Where debating everything under the sun is only the beginning

I'd normally get around by public transit or by rented car, depending on the specifics. And of course loads and loads of walking (or "hiking" if that's the word you prefer for walks in the countryside — maybe I'd agree to call a mountainwalk a hike ).

I prefer to have everything within walking distance and stay on one spot as long as possible. That failing, I take public transportation. That failing, I'd rent a bicycle or a car, but things never got this desperate yet.

There's a difference between walking and hiking. Hiking involves staying overnight somewhere else than where you were last night and walking the distance in between. Or, it involves walking in some nature park all day, carrying all your meals of the day with you. Something like that.

If it makes no difference, then why go out of your way to block walkers so that there is no chance in hell?

The solution is to slow cars down so that there is just one speed, and even the opposite-direction traffic isn't provided a separate lane on the same road.

I don't know about Estonia, but I think you're simply describing how roads work. [...] Having a separated cycle path is at the very least pleasant for any speed cars might go over 30, and on busy roads even when cars go 30.

...in more built up areas crossings will often look more like this.

In my view, effective traffic planning is largely achieved by restricting just one group: Cars. What is most needed is restrictions on car purchase and taxing their usage. This automatically leaves breathing space for all other road users. […]

Regulating road construction for different traffic is secondary. Netherlands has gone very far in special-purpose building for bicycles. It is far more straightforward to just tax cars, if you are really into environmentalism and safety etc.

This is in fact how it used to work in USSR. Getting a car was bureaucratically a very difficult, arduous and long project. As a result, even though roads were built for cars one might say, the cars on the roads were so sparse that pedestrians could walk anywhere. Something similar is in place in Japan: Before you can buy a car, you need to prove that you have a parking spot for it, and tax brackets are prohibitive for larger vehicles.

• What the local people want
• Many incentives and the very realistic option not to use a car
• Some disincentives to use a car

This is in fact how it used to work in USSR. Getting a car was bureaucratically a very difficult, arduous and long project. As a result, even though roads were built for cars one might say, the cars on the roads were so sparse that pedestrians could walk anywhere.

Most infamously on this crossing the railway

Yet when I emerged from the train station in Shibuya, blinking jetlagged in the morning light after a night flight from Amsterdam, what actually caught me off guard was not the bustle but rather how quiet the city is. When you see cliched images of Tokyo, what invariably is shown are the enormous crowds of pedestrians crossing the roads, or Mount Fuji in the background of the futuristic skyline. I expected something like Los Angeles in Blade Runner, I suppose — futuristic and overwhelming. From photos, Tokyo can look almost unplanned, with neon signs everywhere and a huge variety of forms of architecture. You expect it to feel messy. What I experienced, however, was a city that felt almost like being in a futuristic village. It is utterly calm, in a way that is actually rather strange.

Since the advent of the automobile, architects and urban planners worldwide have found it almost impossible to resist building cities around roads and an assumption that most people will drive. Tokyo somehow managed not to. It rebuilt in a much more human-centric way.

For one thing, cars are far more enthusiastically inspected than in America or most of Europe. Cars must be checked by officials every two years to ensure that they are still compliant, and have not been modified.

But unlike America, the idea of making them free never seemed to cross politicians’ minds, probably because Japan in the postwar era was not the world’s richest country. Capital was not freely available. To build the roads, the national government formed corporations such as the Shuto Kōsoku-dōro Kabushiki-gaisha, or Metropolitan Expressway Company, which was formed in greater Tokyo in 1959.

What that meant was that, from the beginning, roads did not have an unfair advantage in their competition with other forms of transport.

But cars will always need more space than bikes, different routes, etc. If you build for everyone, you build for cars. Period.

According to Sorensen’s research, 35 percent of Japanese streets are not actually wide enough for a car to travel down them. More remarkably still, 86 percent are not wide enough for a car to be able to stop without blocking the traffic behind it.

Making traffic uncomfortable for cars (à la hollandaise)

Do you remember the times when even bicycles had to have licence plates?

The Netherlands is the best country as a driver by a surprisingly large margin.

There was some bike registration during the German occupation because if in their view you didn't need it they could use it for the war effort.