On average, Americans clock 13,000 miles driving their cars every year, mostly commuting to work. Annually, the average auto commuter spends more than a week on top of what would be an uncongested commute. In Los Angeles, the figure is three weeks spent idling in traffic. For every week, the time American commuters spend stuck in traffic collectively tallies to 2.5 million years.
The coronavirus and sheltering in place have reinforced the notion that places without cars are more pleasant. Even before the virus, many cities, especially in Europe, were adopting policies to reduce car traffic, while prioritizing pedestrians and cyclists. The main policy approaches to decrease auto traffic, singly and in combination, have been:
- Make streets multimodal: designing roads to be shared, where all modes intermingle, often without sidewalks. Such streets slow vehicle traffic and require everyone to watch out for others.