> It feels like once you actually account for real things that need to happen like vans carting building materials, you're back where you started except that no

> It feels like once you actually account for real things that need to happen like vans carting building materials, you're back where you started except that now everyone needs a license to do the same things they did before in their "personal" vehicles. There is a finite amount of space in cities which simply isn't enough for everyone to be driving around in personal cars all the time. Pedestrians and bikes take up much less space than cars (both moving and parked). By getting people to stop using cars unnecessarily and switch to transit, walking, and biking, you can actually free up space for the remaining vehicles to get around, even if doing so requires restricting vehicular traffic on some streets. Look at Amsterdam. The traffic is less bad there despite more space being allocated to pedestrians and bikes than US cities. If that seems counterintuitive, think about it the other way: Imagine if you were able to slightly increase the number of lanes by removing all sidewalks and eliminating all transit. While there would be space for slightly more cars, traffic would end up being much worse, because all the people who were walking/biking/taking transit would end up taking much more space on the roads than was created by adding the lanes.