These largely seem to be a function of how it's done where you are, not how it has to be. Your points are generally solvable. 1. Have a park-and-ride outside t

These largely seem to be a function of how it's done where you are, not how it has to be. Your points are generally solvable. 1. Have a park-and-ride outside the urban area but with good public transport connections. These can have a lot of parking, and (at least where I live) are encouraged by the parking fee being €1 if you then use public transport into the city where cars are slow anyway. 2. Then have better recycling/rubbish systems. Here there are two options: you can call the city and they'll arrange a pickup, or you can wait until a specific day of the week when they do large items. Also, if you order something large (a new TV say) the supplier is obliged to offer to take the previous one away. 3. If they earn such, then they're clearly in sufficient demand, and are providing an important and safety-critical role. They're arguably doing a lot more good for a city than many software engineers. 4. Better maintenance. Unmaintained roads are also bad. 5. There's no problem running at a loss if it improves the overall life and economy of the city. Some places even set the price at free because of the benefits it brings (sadly not mine.) All this said, you're not wrong in the sense that everything is about tradeoffs. If there were no tradeoffs there wouldn't be a discussion to be had and everyone would use whatever was obviously the best. For myself, I prefer a more liveable city and happily that's the way where I live leans. There's still plenty of driving (to my annoyance sometimes, cars are big, dangerous, and prone to clogging the place up for other modes of transport) but they discourage it by lowering speed limits and restricting through-traffic. So it's possible but less attractive than going by bike or tram or whatever unless you have a special case.