Most governments have built transportation infrastructure with all of our money . . . but the majority of that infrastructure is automobile based. It mentions in the article that he wants to take the train, but it doesn't go where he needs it to and it's not accessible without an automobile. Give people cheap, fast, efficient ways to get around that aren't cars and they'll use 'em. Make it so that it's incredibly difficult, dangerous, or painful to use other modes of transportation . . . and the majority of people will always choose the option that the government has made easiest for them.
You can't just tax gas and then not give people an alternative to drive. The gas tax needs to be built into transit plans that will work together to reduce fuel consumption. We need to stop throwing the huge amount of money that we do every year into building and repairing roads, and throw that giant surplus into transit programs. We need leadership from our governments on climate issues to dig out of the hole that this poor planning has dug for us.
Would not taxing carbon accomplish the bolded for cars?
Yes. But if there's no good alternative then what ends up happening is increased misery for the poor, a middle class who shrug and absorb the increased costs without changing their spending patterns, and an upper class who are just as happy to keep jetting around the world not giving a fuck.
In my experience, there are often plenty of alternatives to the single occupant vehicle, at least in an urban environment (in my city, bike trails and buses and commuter trains galore). People choose not to use them typically because cars are more convenient, in the sense of 'hopping in to my luxurious moving couch and going where I want as quickly as I can go'. I sympathize. But you can't get around the fact that reducing the risks from global warming will have to cause pain and inconvenience.
I live in an urban area. To get from my house to work (11 miles one way) I've got the following options:
Drive my car - 25 to 60 minutes (Depending on traffic, snow, rain, construction). Somehow, this is our gold standard. I'd include carpooling and taking a taxi/uber in this same category.
Ride my bike - 40 minutes (I'm in good shape, and an experienced cyclist who is comfortable riding in busy city traffic and in pouring rain/snow. Requires a shower at work.)
Take public transit - 120 to 180 minutes (Three bus transfers and a subway ride, or five bus transfers).
Walk - 210 minutes according to Google maps.
Alternatives
do exist . . . but the only one that really seems competitive at all is cycling. And cycling is only competitive because I'm in pretty good shape, and have showers at work. Google maps estimates that cycling will take an hour and twenty minutes for the same route. If you don't have showers at work, you may well lose your job by coming in to a customer facing job sweaty and stinky in the summer. If you aren't comfortable cycling around heavy traffic, you will simply not be able to make the trip. (There exists only about two hundred feet of bike lane in the 11 miles to my work.)
Don't get me wrong . . . I'd encourage folks to bike every time. But there are very valid reasons why someone might not be able to do so. If we built a sensible network of bike lanes, plowed the bike lanes in the winter (currently snow is plowed into bike lanes, forcing cyclists into the roadway), and educated drivers so that things aren't so dangerous for cyclists it would probably go a long way towards increasing the numbers of cyclists on the road. We don't though - these solutions cost money, and nobody wants to spend money on cycling. It's tied up maintaining our infrastructure of roads.
Public transit and walking are really not an option at all due to the time that you would lose each day. Just in Canada, we spend fifteen and a half billion dollars a year on road work - more twice as much as every other type of transportation combined
http://thecostofsprawl.com/report/the-costs-of-roads-and-highways.pdf. Our public transit sucks because we aren't willing to spend the money to both build the transit that is necessary . . . and to pay to operate it. This is a failure of the officials we have elected to government.
For the rural dwellers, they are much more dependent on carbon, and I don't think there's any way around this. but most rural dwellers, such as our pastry chef who drives (presumably) into the city every day, don't need a train station in their hamlet, they need to move closer to the train station.
My dad owns and operates a farm, in the middle of farm land. The nearest town to him is about a twenty minute drive. He is dependent upon an automobile as long as he keeps farming . . . because that is literally the only system that is in place there. A train wouldn't help him or any of his neighbours get to and from the town to buy groceries. Even a busing system would be difficult to implement, but I have some small hope that pooled autonomous car resources might be able to more efficiently move people around in this type of setting.