That Times article was ridiculous hysteria. The idea that any city should privilege private cars over delivery vehicles serving many is nuts. Hierarchical distribution systems are efficient - that's why we use them for electricity and all of our other utilities. Just as not everyone has their own private wires to the power plant, so we shouldn't be relying on everyone to make their own private drives to the store.
Curcuas -- that is tortured and flawed logic
In point of fact everyone has there own "wire" from their house to the Communications Store AkA the Telephone Company -- it was a major breakthrough to allow everyone their own private conversation
Early on -- there were Public Telephone Lines -- aka Party Lines where M Jones could find out about M Smiths unpleasant rash by just picking up the phone at the "right" time
The reason that water, sewer, gas and electricity are delivered the way that they are -- in "parallel" is because the electricity, water and gas going to your house are indistinguishable from the electricty, water and gas going to your neighbors house -- despite the attempt by the politicians and electric utility to perpetrate the fraud that you can pay more to be 'Green"
The weird special case is sewage -- where everyone's very personal sewage is agglomerated together -- because since the pipes are "one-way" no one can use the toilet at the "right" time to find out how their neighbor is doing
Then finally we come to the closest analogy -- the pick-up up of yard waste, recyclable materials and ordinary garbage -- in general its a one-way collective flow like sewage -- but in the case of some people's trash is another's raw material-- there is voluntary sharing -- mediated by whatever you put on the street becoming a "Free Good" available to all
So Now we get back to the original premise -- that everyone should depend on some sort of "Public delivery," rather than private vehicles -- the answer is of course -- BOTH -- where they are appropriate -- everything such as convenience, cost, privacy apply on an INDIVIDUAL Basis
And in the future there may be more options such as Private Delivery Lockers [e.g. Amazon] available by per use fee, or other means such as subscriptions -- where an individual might have a registered proxy accept secure delivery -- with notification -- so that you may either come by to pick it up or arrange for a delivery at your convenience
