> Cities are congested with traffic, sidewalks are small and crowded, and bikers are playing Frogger every day. It goes so much further than this. Highways are

> Cities are congested with traffic, sidewalks are small and crowded, and bikers are playing Frogger every day. It goes so much further than this. Highways are causing air/ocean pollution, learning issues in schools, etc.; noise pollution is multiplied by cars in cities, with horns, sirens etc. competing with the loudness of these vehicles; massive fractions of public space is allocated to free or heavily-subsidised parking space for them; even with all that parking, in my city of NYC and probably others, there is rampant illegal parking on sidewalks, in bike lanes, and more of the tiny fraction of space that is still reserved for non-car use. In NYC, we recently banned private cars on 14th street and all the buses now run far quicker, providing a higher throughput of people on that street, and an overall more pleasant experience of walking/cycling on that street. This took immense effort to put in place, suffering a lot of pushback but now traffic in even nearby blocks has been massively reduced. Similarly with the pedestrianisation of the streets by Rockefeller Center, people are delighted once these plans are implemented, despite the massive outcry and calls for concern for drivers that precedes them. Politicians need to realise that it's the end for private motor vehicles and just take the plunge. They so cowardly bend to the will of the driving population, even when they could gain massive popularity with all constituents by making these changes. More projects like Market Street cannot happen soon enough.