Everyone does not live in a large, crowded, old city as in Europe or a few places in the US.
It's sounds pretty horrible what they are doing in some of those areas, though I guess the people are used to living like that.
Actually if you mostly get around the city by walking, biking, or public transit having cars around makes things horrible. Cars are tools, but like any tool there are good and bad uses. Private automobiles are better suited for rural and some suburban areas. Inner ring suburbs and cities would do better to create disincentives for automobile use. The issue here is given the number of people in NYC and the limited street space, at best cars will ever only serve a minority but they create big problems for everyone else. From a democratic standpoint, the convenience of a minority shouldn't trump the very real problems this convenience causes to everyone else. There's pollution, expensive space wasted for private car storage, traffic signals which delay cyclists/pedestrians, deaths/injuries to vulnerable street users.
The fact is our cities are now in the process of reprioritizing street space for the majority. Eventually this will mean more streets closed to car traffic, more circuitous routes if you're traveling by car, far fewer places to park, congestion charges to enter CBDs, perhaps even private car bans in places like Manhattan. I'll welcome this with open arms. You have to live in a large city to realize how unpleasant private autos make things for everyone around them. The irony is private autos don't even offer their users great travel speeds. It's often faster to travel by bike than car in much of NYC. It's almost always faster to take the subway. Given that reality, one can see how cars are just the wrong tool for the job in cities.
