You can't really do much better than a private car. There are all kinds of things that might be better than a private car. The point I'm trying to make here is

You can't really do much better than a private car. There are all kinds of things that might be better than a private car. The point I'm trying to make here is that most of them require radically more commitment (= money + political capital, usually) than those in power and those who vote for them are willing to give at present. Bashing car drivers is the "something must be done and this is something so we're doing it" approach. It gets you popular points with your base. Unfortunately as we've seen for many years now it doesn't actually work without providing decent alternatives as well. People will still use cars whenever possible. You have to make it difficult, expensive and uncomfortable. Obviously I don't accept that premise. There are also inherently inconvenient things about a lot of car journeys and about owning and maintaining the car itself so to an extent it provides the deterrent effect you've been talking about automatically without any artificial "stick". Public transport doesn't have many of those downsides. Some alternative methods of private transport don't either. But you need local transport to be frequent, reliable, cheap and comfortable, and you need long distance transport to be all of those things plus easily reachable by local transport.