[Oslo] has just phased out the last on-street parking spaces in the city centre, giving an edge to transit, pedestrians and cyclists without banning cars.

The initiative included incentives for cyclists such as new bike lanes, including better lighting and snow removal, along with subsidies for electric bikes and cargo cycles. Council also expanded transit services and lowered fares. — Corporate Knights

It’s hard to escape the irony that the U.S., which will need something like 43 million new housing units to keep up with population growth in the next 35 years, is using space to build apartment-size garages, even as trends in ride-sharing and self-driving cars cast a measure of uncertainty on American car culture. — Bloomberg

As L.A. pats itself on the back for its freshly angular skyline, a new architectural trend — enabled by another city ordinance — threatens to turn the beating heart of modern Los Angeles into a cold, lifeless and unwalkable place. — The Los Angeles Times

The strategy reflects a consensus among some developers and planners that California’s vaunted car culture is inevitably going to run out of gas...[Andy] Cohen, co-chief executive of Gensler, predicts car ownership will peak around 2020 and then start to decline, with more Americans relying on some form of ride-sharing than their own vehicles by 2025. That means cars gradually would disappear from home garages, curbs and parking structures, freeing up acre upon acre of real estate for new uses. — Los Angeles Times

Madrid's mayor, Manuela Carmena, is serious about kicking personal cars off the road in the city center.

On a November 5 show on Spanish radio networkCadena Ser, she confirmed that Madrid's main avenue, the Gran Vía, will only allow access to bikes, buses, and taxis before she leaves office in May 2019, as noted by CityLab. — Independent.co.uk

Driverless cars will trundle around the UK in their first public trials today.

The demonstration of the autonomous electric vehicles is going to take place on the pavements of Milton Keynes.

These tests will be the culmination of an 18-month research project which involved virtually mapping the town and updating regulations for driverless vehicles. — Sky.com

The parliament of The Netherlands has passed a motion which would require that all new cars sold by 2025 will have to be electrified in some way [...]

The Dutch government hasn't yet banned gas and diesel-powered cars, however, and the motion does allow for hybrid cars to be sold beyond 2025. [...]

Although localized governments have sought to ban public cars from urban streets in a number of European cities, the Dutch Labor Party's motion is by far the most aggressive campaign — motorauthority.com

Cars conquered the daily culture of American life back when top hats and child labor were in vogue, and well ahead of such other innovations as radio, plastic, refrigerators, the electrical grid, and women’s suffrage.

A big part of why they’ve stuck around is that they are the epitome of convenience...Convenience (some might call it freedom) is not a selling point to be easily dismissed [...]

In almost every way imaginable, the car, as it is deployed and used today, is insane. — theatlantic.com

On March 31, [Elon Musk's] Tesla Motors unveiled its long-promised Model 3, a $35,000 electric car that will go 215 miles per charge. The market response suggests to some the potential as a category killer, not just in electric vehicles, but mainstream cars in general: in the week since, more than 325,000 Model 3s have been pre-ordered by people putting down $1,000 per reservation, the company said April 7.

Even deep Tesla skeptics call this demand unprecedented. — qz.com

San Antonio-based Architecture firm Lake Flato announced that it took upon itself to offer to its employees the opportunity split the $1,000 cost of the reservation deposit for the Tesla Model 3.

"As our Teslas and TSLA have been very good to us for the last 3+ years, we felt that it would be a great time to contribute more broadly to the adoption of sustainable transport." -Lake Flato Partner — Electrek.co

The plateauing and decline in U.S. vehicle miles traveled per capita that occurred between [2005-2014] was described by some hopeful commentators as a dramatic shift that was indicative of the preferences of a new workforce...Marginal changes in the way a new generation behaves...cannot overcome the realities of a country where more than three-fourths of jobs are located more than three miles from downtowns and where only one-fourth of homes are in places that their residents refer to as urban. — The Transport Public

Paris’s car-free day was not without controversy, not least because it wasn’t a totally carless day and was limited to only around one-third of the city. After a standoff with police, authorities were only able to make car-free certain parts of the city centre, stretching between Bastille and the Champs Elysées, and the outer Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes, and only between 11am and 6pm. In the rest of the city, cars were allowed but at 20km an hour. — The Guardian

Researchers estimate that driverless cars could, by midcentury, reduce traffic fatalities by up to 90 percent. Which means that, using the number of fatalities in 2013 as a baseline, self-driving cars could save 29,447 lives a year. In the United States alone, that's nearly 300,000 fatalities prevented over the course of a decade, and 1.5 million lives saved in a half-century. — CityLab

While you’re hypertensive in traffic listening to NPR, I have seen dolphins frolicking (and homeless men fighting over a shopping cart); I’ve smelled the taco trucks and heard all the languages of kids playing at morning recess. I sweat and shiver; I feel elation and real fear. In short, I feel alive. And so I ride. — Los Angeles Magazine