It is mostly serious. There is plenty of scientific evidence on how car centric infrastructure, city planning and policies have destroyed walkable cities and require an in proportion extreme amount of space and accommodations. Cars as a means of transportation are wholly inefficient, you could put several dozen daily commuters into a single bus, multiple times that in a single subway train.

The only space where cars are not short term replaceable to great improvement of the general habitability of the area is in rural regions where distances are huge, people are spread out widely and communal infrastructure is simply too inflexible to accommodate the needs of the citizens.