I've seen many driving professionals. The vast vast majority have substantially better driving behavior per km traveled. Again well supported by data.

Similarly, the regressive nature of increasing barriers to driving is well understood. This can be easily shown by looking at the effects of drivers license prohibitions on undocumented immigrants. Again, there is data.

Your point about offsetting costs is ignorant to history. A tried and true approach to "starve the beast" is breaking something now and promising to fix it later. The fixes never come, the costs

It seems like you are someone easily swayed by anecdotes over actual evidence. That's a really bad way to make policy decisions.