I can't respond to your deepest comment, but the privilege is you can drive, which is distinctly not universal.

It is normal for the large proportion of the population who don't live in densely populated urban centres served by adequate public transport, because for most people there simply isn't any viable alternative.

And before anyone invokes the privilege argument again, consider that being able to afford a home in those densely populated areas with good public transport is also a privilege. In fact compared to owning a car it's a privilege that involves a couple of extra zeroes in a place like Cambridge or London.

Smarter Cambridge transport

is a defunct private advocacy group whose members have included prominent members of the local cycling campaign well known in the community for their borderline extreme views on transportation policy. That said, we should address the substance of the arguments and not who was making them.

Take the piece about P&R. It's mostly consistent what I've already said above.

It isn't cost-effective to run a comprehensive public transport system outside of densely populated urban areas and high traffic long distance routes. Public transport works because of economies of scale but there just aren't that many people in a place as small as Cambridge who want to make similar journeys at off-peak times. This is the fundamental qualitative difference between a few of our biggest cities and everywhere else in the country.

Even so those P&R sites have capacity for thousands of cars every day that aren't then driving into the city centre. It takes a peculiar kind of mental gymnastics not to see that as a win.

I can't find any other source for anything they're talking about with the costs, including the "Cambridge South East Transport Park & Ride proposal", which doesn't seem to be mentioned anywhere in the official description of that programme[1]. And note that the Cambourne route proposals they mention have been highly controversial for many reasons and haven't actually happened yet.

The other piece suggesting alternative bus routes is a more reasonable proposal than most of the local bus advocacy and deserves credit for that. Unfortunately the traffic model mentioned isn't public but we do know from past public comments by those in the know that the model is inadequate and in particular it grossly underestimates some effects that cause dramatic increases in journey times for large numbers of road users. Without seeing real figures for how you put that many buses around the ring road without causing the usual mathematical problems with queueing in heavy traffic and making the whole system fall apart it's hard to know whether it's a useful proposal or not. Likewise it doesn't say how pedestrians and cycles would take advantage of the now-free road space inside the ring road if there's an effective barrier caused by a steady stream of buses on the ring road itself nor what would happen to all the cycle traffic that currently uses the ring road itself since it would obviously be far too dangerous to continue doing so with that many buses around.

[1] https://www.greatercambridge.org.uk/public-transport-schemes...