Though progress is often slow, city planners and politicians are gradually waking up to the fact that when cities offer safe and affordable alternatives to cars, we start to travel differently.
More and more young people are choosing bicycles, buses and trains over owning a car out of the sheer cost. In Berlin, it’s public transport, not cars, which is the coolest way of getting around.
In Copenhagen, a city that has a long held reputation for being bike-friendly, a whopping 62% of people choose to cycle their commute.
In the French city of Lyon, the number of cars entering the city has fallen by 20% compared to just a decade ago. As the city’s network of bike hire stations continues to grow, town planners are hoping for a further 20% decline.
In London, where cycle super-highways are becoming popular, the share of journeys made by car has fallen by a quarter since 1990.
Car free days are rising in popularity in many of the world’s largest cities, giving people a taste of what it’s like to live with less noise, traffic and pollution. Bogota was one of the first cities to introduce a car free day, and it’s now become so popular that it’s been extended to a full week.
Bogotá’s Ciclovía is fantastic! I was there in the mid-nineties and they closed a major artery, the Carretera Séptima, on Sundays. Here some pictures.
If you live in a country then you are evil and problematic. You should move into the city like a civilized progressive person. That’s how humans have been living for thousands of years, it’s a natural habitat for humanity.
What you are confusing a bit is the traditional human life style of living in the countryside on a farm, growing one’s own food, and being self-sufficient, with the “American Way of Life” with living in Suburbia, working in an office in the city, daily commuting huge distances with use of fossil fuels, and burdening the rest of humanity with the fallout from that. The latter is just plain unsustainable. And exactly these people want subsidies to sustain it - at the cost of all others.