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Page added on October 12, 2018
Major world cities are making cars a thing of the past
Friday, October 12, 2018, 5:03 PM – As global population increases, so does the number of cars in our city streets and roads. Engineers, policy makers, scientists, and urban planners around the globe have been brainstorming ways in which cities can be more pedestrian-friendly while lowering CO2 emissions. A good number of large cities worldwide are finding successful ways to extract vehicles mainly from their urban centre.
Since the 1980s, cars have progressively improved their fuel efficiency to almost double while lowering their emissions by more than 95 per cent. Despite the dramatic improvements, many major cities around the world are still engulfed in a daily cloud of smog. Even in a state like California, which demands the toughest emission standards, Los Angeles leads the list of U.S. cities for poor air quality. Today, there is a very dynamic movement to switch to all electric cars as soon as possible, but that might not be the definite solution to such complex air pollution problems.
Rush hour in downtown Los Angeles, California on highway 110. Image: Getty Images
(Related: How air pollution increases crime in cities)
Even if electric cars lower carbon emissions to zero, that does not necessarily mean zero carbon emissions for travel. Beyond vehicles, drivers also demand more roads, and that means more land being sacrificed. In many U.S. cities close to 40 per cent of the land surface is allocated for roads and supporting infrastructure. This means that, in many cases, vegetation is removed to accommodate the roads and streets that magnify the urban heat island effect while increasing air pollution levels.
In Los Angeles most people drive everywhere because the city offers more road capacity per capita than any other large U.S. city. If you add roads and highways to your urban environment, you basically encourage drivers to use their cars. In order to get people out of their cars, cities need to make it easier for residents to connect between different transport modes.
A large number of major cities around the world have been searching for ways to do achieve this goal, and this is the list of ten of those top cities leading the car free movement.
Madrid, Spain
Madrid plans to slowly transition into a car free city centre. By 2020 the plan is to ban cars from 500 acres of its core, but that will also require urban planners to redesign 24 of the city’s busiest streets and convert them to pedestrian use only.
The sustainable mobility plan designed for the city will aim to reduce daily car usage from 29 to 23 per cent, a step forward towards reducing the escalating air pollution problems Madrid has seen since the turn of the century. Drivers who ignore the new rules will be fined $100, and cars that pollute more will also pay more to park.
Oslo, Norway
The plan is to ban all cars from the city centre by 2019. The Norwegian government will have to invest heavily in public transport to achieve the goal, and at the same time replace 35 miles of roads used by cars with bike lanes. The city is moving forward extremely rapidly with the plan and will soon implement similar solutions in other major cities of the country.
Berlin, Germany
Berlin has been working around the clock since late 2017 to build a dozen bike super-highways, about 13 feet wide and blocked off from cars. Before moving forward with this plan, in 2008, the German capital created a low-emission zone around 34 square miles of the city centre, banning all gas and diesel vehicles that fail to meet national emission standards.
Chengdu, China
A new residential area of this Chinese city has been designed thinking specifically about the needs of pedestrians. The layout makes it easier to walk than drive, and you can move almost anywhere within the neighborhood in no more than 15 minutes. Cars are not completely banned from this city of 80,000, but at least 50 per cent of the roads are car free today.
Hamburg, Germany
During the coming years, walking and biking will become the dominant mode of transport around the city streets of Hamburg. The plan is to reduce the number of cars and only allow pedestrians and bikers into certain areas, and this will happen in two decades, tops. The project calls for a “green network” of connected spaces that people can access without cars. By 2035, this network space will cover 45 per cent of the city with parks, playgrounds, sport fields, and cemeteries.
Mexico City, Mexico
Using a rotating system of license plate numbers, the city has prohibited a portion of cars from driving into the centre for two days during the work week, and two Saturdays a month. This rule has been used by authorities since 2016 to control an estimated 2 million cars and helps mitigate the very high smog levels frequently found in one of the largest urban areas in the world.
Copenhagen, Denmark
For decades, the Danish capital has been an inspiration for those planning a car-free urban environment. Today, over half of the city’s population bikes to work on a daily basis. Copenhagen has made a continuous effort to introduce pedestrian only zones since the 1960s, and now it has more than 200 miles of bike lanes and one of the lowest percentages of car ownerships in Europe. More superhighway bike paths are on the way to connect the centre with the suburbs, and the city expects to be completely carbon-neutral by 2025.
