The Mythical No-Car City

There was a brief piece (interview) out of the Tagesspielgel today with a Green Party official from Berlin-City's government (the senator in charge of traffic for the city itself). 

So Regine Gunther went into a dialog about the Berlin she sees in the next three to four years.....a city with only electric cars.  Yes, she wants to ban gas and diesel cars by 2023 in Berlin.

Odds of this happening?  Between zero and one percent chance.

But this is the society that is pumping up political chatter and getting people excited about a mythical society that can exist without cars. 

How many Germans believe this type of utopia can exist?  There's no way to gauge the number but I would imagine it's up around 5-percent who think it could happen in the next decade. 

In fact, I can go and lay out the strategy where you simply eliminate various streets from vehicle traffic, and start to charge a daily tax for driving into the heart of a city.  Imagine pulling up to the 2 km by 2 km area of Frankfurt, with a warning sign and scanner.....where your car is going to be charged four Euro for the privilege today of entering the 'zone'.  Everyone will naturally pay it.....with the expectation that their boss or company will have to reimburse them in some fashion.  Four years later, the fee will double to eight Euro a day, with that being the breaking point where people start parking their cars in massive parking lots outside of town, and using a complicated rail and bus network to reach work each day.

So this would resolve the 'problem' and make the Greens happy?  Well....here's the next sequence.  If you were a company and all this 'speed bumping' was going on with your business and employees....why would you stay in that city?  So month after month.....business zones would be built outside of the city, and eliminate the entry fee business and the Green involvement in your business operations.  It might take twenty years, but you'd chase out the majority of business operations in German cities that adapted to the 'zone' idea.

Along the way, the Greens would pat themselves on the back and proclaim success....as various business building stand empty, and no one seems to have interest in living in the urbanized zone itself.  They all moved to some smaller towns or non-threat areas.  At this point, populations would be decreasing and the Greens would stand and ask why 4,000 people left the metropolitan region last year.