Should cars be banned from city centres?

Cars should be banned from the city center at least in the biggest cities because they bring on more problems than benefits. Pollution is the top one major drawback, along with traffic jams and a relentless decrease in local commerce.

Firstly, it is widely known that cars are responsible for the highest levels of carbon dioxide emissions, the most common greenhouse gas. In 2007, the rate stood at 158 grams per kilometer. It accounts for the first cause of global warming in the US and the second in Europe. Hard though it is to believe that despite these numbers, the cars fleet soared to amazing four times the population growth from 1980 to 1990 in Mexico city, for example. A perverse car-oriented society is also found in Moscow where the status of owning a car has been dilapidating seriously the environment world around.

Secondly, cars humper traffic be them parked or roaming on the streets where public transportation should be the priority mean of commuting. Even after the implementation of urban toll and license plate rotation scheme, London and São Paulo locals have reached peaks of immobility in their centers in the last decades. The squandering money in São Paulo´s economy due to traffic jams stands at 10% of the GDP. London has fallen back on bicycle routes and São Paulo has tried hard to work up subway and buses lines.

In addition to that, local commerce looses pedestrians and consequently sales volume decreases. City center commerce tends to deteriorate because it turns into simply to a passage area. What´s more, local residents are forced to move out of the city center making the area much more devaluated.

All the problems can be wrapped up by two words: public transportation, to the detriment of cars in the city centres. At any rate, it should be promoted the use of bicycles and companies should incentive the carpool until subway stations around the area