It's the opposite of conventional transportation policy in American cities that places motorist convenience in high priority (think 'level of service'). This story shows what European cities are doing to get motorists out of cars.
"The methods vary, but the mission is clear - to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation".
While 'smart transportation policy' in U.S. cities now includes smarter parking pricing policies, many European cities are eliminating street parking. And congestion (cordon) pricing has yet to appear in the U.S. despite showing excellent results in London and Stockholm.
"In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving," said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. "Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars."
No project appears too small - even removing "pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed", adding to what Americans call 'traffic delay'.
FULL STORY: Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy
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Placer County
Mayors' Institute on City Design
City of Sunnyvale
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP), the Department of City and Regional Planning (CRP)
Lehigh Valley Planning Commission
City of Portland, ME
Baton Rouge Area Foundation