well, we could do like the Panama Canal and widen it up with explosives....

but I digress

yeah that reminds me of when i was in vietnam. we're about to cross the street and the tour guide instructs us to look directly across the street and keep walking and do not, under any circumstances, stop for anything. it was like walking through a school of fish...

There is something eerily peaceful about those submerged cars lined up in a row.

@tetracycloide: Heh.. that is the way traffic crossing happen at Boston University... Sure there is a light, but sometimes between classes the number of people build up until traffic has to yield to them and they just cross the street in-mas.. until the foot traffic thins and cars start driving again.. it is very organic...

Flying cars, anyone?

or submarines in your drowned cities?

Or how about redesigning urban centers for foot and bike traffic and keeping cars out of the more congested areas?

Hell, even cities built up after 1900 can suck for cars... I'm looking at you Los Angeles (even though you're my lady & I love you madly).

The problem is 3fold:

1st cars: There just can't be one for every person and they can't be huge (love the minis & the smart cars)

2nd - people: we have to stop being selfish about driving everywhere and living so far from work.

3rd - public transportation: it is a necessity. Politicians need to tell people the hard truth: we have to spend billions and years to have it.

@ComicDork: Agreed. Of all the big cities in the world, LA is supposedly the best planned for the auto, and still has traffic to beat all the photos above. Cars and cities just dont mix. Cities like LA though will have the hardest problem adjusting to the new pedestrian paradigm though since it is virtually impossible to walk from anywhere to anywhere. I've always thought one obvious partial solution to global warming is an urban planning/infrastructure one. (for the record I work/shop/drink mainly within one mile of where I live. I like my little bubble.)

@ComicDork: every city on the planet should have a subway like the one in seoul. it's one of the most densly populated places on the face of the earth and getting from place to place is still unbelievably easy.

So if you didn't allow cars in cities, where would tourists park? Or even people that live outside walking/biking distance?

@tetracycloide: Not always feasible, unfortunately. For instance, here in Atlanta, we have miles of solid granite under the city that we'd have to blast and tunnel through for any sort of working subway system, and there's not enough land available to expand our above ground rail system to make real mass transit work.

The biggest problem is that the vast majority of our cities can't handle real serious change to their current transportation systems, even tho most of them desperately need to. And can you imagine the logistical nightmare of trying to build subways in cities like Miami or LA?

I would include São Paulo in this feature, simply because there are traffic jams EVERYWHERE, day or night. (The highways that run along the two rivers are particularly difficult...) Every car has a designated day of the week that it can't drive, but there are talks of extending that to two days. An unfortunate side effect of the Brazilian economy getting stronger and stronger in recent years is that car sales have skyrocketed. Pretty soon traffic here is expected to reach a critical point where it's just impossible to drive anymore! The city's population exploded in the 20th century, and consequently there was no real infrastructure designed to handle this kind of traffic. (On the flip side, Brasília was completely designed around cars, and has virtually no traffic jams.)

As far as pollution goes, all new cars can run on ethanol (biofuel, which is significantly cheaper than petrol here), so that's a plus.

San Antonio, TX traffic isn't horribly bad, but we have an ungodly amount of construction going on . . . and on . . . and on . . . and on (some of it started before I moved here 5 1/2 yrs ago). Unfortunately for me, I live waaaaay across town from work, friends, and boyfriend (not my choice--I'm renting from my parents), but I've taken care of it by pretty much moving in with the boyfriend. I now shop, eat, and play within a one mile radius from our apartment, and work less than 10 minutes' drive away. Life this way is much easier. I do wish we had good public transportation though. My friend in DC takes the metro everywhere.

@Gann: Yay for the Culver City bubble!

Los Angeles is finally building a west side metro line. It'll be 'finished' in 20 years? They also have to figure out what line it'll connect to the larger system at.

This city used to have the best public transit in the world. Street level trams like in Roger Rabbit, and like, Moscow. Apparently some of the trams that went out of service in the 50s are still being used by nations like Brazil. See, GM bought out the rail lines, and well, apparently "public opinion" was hugely in favor of taking out the rail lines to give traffic one more lane. You still see some old disused tram-lines around the city sometimes.

And lots of people won't trust the LA metro lines because they're a) not earthquake safe and b) built in and around methane pockets which have a tendency to just explode at random. Course, that sounds like fear-mongering to me, but problem is, fear-mongering works.

I can't wait to move to a city with good public transit.

To come? That WAS my commute this morning in LA.

@jennstar: i live in d.c. and we've been waiting for an extension of our subway line out to the other airport for what feels like decades now, so yes i can imagine.

the metro in d.c. is ok but it certainly doesn't go everywhere. it has a real problem with the 'last mile' in that once you get to your stop you're still further than you would want to walk from where you're going without a good way to get there.

@aspiringexpatriate: probably going to have to look outside the US.

Wait, Bollywood is remaking "The Italian Job"?

[www.tribuneindia.com]
At this point, I would just give up and cry.

Damn, wrong image... this is the right one (sorry for double posting).
[ocaraestranho.files.wordpress.com]

Problem: Crazy mad traffic jams.
Solution: Crazy mad traffic driving skills!

+ Watch video

@guibom: I thought I was adjusted to crazy traffic, but dear God that's terrifying...

@toopersent: To keep cars out of the city, put giant park-and-ride lots at transit hubs on the fringes of the city. Even if cars are permitted in the city, it's still a good idea. People drive to that point from their distant suburb or out of town, and then get on the train and go anywhere they want in the city without parking worries.

LA is actually a very walkable city, but you can't think that you want to walk from Los Feliz to WeHo is a necessity. LA is really no different that so many other cities in the US (Outside of NYC, DC, SF, Boston, Chicago + a handful of others) is filled with pockets of great walkable neighborhoods separated with distances between. Also LA gets a bad rap because LA is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to LA.

The Roger Rabbit thing is so true and most folks don't get it.

I think about traffic/urban planning in LA a lot and I think 'the City' needs to do the following:
- FIRST: all directions get turn arrows with RED/NO TURN states. THIS IS A MUST IN LA
- focus on showing people how neighborhoody their areas can
- facilitate movement between these neighborhoods with a system like the old Red Line (a la Munich's trams) and F@#K any neighborhood that doesn't like it (I'm looking at you Beverly Hills)
- use the Santa Monica parking model in areas like Hollywood (which should be re-developed into a focused theater area like Times Square)
- Re-route traffic either permanently or during rush hours with streets like La Brea & Highland becoming 1-way (or permanently like they've discussed with Pico & Olympic)
- expand no Parking hours on main thoroughfares to reflect actual rush hours (6-10; 3-8)

man... I should run for city council.

@grenacia:
actually yeah, they have these for casino employees in Atlantic City. It would be a massive undertaking though and would take up a lot of land that was surrounding the city to be able to support everyone. That would take out some farmland in some places.

@ComicDork:

I agree totally. Urban planning seems to be an oxymoron in so many cities (particularly in the US), and this is even true in urban regions in developing countries, which need planning the most.

If you want a look at the future of urban transportation, here's a hint. It won't involve the car. Because ultimately, it just can't. Cities can't and shouldn't support them on a large scale.

Walkability, people.