I agree that cat centric life is awful. However "you are traffic" is not the whole picture, not all traffic is created equal. Some people are just naturally adept at making traffic.
Why do Americans think "traffic" means congestion? Traffic is the people on the road. You can say things like "let me check the traffic" or "the traffic is really bad", but if you use the road you are traffic. It's nothing to do with congestion, if you use the road you are traffic. It's this kind of subtle language mistake that reveals a whole country full of main characters: I'm the one travelling, everyone else is just there for my inconvenience.
Correct. That's the biggest downside of car infrastructure, we are bound(ed?) by the lowest common denominator. Once a slow car is blocking the way we just contribute to that same traffic.
It's awful for most. If a person lives long enough, they will likely lose the ability to drive. A lack of walkable infrastructure basically means social death at that point. How many people struggle with the decision to try to take the keys away from their parents?
Also, cars create mobility issues by injuring people.
Good pedestrian and transit infrastructure is barrier-free. If you can't cross the street and board a train in a wheelchair, the lack of pedestrian infrastructure is exactly the problem.
The problem isn't barriers to being a pedestrian. It's alternate forms of transit not existing. My town barely has bus service. The nearest stop is over a mile away, and it has a frequency, in theory, of hourly. I live in town. The bus route sorta serves the historically poor section of town and that's about it. Having a car is not optional. We don't have a functional long distance rail network, never mind light rail or subways.
It sounds like your town does have a serious deficiency, but that deficiency is not a shortage of car infrastructure. It seems like it needs much more transit.
The money for transit needs to come from land values (capturing the increase to land values that the transit creates). Ticket revenue can never fund a transit system.
This is how train networks the world over were built, with train companies buying up land and then developing or leasing it out after their railways made it valuable. It's how successful transit companies operate in Asia and remain profitable, building shopping malls and hotels on and around their stations.
It doesn't require population density (that comes after the development), it doesn't require government support (although it helps, especially if the government is subsidizing roads), but it does require investment and long-term planning.
