Europe makes driving unpleasant to discourage car use

Elisabeth Rosenthal
The New York Times
June 27, 2011

While U.S. 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.

Cities such as Vienna, Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of “environmental zones” where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.

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