I completely agree with you, and I think your branch is a good one. Also, personally, I look forward to the day when cities are essentially free of car traffic. I envision wide pedestrian boulevards.
Speaking by analogy, most of us rational thinkers accept that we cannot make conclusions such as "our government needs more money, therefore we must increase taxes." Maybe, but maybe not.
But I've noticed with cars (or, maybe insects) it seems to be easier to jump to "let's tax and regulate these bothersome machines away."
4) Why do they prefer driving these cars? Can we make public transport as good or even better than driving a car?
5) Let's put in place a plan to improve public infrastructure while restricting new cars on the road.
6) Once we satisfactorily accomplish 5, we can phase out cars.
My primary point being it's easy to create strawman lines of thought and have no meaningful conversation. ;)