{"id":1928,"date":"2011-06-27T10:40:44","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T14:40:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1928"},"modified":"2011-06-27T11:00:06","modified_gmt":"2011-06-27T15:00:06","slug":"strangling-car-traffic-to-create-walkable-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/?p=1928","title":{"rendered":"Strangling Car Traffic to Create Walkable Cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Elizabeth Rosenthal, NEW YORK TIMES, June 26, 2011<\/em><\/p>\n

\"dreamstime_xs_19016156\"<\/a> <\/em>While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear \u2014 to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.<\/p>\n

Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs<\/a>. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of \u201cenvironmental zones\u201d<\/a> where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.<\/p>\n

Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into \u201cwalkers\u2019 paradises,\u201d said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,\u201d said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. \u201cHere there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.\u201d<\/p>\n

To that end, the municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city\u2019s ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.<\/p>\n

Around L\u00f6wenplatz, one of Zurich\u2019s busiest squares, cars are now banned on many blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail\u2019s pace so that crosswalks and crossing signs can be removed entirely, giving people on foot the right to cross anywhere they like at any time.<\/p>\n

As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city\u2019s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. \u201cDriving is a stop-and-go experience,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what we like! Our goal is to reconquer public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers.\u201d<\/p>\n

While some American cities \u2014 notably San Francisco, which has \u201cpedestrianized\u201d parts of Market Street \u2014 have made similar efforts<\/a>, they are still the exception in the United States, where it has been difficult to get people to imagine a life where cars are not entrenched, Dr. Schipper said.<\/p>\n

Europe\u2019s cities generally have stronger incentives to act. [Read rest of article]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Making it less pleasant to drive and more pleasant to walk or ride a bike is making many European cities more pleasant to live in, with cleaner air merely one of the perks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1237,1239,1236,1235],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1928"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1935,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1928\/revisions\/1935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itstheenvironmentstupid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}