Cars don’t belong in cities

I didn’t. You need streets for at least the fire brigade, ambulances, tradespeople, (parcel) delivery, and the occasional taxi. Moving vans. Even lorries supplying shops, can’t have a cargo tram everywhere.

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You're back-tracking: now you are allowing, however intelligently, for cars in some instances

You also sound British, which no offense, but it's a country that doesn't have cities that get as hot (or hot and humid) as say, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Antonio, New Orleans, Atlanta, or Orlando.

or as cold as, say, St. Paul, maybe Anchorage, Chicago, or Buffalo;

and that's just the US. No cars within Toronto city limits wouldn't work well. Ditto Moscow, probably Kyiv, Warsaw, Mumbai, Brisbane, Jakarta, Ho Chi Minh City, Dubai, et al, either.

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What we definitely don’t need is parents driving 12yolds to school.

I mostly agree. As a person older than 70% of North Americans, I think the nerfing of society can cause problems.

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How about we make it a municipal utility.

Okay. Now let's say it's a city with over 1 million people, and the experts say minimally one car per 400, or 2500 cars needed for rent. Which company will get the contract to sell the city those ≥2500 cars—Ford, GM, Chrysler, Toyota, BMW, Tesla, or a Chinese variant? The one that lobbies best?

How about allow licensing of rent-a-cars? Existing ones are grandfathered in for 20 years without plates, but others pay, say, £10 000 + £2000 every year for a license to rent. Obviously they'd also have to have good insurance.

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It’s actually habit, formed at an early age. Bike is how I got to primary school, which was possible because some committee designed the city in a way that it was possible (distance) as well as safe. I do have a driving license, lessons etc. cost a good 2k Euro back them, never owned a car. Haven’t driven in ages.

Perhaps, and good for you. My point was more of individual effort. Chances are, where you're from, there were people who'd cycle in pretty well any condition, and insisted on the right to cycle. They were the reason some authorities made accommodations, which in turn made cycling seem more viable to more people, thus increasing the number of cyclists. Such were incremental—a bike lane here, a bike lane there—nothing that required >£1 billion (or >€1 billion)—and eventually cyclists got a bit of an infrastructure and proposals for more expensive projects got more considered—but one way or another, people will be cycling—the only question is how to increase it.