Times change and mentalities with them. I think many European cities had a "cars everywhere" mentality during the post-WWII "renaissance" (maybe inspired by the USA) but then we realized that we hit a limit and started scaling things back starting sometime in the early 90's I'd say. Many projects from the 70's that were hailed as the future of transportation are now seen as huge warts we don't know how to replace now. Take the Boulevard Périphérique around Paris for instance: a nuisance for people living nearby, often gridlocked, super dangerous and atrociously ugly.
People realized that this approach wasn't sustainable and now more and more work is done to undo it, that's a good thing IMO. Ancient European cities simply were not built to accommodate cars, they don't fit.
> Take the Boulevard Périphérique around Paris for instance: a nuisance for people living nearby, often gridlocked, super dangerous and atrociously ugly. People realized that this approach wasn't sustainable and now more and more work is done to undo it, that's a good thing IMO.
Do not worry, we still go on building ring roads and bypasses around cities. Either where there were not yet any, or farther from the centre and the existing ones where there are already existing ones.
- But this time, they will be enough far away from the city, and they will make traffic jam disappear, we promise.
- Yeah, that's what you said 40 years ago about the first ones, and then urbanisation exploded around them and they quickly got swallowed by the city and its suburbs...
Bus yes, it is true that the fad of building expressways ending right inside city centres has stopped quite a long time ago.
People realized that this approach wasn't sustainable and now more and more work is done to undo it, that's a good thing IMO. Ancient European cities simply were not built to accommodate cars, they don't fit.