And here in the western world, people still don't like using public transport and their bikes (when they can). It's difficult to be optimistic, but it seems there is nothing that will truly limit fossil fuel consumption. Maybe some oil producing countries could get in some sort of alliance, and artificially limit the amount of oil they extract, in return for subsidies? Those countries could also put a tariff on oil.…
You mean the US, because in a lot of european countries, we very much like using our public transports and bikes
In France, if you add those two modes, you barely get over 10-12% of the number of moves people make.
The number of cars has again increased by 10% in the last decade. It has doubled since the 80s, when we thought that almost everyone who needed a car had one, and that they were already too many and had bad influence urban planning and many other aspects. The progression seems to never stop.
It's a flood of cars. If I take my municipality, there are more individual cars and vans than people who can drive them. It is not uncommon to see households with 3 or 5 cars. Cars are parked everywhere (rarely on owners' property, though); and that's before city people come over for the week-end or holidays (2/3 of houses are secondary residences)...
Everywhere but in large cities, local elected officials keep on pushing projects of motorways 'for economic development' like it was 1972 (a strategy which hasn't worked in 60 years, but eh...), spending tens and hundreds of millions of €, sometimes in direct competition of an existing or abandoned railroad. A case a few dozen miles away from my place: €200M for a 2 km bypass (no 0 is missing or extra). They have bottomless pockets for roads.