Very interesting showcase from Paris.  TS, this is not a war on cars (although cars long ago declared war on humans).  This is a realistic look at how we can improve space for humans while maximizing human movement.  Cars aren't always the fastest way to move people, despite your claims.

"The reason people like cars is they represent freedom and personal responsibility"

That's true if you're in the 1950's, but the reality today is very different. We're seeing traffic models predicting absolute gridlock in many of our congested corridors.  The average traffic speed has decreased 50% since the 1960s.  We spend a record number of hours sitting in traffic going nowhere. The car may _represent_ freedom, but that's just not the reality of today's urban environments. (Obviously driving in the country is liberating, and by all means, go for it!) In New York City, the average speed of cars is slower than in the 1800's with horse and buggy.  We can't keep putting our fingers in our ears and saying lalalala while stuck in traffic, bemoaning a so-called "war on cars", which is somehow a "down with capitalism and freedom."

Unless you have another solution to counter the increasing congestion, decreasing traffic speed, and increasing pollution health risks, I think these are some pretty interesting models for how we can handle a rapidly increasing problem.  

I'm a biker, and I move around San Francisco much faster than any car can at rush hour. That's a liberating (and freedom-filling) feeling to zoom past cars stuck in traffic.  I have no idea how the model of buying, maintaining, and riding a bike is more socialist than a car to you... because I paid less?

I understand your concerns, and these need to be implemented well, but let's think about it like this.  In Paris, we would have cars that move through with a speed limit of 30km/h. At this rate, we can move 1 car 0.5km/min.  Add in traffic lights and traffic, and this gets reduced to our average: ~ 10km/h, or 0.16km/min.  So we can do a few things:

1. We can reduce the stop/start time from traffic lights and traffic.  If a car could continually move through at 10km/h, it would get to the end point just as quickly as a car that moves at 30km/h with the stop/go of traffic lights.  10km/h seems slow, but the end throughput is just as a high as before, and the rate of accidents drops over 50%, with the rate of accident mortality dropping over 95%.  This is a HUGE win: massively decreasing road accidents, while maintaining average time from start to finish for driving.

2. Decreasing overall speed of traffic encourages alternative forms of transportation because it makes them safer.  One of the biggest reasons cited from non-bikers is a fear of getting hit by cars.  You can either add more bike lanes, or make the routes they already take slower (and thereby safer).  This can have a net positive impact on a zone, with zero traffic flow impact.

3. We have seen net movement flow actually INCREASE by reducing traffic speed, and here's how.  First, imagine 100 cars moving at 10km/h, or taking about 6.5 minutes to go 1km. An average car length at 4 meters + space between, you end up with ~ 10 meters per car including gaps. 100 cars = 1,000 meters, or 1km. If you take 2 lanes, that means you get 200 cars per km.  In Europe the average number of persons per car is 1.5 (in the us, this is closer to 1.1).  Let's take our higher number, and we see that we move 300 people in the 6 minutes for a 2 lane road.  We also see an average of 3 bikes / minute in Paris (not high for Europe), or 18 people on bikes. Now let's take out one lane, so we are moving 150 people in cars per 6 minutes.  Since we consistently see biking multiply by 10x when we provide dedicated space for them, we immediately see ~ 30 bikes per minute, or 180 people on bikes per the 6 minutes.  Our net human flow has now gone from 300 people in cars to 150 people in cars + 180 people on bikes, or 330 people total.

We see this time and time again.  If the goal is to increase the total number of *cars* moved, by all means, making bigger, faster roads is the way to do that.  But if the goal is to increase total number of *people* moved, we see slight increases in car congestion yields such incredible benefits in pedestrian and bike throughput that the ultimate gains far outweigh the increase in congestion.  As an added bonus, the slight increase in congestion creates stronger demand for alternatives over time, thus increasing our overall capacity and decreasing congestion.  When no alternatives are provided, congestion has nowhere to go.

No this road has next to no buses travelling along it as it is not going in to or out of town.

and this area is inside the London Congestion Zone. to drive inside the zone costs £8 ($12usd) a day. So yes traffic is lighter than NYC.

I have seen this happen in Toronto, with successive socialist-leaning mayors furthering this war on cars with ridiculous schemes such as huge concrete medians that take up 2 of 4 lanes on busy roadways, speed bumps on streets that shouldnt have them, and obscene monthly parking fees that equal rent in many areas.

Attrition of automobiles by the city, as Jane Jacobs would say. It only took the world 60 years to figure out that she was right.

Chinatown and Soho, with their huge pedestrian flows, are ripe for London-style traffic calming. Thanks for the informative video!

see you ?
Knut

That's the problem. People like you and I that are likely to check out a website like streetfilms understand the theory of induced demand. But try explaining it to your average joe schmo. Most people think of traffic like water in a balloon. If you squeeze it in one spot, it will necessarily expand in another spot. Its counter-intuitive that the whole balloon will get smaller, but as you know, this is exactly what happens with traffic.

Increase road capacity and you will have more cars on the road. Decrease capacity and you will have fewer cars on the road.

Los Angeles' solution: widen the streets.

Le sigh.

would these solutions scale to New York?