We used to live in Vilnius, Lithuania. In the city, probably one third of the roads in the main part of the city are car-free, blocked by large planters or bollards or just too narrow to drive on. Every street has sidewalks, many of them almost as large as the streets. One of the main streets through the center of the city was blocked by bollards after 6pm and before 5am, so that no cars were allowed, and especially during the summer, it would be full of people just walking around. In fact, the whole city was full of people just walking around. It felt there like pedestrians had priority. If you came to a crosswalk, without fail, oncoming cars would stop and let you across (before you were in the road). Speed limits were such that in most parts of the city, you never felt endangered by traffic. We lived for a year without a car, and really the only times I wished I had one were when we had to carry large grocery loads on the trolley buses, because it was so easy and pleasant to live without one there. Public transit went everywhere, even out into the country, and has steep discounts for students, veterans, pensioners, disabled. It was such a totally different feeling that we were shocked when we came back to Portland by how impersonal it felt at times, when we could go an entire day and hardly see a single person outside of a car on the roads (depending on where in the city you ended up during the day). A city like Vilnius feels much more human, I think.

Portland is definitely moving that direction, and doing some things really well, but I think we – as most of the U.S. – have a long way to go just in our perception of how the city should be prioritized. It’s not that we should get rid of cars, they are an important part of our lives. However, we need to realize that our cities will be much more livable if people who aren’t in cars feel safe on our streets, and we need to make a noted effort to make that happen.

As someone who works downtown and commutes 1.5 miles on foot this issue is near to my heart. Great article.

I’m afraid I’m a fairly new subscriber to this blog so I don’t know if this has been explored in a previous article but I think that the psych/sociological separation of an individual from the “outside world” is a very interesting topic. It’s relevant to this article in the discussion of autos and their lack of consideration for peds but is also applicable to many other urban issues or problems (road rage, bikes or peds vs. cars, wearing headphones everywhere you go, etc.).

Thanks again.