David Byrne (not that one) writing for Reasons to Be Cheerful explores different strategies for reducing urban car use: banning cars from city centers; partial and incremental bans; and congestion pricing. Where such things are working, says Byrne, there is “less pollution, less congestion, less danger and less heat”.
Also on RTBC, Will Doig looks at one Spanish city which reduced car use in part through “clever engineering” (such as building streets that lead nowhere “making it impossible to use them to drive from one end of the city to the other”). I’m especially fond of the subway-style map but for walking routes to to and from major downtown destinations.
Meanwhile, over on CityLab (via, yes, RTBC), Feargus O’Sullivan [checks out Amsterdam](one-way systems, roadway narrowing, and barriers) which is trying to reduce car use by “using one-way systems, roadway narrowing, and barriers” and increasing public transit hours. In part those barriers are being used to create streets which can’t be used to get across town, like in the Spanish city above—“what the Dutch call a ‘cut’ (knip in Dutch)”.