London, United Kingdom
If you want to go to the city centre of London, you have to pay. Together with other major European capitals like Paris or Madrid, the city will be banning diesel cars, but in the case of London by 2020. A higher fee known as “congestion charge” is already charged to vehicles using diesel engines in some areas. The next step on the list is to ban all sorts of diesel cars and, by 2040, sales of this type of vehicle will disappear all across Britain.
New York City, United States
There is no immediate intention to ban cars, and maybe it should not be on the list, but time will soon likely bring new car reduction plans to the Big Apple. For the time being, the city is making and effort to increase the number of pedestrian areas, along with bike share, subway, and new bus options. During the summer, many of the city’s streets are converted into pedestrian walkways and, today, strips of land in popular areas like Times Square, Herald Square, and Madison Square Park are pedestrian-only.
Brussels, Belgium
Brussels has also been on top of the list of cities leading the path towards a car-free environment. Most streets that surround the centre have been car free for ages. The city roads make-up the second largest car-free zone in Europe, only behind Copenhagen.
One day every September, all cars are banned from the city centre, but today Brussels is looking for ways to further expand zones with no cars. The city started banning diesel cars in 1998 and during this past summer, public transport was free on heavy air pollution days.
24 Comments on "Major world cities are making cars a thing of the past"
Richard Guenette on Fri, 12th Oct 2018 6:45 pm
All countries should use less gas-guzzling vehicles and have more footpaths (more people walking every day, not just for leisure), bicycle paths, free public transportation (examples: high speed rail, bullet trains etc.). Less vehicles means less automobile accidents. Pollution is a serious problem in all countries (including air, water, land, noise pollution).
George Straight on Fri, 12th Oct 2018 6:50 pm
Sure they are, will convert the abandoned autos into affordable housing with 30 year mortgages
Antius on Fri, 12th Oct 2018 6:50 pm
Yes Richard. Unfortunately, such things only work in dense urban habitats. We are stuck with the assets we built before. This makes the systems that we have stubbornly difficult to change.
Richard Guenette on Fri, 12th Oct 2018 6:53 pm
As our global population continues to grow, we will need to recycle our wastewater (use ultraviolet rays to turn wastewater into freshwater by killing harmful bacteria, pathogens, viruses etc.). We will need vertical farms to grow fruits and vegetables (vegetables such as beans, legumes etc.).
Richard Guenette on Fri, 12th Oct 2018 7:10 pm
We will also need to find ways to reduce and (permanently) eliminate waste on this planet.
Duncan Idaho on Fri, 12th Oct 2018 7:36 pm
“A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise we were given as children about what our adult world was supposed to be like. I am referring not to the standard false promises that children are always given (about how the world is fair, or how those who work hard shall be rewarded), but to a particular generational promise—given to those who were children in the fifties, sixties, seventies, or eighties—one that was never quite articulated as a promise but rather as a set of assumptions about what our adult world would be like. And since it was never quite promised, now that it has failed to come true, we’re left confused: indignant, but at the same time, embarrassed at our own indignation, ashamed we were ever so silly to believe our elders to begin with.
Where, in short, are the flying cars? Where are the force fields, tractor beams, teleportation pods, antigravity sleds, tricorders, immortality drugs, colonies on Mars, and all the other technological wonders any child growing up in the mid-to-late twentieth century assumed would exist by now? Even those inventions that seemed ready to emerge—like cloning or cryogenics—ended up betraying their lofty promises. What happened to them?
We are well informed of the wonders of computers, as if this is some sort of unanticipated compensation, but, in fact, we haven’t moved even computing to the point of progress that people in the fifties expected we’d have reached by now. We don’t have computers we can have an interesting conversation with, or robots that can walk our dogs or take our clothes to the Laundromat.
As someone who was eight years old at the time of the Apollo moon landing, I remember calculating that I would be thirty-nine in the magic year 2000 and wondering what the world would be like. Did I expect I would be living in such a world of wonders? Of course. Everyone did. Do I feel cheated now? It seemed unlikely that I’d live to see all the things I was reading about in science fiction, but it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t see any of them.
At the turn of the millennium, I was expecting an outpouring of reflections on why we had gotten the future of technology so wrong. Instead, just about all the authoritative voices—both Left and Right—began their reflections from the assumption that we do live in an unprecedented new technological utopia of one sort or another.”
makati1 on Fri, 12th Oct 2018 7:40 pm
Growing up in Third World America:
“Shocking New Studies Find That America’s Young People Are Overweight, Unhealthy, Suicidal And Addicted To Alcohol And Drugs”
“After reading the information contained in this article, you will probably find yourself questioning if America is going to be able to survive for much longer, because our young people are a complete and total mess….
