Instead of sending the info to people's smartphones, the city should use it to adjust the rates for parking meters to reflect real-time demand. When the parking spot vacancy rate falls below 15%, increase the meter rates, and if the vacancy rate rises above 15%, decrease the meter rates. You'll never have to worry about finding a parking spot again, and you'll always be able to park close enough to right outside your destination. Parking spots are a scarce resource, and we usually ration scarce resources via price, not queuing. Strangely it's only with roads we tolerate queuing instead of price, both for driving (waiting in traffic jams) and parking (circling the block).

Pedstrians who step on to the road without looking are a real danger to cyclists. It happens a lot on busy inner-city roads, and it's obviously caused by their assumption that vehicles make noise, an assumption that is wrong for both cyclists and EVs. The last thing I want is for that assumption to be reinforced by legislation. The better option is to mandate quieter (or silent) conventional cars, or just ban cars altogether. (OK, I know that aint gonna happen, but it would certainly make the streets safer. Quieter too.)

The same way you change lanes when you have a vehicle either side of you - you don't.

Seeing as car-ownership amongst poor people in Europe is much lower than amongst rich people, I think you have it backwards.

Gee, I dunno, spending all those billions of taxpayer dollars on roads and freeways? Building a transport system that is designed for motor vehicles instead of, say, bicycles and trains?

Shouldn't oil companies (or at least their customers) have to pay for their own transport infrastructure, ie, roads?

Investment in transport infrastructure drives land-use patterns. The situation you describe in the US is an artifact of 50 years of investment in highways combined with almosy zero (or negative) investment in mass transit. Reverse that funding ratio and over the next 50 years you'll get densely populated cities with heavily utilised mass transit and the sprawl might all be returned to the farmland it was.

You can't assume that all other vehicles will be cars. I ride a bike in traffic, and the narrow lanes where I live make it necessary to for me to take the whole width of the lane. Is this outside your "limits of predictability"?

The argument that cyclists don't pay their way is absurd - the reality is the opposite; public funding of roads is a massive subsidy from those who don't drive a car to those who do. As a cyclist I'd love a system of user-pays for roads.

The article neglects the way that the transportation infrastructure affects how much transport is needed. If you rely on cars and trucks for most transport you end up with low-density sprawl and hence a very high number of miles travelled. If you rely on trains and bicycles you end up with high-density development and hence a much lower number of miles travelled.

In other words, when comparing transport modes you can't assume that the amount of miles will be the same.

They are inefficient due to the amount of space they require for driving and parking. It's all that space taken up by roads and parking that stretches out the distance between travel points.

Smaller vehicles such as bicycles require much less road space and parking space, thus making cities more compact, and therefore reducing fuel consumption even for those who drive.

If you build roads and no transit you get the US-style sprawl you describe. If you build transit and only minimal roads you get high-density transit-friendly development.

The transport infrastructure "drives" the style of city you get. Build it and they come.