No amount of new roads will ever eliminate congestion  Some sustainable travel activists imagine that drivers can be coaxed into breaking their car addictions through investment in public transport and cycle alone. Their hope is that, as green transport options improve, more drivers will organically make the switch and car use and congestion will simply dwindle away without requiring politically-contentious alterations to the road network. Unfortunately this specious fantasy is critically flawed. The knock-on implication of any fall in car use created by new sustainable transport options is that roads become clearer. But due to induced demand, quieter roads, just like new roads, simply encourage more people to drive again. In short, unless the overall provision of space for cars is reduced, sustainable transport initiatives make cars more seductive just as fast as they provide alternatives in a vicious circle. Car-based urbanism, electric or not, is inherently unsustainable. Though shrinking road space may initially appear to drive up congestion, Paris Metropolitan Region senior urban planner Paul Lecroart reports that research spanning 60 cities shows removing lanes from inner city highways quickly reduces traffic by 14 per cent without "deterioration in traffic conditions". Congestion, though impossible to alleviate by building new roads, can, if controlled strategically, be a powerful tool for reducing car use.  To break this cycle, cities should not just build green transport systems but actively dismantle the old car infrastructure at the same time; narrowing roads, replacing car lanes with bus and bike routes, removing car parking spaces from streets, implementing Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, and continuously reducing the amount of land dedicated to cars wherever congestion is too low. Such measures could be deployed in tandem with driving taxes like Singapore's Electronic Road Pricing, but toll-based solutions disproportionately impact the least well-off and can be easily repealed by future governments. Long-term physical reductions in the percentage of land reserved for cars, on the other hand, permanently reconfigure cities for sustainable transport.......read more   https://www.dezeen.com/2023/01/11/congestion-roads-cities-traffic-sustainable-transport-phineas-harper/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Dezeen&utm_content=Daily%20Dezeen+CID_cabc3adebdd85b3b1fa96e7b623a6cb3&utm_source=Dezeen%20Mail&utm_term=cities%20should%20not%20just%20build%20green%20transport%20but%20actively%20dismantle%20car%20infrastructure      ......and......           European Commission prioritises cyclists and pedestrians in cities for "first time in history  The European Commission has proposed an overhaul of urban infrastructure to encourage more walking and cyclingas part of the EU's aim to become anet-zero continent by 2050.If passed, the Efficient and Green Mobility package would require the 424 largest cities in the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) to hash out sustainable urban mobility plans (SUMPs) centred on these kinds of "active mobility" modes by 2025.     https://www.dezeen.com/2022/01/05/cycling-efficient-green-mobility-european-commission-news/