Irritate Drivers – Create Great Cities?

The NYT’s reports on the difference between European and American public policy, finding that Americans try and make things easy for cars, while Europeans want to annoy them. It’s an odd way to phrase policy direction, but it gets to the essence of matter quite well.

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.

In Australia we have the odd situation where politicians publically claim to prioritise pedestrians and cyclists over cars, but the funding is arranged exactly opposite. Read on.