Bikes and walking don't replace cars. Can you imagine the commute of someone in a suburban or rural area, in winter, on a bike?
Sure, if you can afford to live in SF or wherever there is enough infrastructure to support that kind of lifestyle, people have an alternative. Your proposed solution does nothing for the rest of the population. It would just make driving more annoying and expensive for them.
If we're talking about issues that require attention to save lives of children, then adding traffic-calming infrastructure only to urban areas will put a big dent in the problem, as most of the ICD codes which correlate with young age ranges happen in urban areas.
> Can you imagine the commute of someone in a suburban or rural area, in winter, on a bike?
Indeed I can, because there are areas of the US, and even more of Western Europe, where a mixed transit and bike trip can be achieved all year long. I suggest that you try out a commute-like trip from outside Portland or Amsterdam into the cities centers to see what I mean.
> It would just make driving more annoying
Boo hoo. Annoyance is a small price to pay for the power that comes with controlling a machine that kills 3,000 children in the USA alone.
> What if cutting oil & gas subsidies came with a proportional (averaged) reduction in taxes?
You can't "cut" subsidies, because there are no direct oil and gas subsidies. There are favorable conditions (e.g. lack of taxation) that are sometimes construed as a subsidy and there are externalities (like carbon emissions) that aren't priced in.
You would have to raise taxes in one place (e.g. carbon/gasoline tax) and then lower them in another place (income tax?).
However, I thought the point of the parent was to raise taxes to make less people drive cars. My point is that if you do that, most people will still drive cars, they will simply pay more for it.
A carbon tax plus a carbon dividend to the public (just for example) would leave average drivers paying the same, above average drivers paying more, and everyone incentivized to drive less, or electric.
Sure, if you can afford to live in SF or wherever there is enough infrastructure to support that kind of lifestyle, people have an alternative. Your proposed solution does nothing for the rest of the population. It would just make driving more annoying and expensive for them.