Cohousing-L Mailing List: NY Times: Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

Snippets from an article on our car freer future:

Across Europe, Irking Drivers Is Urban Policy By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, NY Times, 
June 26, 2011

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/27/science/earth/27traffic.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB

ZURICH — 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 — to make car use expensive and just 
plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly 
modes of transportation. [snip] 

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 “walkers’ paradises,” said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at 
Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation.

[snip] 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’s ever expanding tram 
system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to 
halt.

Around Löwenplatz, one of Zurich’s busiest squares, cars are now banned on many 
blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail’s 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. [snip] 

Mr. Fellmann calculated that a person using a car took up 115 cubic meters 
(roughly 4,000 cubic feet) of urban space in Zurich while a pedestrian took 
three. “So it’s not really fair to everyone else if you take the car,” he said. 
[snip] 

In Copenhagen, Mr. Jensen, at the European Environment Agency, said that his 
office building had more than 150 spaces for bicycles and only one for a car, 
to accommodate a disabled person. [snip] 

Store owners in Zurich had worried that street closings would mean a drop in 
business, but that fear has proved unfounded, Mr. Fellmann said, because 
pedestrian traffic increased 30 to 40 percent where cars were banned.

With politicians and most citizens still largely behind them, Zurich’s planners 
continue their traffic-taming quest, shortening the green-light periods and 
lengthening the red with the goal that pedestrians wait no more than 20 seconds 
to cross.

“We would never synchronize green lights for cars with our philosophy,” said 
Pio Marzolini, a city official. “When I’m in other cities, I feel like I’m 
always waiting to cross a street. I can’t get used to the idea that I am worth 
less than a car.”

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org