I think that's the key statement. And you have to look at it systematically, not emotionally. It's very hard to do. But try this:

A car is just a tool for moving people around. There are several other tools that can also move people around. The car-tool is very useful for thinly-spread populations that have lots of space to give over to the car's use and who have lots of individual resources to support their individual car.

But, as soon as they need to move into a space that is reasonably congested with other people, and with other things (buildings, trees, baby carriages, what-have-you) their car is no longer an optimal tool and, in fact, requires a disproportionate amount of space and systematic resources (traffic management, police, ambulances, and so on).

So, yeah. We have to get over the idea that someone who can drive their car up to the edges of the city, must therefore be able to drive their car *into* the city. Once we do that, lots of opportunities to better get them to where they want to go (along with everybody else) are available to us.

My 12-yr-old has an email under our ISP account that I can monitor and it barely matters. Email is what her Mum & Dad use. Instead, she's obsessed with IM ("MSN" is what she calls it), facebook & MySpace. *That's* what keeps me awake at night.

Cheers,
DCobbler