In Europe, the average age for buying a new car is 50.
This means that most of the cars sold are second-hand.
Most people think that the car is a luxury and prefer to focus on their home first, then their family, and after that, their car.
I am from Brazil and although most cities are 100% built around cars, public transportation IS an option and mostly works and is (somewhat) affordable.
Unlike the US, if a place is 1km away as the eagle flies you can get there by walking ~1.5km max. And there are bus services and although often overcrowded or with low service, they do run and you can plan your life around them.
Yet everyone still buys a car as soon as they can afford one (or often if they can't). And they use it for commuting to work every day.
To get to the point that Europe is in where even rich people don't want cars or if they have one it is for weekend trips. You need to do a lot better than this.
Unfortunately getting the US to be like Europe in this regard is not really viable, but it could get to the point where Brazil is where the poorer people can afford to not own a car.
In some big cities in Brazil they do a lot of low-cost things like dedicated bus-lanes that actually make some high-demand trips shorter by bus. Progress in this area needs to be incremental, there is little point in investing crazy amounts of money in one big project. Instead the investing should be lower and constant.
sometimes one big project can make a big difference, like a new rail-bridge or metro. But in general getting people into busses is more efficient even if that means rich people still won't want to get into that bus.
> To get to the point that Europe is in where even rich people don't want cars or if they have one it is for weekend trips. You need to do a lot better than this.
It's not like that in all of Europe either, the further you go from Western Europe, the worse the public transit gets. The Balkans are probably the worst, you need a car if you live outside a city as rail and even busses are slow, unreliable, or just not an option in your place.
It is like that in Western Europe as well, "if you live outside a city" you need a car. However small cities don't have the massive gridlocks that big cities have so they can support a car-centric life.
And sure taking a train sure is faster/nicer for long travel, but in practice what matters the most for the economy and people's life/health is the daily commute which mostly happens inside cities.
But you don't quite get how it is in the US (and Canada). In the US it is "if you live *inside* a city" you need a car*, no matter if small, large, or metropolis.
> the daily commute which mostly happens inside cities
Well, some countries are far more centralized than others. The daily commute to/from cities is a huge problem where I live, to the point that cities are flooded mostly with outside commuters. Trains and busses could solve that very elegantly, but nobody’s investing in that.
the further you go from Western Europe, the worse the public transit gets.
It's not really an East-West thing. Downtown Sofia for example has much better public transportation than many 'secondary' and rural towns in Germany and France.
But that's Downtown Sofia, how about the rest of the land? That's what I'm trying to say - yes, it's fine if you live in cities, but outside of that, it's not so easy. Whereas Western Europe invests much more in having efficient transit in smaller and rural towns.
Yeah, getting rich people in buses is probably impossible. But making 90 % of all journeys cheaper and more convenient for 90 % of people is pretty doable.
