No pain, no gain. We just suck it up for a few years. Our future generations will thank us. You get immediate savings by stopping road expansion and cutting

No pain, no gain. We just suck it up for a few years. Our future generations will thank us. You get immediate savings by stopping road expansion and cutting fuel demand (close lanes on big roads, replace with bicycle lanes). You get 3-10 years of pain from bicycle/walk-commuting in a city designed for cars. To compensate, let people build supermarkets and stores in single family zoned areas. Subsidize rent-a-bike companies with funds from gas taxes and frozen road construction projects. This is basically the only sure-fire way to let poor people generate free cash flow to survive the recession without having to helicopter them money. This has worked for developing countries like China. Also, this is a way to keep cities financially solvent by letting the tax revenue to land area ratio increase naturally as people adjust to human-powered commuting.