only exists for walking/chcling) with well developed non-automotive networks and well developed public transport. Not to say all the answers are there, but conceptually I think that’s the solution - Make it inconvenient and expensive to drive. Also, restricted roads. Busses and tradespeople and delivery can enter a road but cars cannot - there will always be abuses of any system.

Brilliant question

Since cars are expensive i think people won't go to the lengoths of pretending to be tradesmen (roofers plumbers electri. Etc) just to have a personal vehicle. In fact, other people like architects + engineers + construction workers might need one. But:

• it could be tied to professional licenses
• the driving license database is already closely regulated so we could literally only give people an "active" license if they need it for work, for instance
• before we get to the point of totally banning them, we want to have public transport so good that people won't choose cars anyway. I suppose this might not matter to the last 30-10% of selfish people, you're right. But then...
• as we reach that point we also will have made the roads so oriented around cycling, walking and public transit that cars will be the least desirable option. See cities with big metros like NYC, London and Tokyo if you need more evidence that this works; the car part of the city is chock full, and the public side of transport is favoured by more(?) people

Vehicles and drivers are all separately licensed and taxed anyway - so most of the infrastructure is there.

For commercial use - tie it into the owners tax return.

Disabled people get a blue badge anyway to get the parking spaces.

It's either that everybody has a car, or nobody has a car. The more cars the more economically the car infrastructure.

We either go all in or all out.

I'm a farmer as my second job and I definitely need to be able to haul stuff sometimes. I try to take my motorbike when I can, but that only works for some things. If it's just small things and the closest store carries them and the weather is not terrible (we were 36.x at almost 90% humidity yesterday, for example) and it's light (people drive like maniacs out here sometimes), I'll cycle.

Certain deliveries are an example at least in the near term (though lighter vehicles could often be used; my car is a kei-van (660cc, 2-cylinder engine, light-weight vehicle)).

Certain trades also need to carry tools and other things that can require space. Particularly if they're required to supply their own power or pressurized water (certain plumbing and drain clearing), or the like.

Living in rural Japan, the elderly and otherwise disabled folks might need help, but that doesn't necessarily mean they must have their own vehicle or that it must be single-occupancy.

You basically can’t. Just look at Singapore. They made cars way fucking expensive and public transportation really easy but they still have congestion.

To do it right you would need to incentive things like building without parking, building high density near public transportation entry points.

Trying to regulate vehicles directly won’t have the effect you want.

Idk about other place, but here vehicle used for businesses(trades, transports) must registered as such and labelled as such, so it's clear what business own the vehicle.

I don't believe in banning vehicle tho, i believe in restricting it for certain place.