Madrid announces new rules of the road in bid to banish traffic from center
Lot of anti-car folks on here. I'm inclined to agree we should discourage driving into city centers, but it's a tough ask when we've been driving forever and everyone owns cars. Telling my elderly father, who lives in the suburbs and drives everywhere, to take a train into the city to visit me is a non-starter, as another commenter pointed out. Habits are hard to break.<p>However, I work in downtown San Francisco and live in Oakland, and I would NEVER drive my car over the bridge into the city, because of congestion. Banning cars outright seems to be a heavy-handed move and overly restrictive of individual choice, and you should just "price in the externalities" as the economists say. High tolls or expensive city driving permits for non-residents seems a better move to ease the transition as well as fund public transit options. They have to build up really, really good public transit infrastructure if they're going to make it more attractive than driving.<p>To me the plethora of rules reads overwrought and complex, and "occasional visitors" seems ridiculous.