[shortoncash]

I would restrict traffic to very specific use cases, like Uber, taxis, public transit, and charge high tolls for everyone else. Then, I'd encourage e-bike or bike rebates/tax credits. The traffic situation in cities is really out of hand. The fact that this country has an obesity epidemic just makes this solution even more appealing to me.

This isn't really a "freedom" oriented line of thinking and I get a lot of hate from people with certain political bents when I mention this idea, but there's no social value in total gridlock. Cities are a special situation where the streets are a public resource that needs to be allocated properly. The streets are nowhere near being allocated properly in most of the cities I have lived in.

[sevilo]

this may work well for smaller cities that are highly dense, but for a lot of North American cities, where a large population live in the suburbs and commute into city center for work, public transit are often unreliable and there's not big enough of a population overall support long hour, frequent services. I don't think it's fair or realistic to ask them to bike multiple hours to get to work everyday. Not to say hate, but I do find this type of proposal or thinking somewhat elitist and completely ignorant to the fact that there are others who do not live in cities yet depend on them for a living. Many people already choose to live in the suburb in order to lower their living cost compared to living in city centers, is it fair that they will be charged high tolls compare to whoever that's able to afford city center living?

[shortoncash]

Is it fair? No. However, people who don't live within a city really aren't in a position to dictate how that city should be run if they don't actually live and vote there.

Plus, employers would eventually just provide transit options to their labor pool. It would be similar to the bus services that the large companies in Silicon Valley use to bus in employees from neighboring cities and towns. The market and transportation systems would realign to fix problems.