alt-hist: a world without cars

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

You could vastly reduce car usage by increasing regulation and taxation and avoiding the 1950s era decision to design cities for motor vehicles.
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A combination of localised communities and good public transport could then account for most people's transport needs, leaving motor vehicles for local freight and the elite.

Assuming the intent is for cars to be uncommon rather than nonexistent, this is the way to go. I left out the bit about the World Wars because, while avoiding those would certainly help, I feel so much other technology would be impacted that it would be much less feasible to reach a point that looks just like today but without cars. Given, any solution is going to cause some butterfly-effect style ripples, but the above is going to be far less disruptive than removing the World Wars.