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Notes -
Other public transit pros:
Generally the density of places with it means I can add a second or third destination after the primary museum, gallery, glory hole, restaurant on a whim
If your social sphere lives in the same area, it's much easier to meet up with people while doing any of this
You can read or do other stuff while you travel, no attention required
I can get drunk or high at the destination without coordinating a DD
Edit: I realize this is mildly uncouth but I'd like to offer an open mic to anyone drive-by downvoting this comment, why? Do you think my 'pros" here are stupid? Do you dislike public transit? I'm genuinely curious what motivates someone to look at the comment and go "I dislike this" but then also not articulate their thoughts at all. Let's chat
If everyone else drives to a destination neighbourhood, then once you get there the place is necessarily dominated by parking so you can't walk from the theatre to the restaurant to the bar. There are ways of fixing this problem - New Urbanists talk about "park once" districts and point out that the proof-of-concept is the mall, which forces people to get out of their cars and walk from shop to shop by putting the "street" the shops are on indoors. But it means giving up the ability to park right outside the building you are going to.
Self driving cars make this a lot easier because (even if they are privately owned, rather than robotaxis which don't park up at all) parking in a lot outside the destination neighbourhood becomes zero cost. On the other hand, they will add a whole different set of moving congestion problems that we haven't really thought about yet.
I don't really understand your point because I live in Toronto and I have never once thought to myself "damn I can't walk from the ROM to the restaurant I'm meeting my friends at because there's too many parking lots in the way". I'm also generally not suffering for parking in Toronto when I drive places, I love how much underground parking we have hidden away.
Although that was actually my experience in San Antonio, so I think the real thing here is an urban planning skill issue lol
This is the New Urbanist view - that you can absolutely build destination neighborhoods where everyone arrives by car, parks, and then walks within the neighborhood, but Americans fail to do so by default. Apart from indoor malls and planned New Urbanist communities, Toronto is the place I would most expect to pull it off.
Just put the parking spots underground?
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