The air could be cleaner, planners thought, our streets safer and less congested and the pace of living could be slowed as more people walked and cycled.

When was that?

As I journeyed to Sydney last week on the train I realised the Lower Hunter's love of the car is strong and enduring. It was a wickedly wet and windy morning, but the commuter car park at Morisset station was almost empty.

Empty too was the spot where the coffee cart sat, pre-virus.

On the train, stickers indicated safe distancing, but there were insufficient travellers to be bothered by the carefully calculated seating plan, except that it reminded us of the risk of crowded indoor spaces.

Half of the passengers in my carriage were masked-up, including me.

Out the window, on the M1, car and truck traffic was busy despite the deluge. Was I safer than those travellers, their chance of an accident versus my chance of the virus?

Of course, I was vastly safer, although the M1 Mad Maxiteers weren't suffering a clammy cloth over their mouth and nose with glasses constantly fogging. And, rain notwithstanding, their journey would have still been significantly quicker, such is the pace of our 19th century inter-urban rail service.

My day necessitated a couple of suburban journeys with, again, empty carriages. A guard tells me that patronage on Sydney trains hasn't grown after the school holidays, as had been expected.

Central Sydney remains as deserted as at the height of the shutdown. My journey home through the Central Coast was even quieter. There must be many still working from home.

The car is a funny thing. If it were invented today, it seems unlikely that regulators would allow a single operator to take charge of this tonne of steel and hurtle it at 110 kmh along a smooth wet surface with a tank of highly explosive hydrocarbon fuel strapped underneath as an energy source.

And yet 75,000 of such things bang their way up and down the M1 Pacific Motorway every day.

We accept the car and the competence of its driver as part and parcel of daily life.

According to the government's Household Travel Survey, we make more than 116 million car journeys in the Lower Hunter every year - for work, school, shopping, sport, social and recreational activity. For journeys to work, 77 per cent are made by car. This is 10 per cent above the national average. Only 2.6 per cent of journeys to work in the Lower Hunter involve the use of public transport. The national average for getting to work by public transport is 11.5 per cent, which isn't high by world standards, but it is a lot higher than the Lower Hunter's paltry performance.

The Lower Hunter's preference for car travel means we own a lot of cars.

Only 7 per cent of households in the Lower Hunter don't own a car, while 55 per cent own two cars or more. Moreover, the region's car usage has not diminished over the past 10 years, even though car usage is falling in cities in developed nations around the world, as commuters shift to walking, cycling, public transport and ride-sharing providers such as Uber.

Not for us the bus, the train, the tram or the ferry. Our choice is for a private, comfortable, low-humidity, pleasantly warmed or cooled personal shell, with audio options that make FM radio redundant, the freedom for uninterrupted phone calls, for many it is better than home.

COVID-19? The modern car is winning. No other appliance is coping so magnificently.

Of course, the Lower Hunter's car addiction has its consequences. Slowly, everything - workplaces, schools, uni, hospitals, shopping centres, beaches, sporting fields - are moulded for the convenience of the car traveller.

New housing estates in ever-remote locations are readily occupied by car-ready homemakers. Urban sprawl accelerates, but no one complains. Well, not many, but there are some.

A Lower Hunter built for the car is not a pleasant place for the non-driver: the aged, the disabled, young people, the poor, the cyclist, the walker, the parent with a stroller, the kid who walks to school, the commuter who prefers the train.