How The Decline Of Cars Is Changing Cities For The Better

Cars have ruled American cities for decades, with planners working to simplify driving and parking by routing freeways through downtowns, widening streets and adding parking lots.

But not all of them. Sam Schwartz, a traffic engineer for New York City in the 1970s and ’80s, recalls his colleagues snubbing him for riding the subway and being baffled that he was trying to keep a street through Central Park closed to vehicles. Schwartz spent his time trying to limit traffic, working on failed plans to ban cars from Midtown and boost bridge tolls for drivers entering Manhattan.

Schwartz, who later served as New York’s traffic commissioner and the city Transportation Department’s chief engineer, and now has his own engineering firm, wasn’t deterred by that early lack of success. 

“I engaged in low-level sabotage of the Traffic Department’s plans,” Schwartz recalls in his book, Street Smart: The Rise of Cities and the Fall of Cars,  published last month with co-writer William Rosen. 

“I would widen a sidewalk to a decent size here. Eliminate a parking lane there. One time, a road that linked Brooklyn’s Prospect Park to Parkside Avenue mysteriously disappeared from the city’s plan,” Schwartz wrote. 

Since those days, Schwartz has been joined by many experts who realize cities and their residents suffer when cars are the top transportation priority. At the same time, Americans have been driving less, with the annual number of vehicle miles traveled, or VMT, declining since 2004. The trend is so surprising that it took awhile for experts to believe it would be sustained.

“There was a revolution that nobody noticed,” Schwartz told The Huffington Post. “Everybody kept predicting they would go up. …. In 100 years, there has never been such a rapid change in transportation since the advent of the streetcar and the automobile.”

Schwartz said much of the VMT drop is due to millennials, who are driving less than their predecessors and relying more on bicycling and public transit. More millennials want to live in walkable communities with public transit than do older generations — though the majority of millennials still live in suburbs.

Schwartz often warns mayors that to keep young residents from moving away, they need to build dense downtowns, public transit and walkable streets. Those features attract 20-somethings — and also have economic, health and environmental benefits. 

Below are three cities that are transforming themselves into places that put people before cars.

Oklahoma City