Construction costs are currently skyrocketing

You make the mistake of taking the "Jetzt" and simply interpolating it linearly into the "Morgen." Just because it is like this today doesn't mean it has to be the same tomorrow, only a bit bigger... one can develop and improve.

But I'm out of this now as well. If you can't even begin to imagine something like that, then we don't need to debate about it. It's pointless.

You are making the mistake of taking "now" and bluntly interpolating it linearly into "tomorrow." Just because it is like this today does not mean it has to be the same tomorrow, just somewhat bigger... one can evolve and improve. But I'm out of this now as well. If you cannot even remotely imagine something like that, then we don't need to debate about it. It's pointless.

I sometimes also find it really tedious. Even people who could easily leave the car standing don’t do it. Out of convenience. If someone does not want to admit that, well, go ahead. Yes, I also sometimes use our car out of convenience. But I am honest with myself about that. We really don’t need the car. This applies to our special situation now, which can look completely different for others, yes. But I simply know many who live in the immediate vicinity of us and, despite perfect connections to 1 bus, 4 S-trains, and 3 trams, still do everything by car. Well, what can I say, for such people the sayings "it has to get more expensive before they stop" probably apply.

On the other hand, I once lived in a small town and worked in the neighboring small town, where I did my FSJ. Working in shifts. Cycling there was only possible via an unlit, extremely dangerous country road, so I gave up. Taking the bus at my working hours was absolutely not possible. So I had to buy a car. And at that time, I didn’t even have children yet. Situations are just that different.

I lived for a long time in a town with 32,000 inhabitants, and during rush hour there was an S-Bahn every 15 minutes to the nearest big city...

Shows me that population numbers don’t say much. I come from a town with 35k inhabitants and the experience over the last two decades, in which I’ve been aware of it more consciously, was.... mixed.... As a teenager I still got by bus from my parents’ home to the city center about every hour... then every two... then at some point, apart from school buses, simply nothing ran anymore and on Saturdays there were still 2 call buses a day (fixed schedule model, just corresponding to the normal bus line and woe betide you if you didn’t call at least an hour in advance to “reserve”). Within a few years this had developed from “usable if you plan a little time buffer” to “well, if you wanted to use it, you had to arrange your entire daily schedule around it.” The latter state then persisted with slight variations (sometimes there was one more bus, then again not) for several years. At some point at the lowest point, the public transport provider actually went completely bankrupt and with the takeover by the new one, it seems to have slowly developed back in the other direction. Two years ago I checked once, we were back to about a 2-hour interval. And as of today, there is again an hourly schedule AND most buses now actually stop at the main train station, which previously could only be reached by car (horrible pedestrian connection completely without sidewalks and only individual buses that were not particularly well coordinated with the trains running, both have been VERY significantly improved in recent years. At the all-time low, even the P+R parking was subject to charges, but that was quickly repealed due to protests), so that you can actually get to the nearest big cities again purely by public transport. (With that, you can now get about hourly by RE to the nearest big city, or since there’s also one in the other direction, about every half hour to a big city... you just have to see which one :P) My point was actually just, while you think of a city with 32k inhabitants as having a 15-minute interval to the next big city, I think of 35k inhabitants as having improved a lot already just because of the hourly schedule that has only existed again for less than 2 years ;)

But you can also see that there was apparently total mismanagement. And that means that besides the infrastructural basic problem, there are also many other factors that can indeed be optimized. But I also think that with autonomous driving, individual traffic outside of special cases actually becomes rather unnecessary. Whether it should be banned because of that is another question; probably it will actually be solved through costs, which I would find a pity...

The "good old days" are over because they were based on the fact that a large part of the world would never come to prosperity and did not even aspire to it. That is definitely over, Chinese, Indians, Brazilians... in the future they all want to live like us.

That is a narrative. Back to the good old days is another narrative. Politics - like many other things - is driven less by actual reality than by the currently popular narratives about reality. But these are always only distortions, sometimes better and sometimes worse. And when enough people believe in a narrative, it has very real consequences. Whether the narrative was good or bad. The last 2.5 years have provided plenty of illustrative material in all directions. And it becomes very dangerous when one group tries to impose its narrative on other groups for whom that does not fit their reality at all.