Sadly, instead of reading books our high school seniors are spending an average of six hours a day on “social media, texting, gaming and surfing the web”……
According to the CDC, drug overdose rates among our young people have been absolutely soaring……And the CDC also found that liver disease (due to heavy drinking) is rapidly rising among young adults……
But the most tragic fact from that entire study is that suicide is now the second leading cause of death for Americans from age 15 to age 24……
In order for a nation to be great, it needs to be made up of great people, and at this moment it is very difficult to be optimistic about the future of our nation…”
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/shocking-new-studies-find-that-americas-young-people-are-overweight-unhealthy-suicidal-and-addicted-to-alcohol-and-drugs
Slip slidin’…
Cloggie on Sat, 13th Oct 2018 12:58 am
Shared (autonomous?) driving as part of the solution:
https://youtu.be/y2X1ehdJQSI
Davy on Sat, 13th Oct 2018 5:07 am
“A secret question hovers over us, a sense of disappointment, a broken promise”
Idaho, the proper way to make a reference is title and link. If you don’t it looks sloppy and lazy.
Jaz on Sat, 13th Oct 2018 8:44 am
No government will damage let alone destroy the Auto industry.
https://www.smmt.co.uk/industry-topics/uk-automotive/
The number of firms that survive by making parts for the industry is substantial.
twocats on Sat, 13th Oct 2018 8:46 am
the world is ending duncan – but reference that shit! 😉
in the most expensive and least affordable places for all but the professional elite and crazy-lazy-rich, cities have made (some minor) efforts to make their environment not be a habitat for 2-ton lifeless metal husks.
sweet.
Dredd on Sat, 13th Oct 2018 9:21 am
Leave it in the ground and the polluting cars will go away with little to no effort.
Stop feeding the car-trolls, feed things that do not destroy habitat.
DUH
Richard Guenette on Sat, 13th Oct 2018 10:32 am
We should encourage people to walk, bike, or take public transportation. It would be good for their health and personal finances.
Here we go again on Sat, 13th Oct 2018 10:33 am
Internal combustion is an internal piece of the global economy….it’s all or nothing…
What’s the next phase of humanity you ask?
Eat or be eaten….
Here we go again on Sat, 13th Oct 2018 10:35 am
Sure Richard encourage…my ass…not much $$$ to be made with that encouragement..
You must be naive or very young…
Self Checkout on Sat, 13th Oct 2018 11:14 am
A lot of Americans are patriots, willing to die for their country. We should encourage that, not label it a “problem”.
MAGA
Cloggie on Sat, 13th Oct 2018 12:12 pm
Holland, October 13.
Its Autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees, here in Winterswijk, on a weekendtrip.
At 29C (84F)
https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/nederland/artikel/4449731/nog-een-weekend-genieten-warme-nazomer-breekt-record-na-record
rockman on Sat, 13th Oct 2018 3:46 pm
Can’t fault the cities for making the effort. OTOH from a global perspective the 80+ million new ICE’s purchased every year makes any gain insignificant. IOW good for those cities but not much for the world.
Mister French on Sat, 13th Oct 2018 3:50 pm
ROCKNUT… BRILLIANT….such insight… sarcasm
Cloggie on Sun, 14th Oct 2018 2:45 am
“Plug-In Cars = 60% Of New Car Sales In Norway In September”
https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/14/plug-in-cars-60-of-new-car-sales-in-norway-in-september/
Take that, rockman!
P.S. Norway would not be in the position to pull this off without… it’s oil wealth!
Regardless, somebody needs to be the initiator, just like equally tiny Denmark pulled off the global wind energy revolution: currently 500 GW world-wide and counting. Denmark deservedly now harbors two of the largest wind turbine manufacturers Vestas and Orsted.
Courage and perseverance pays off.
Mike on Sun, 14th Oct 2018 5:01 am
Chicago now has a bike superhighway called the 606 several miles long
Davy on Sun, 14th Oct 2018 5:49 am
“Plug-In Cars = 60% Of New Car Sales In Norway In September”
neder, do you know the population of Norway? If you did then you would see this is insignificant in the bigger picture.
Cloggie on Sun, 14th Oct 2018 6:19 am
“neder, do you know the population of Norway? If you did then you would see this is insignificant in the bigger picture.”
Sure, davy boy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Winter_Olympics_medal_table
https://fr7isthebest.tumblr.com/ on Sat, 15th Dec 2018 3:18 pm
Appreciation to my father who informed me on the
topic of this website, this website is genuinely awesome.