Towards Carfree Cities: Looking for effective and feasible policies for municipalities to convert towards a carfree or low-car city

Cities are on the rise: Recent years, cities have faced an increase in economic growth, employment rates and population numbers. As a result, the accessibility and liveability of cities is under pressure, mainly due to an increase in the number of cars. One of the possibilities to cope with this problem is to free existing cities from cars, resulting in ‘carfree cities’. However, the effectiveness and feasibility of measures that aim to achieve this, is not always clear. This paper aims to describe the characteristics and desired results of carfree cities and aims to identify effective and feasible policies for municipalities to convert their city into a low-car or carfree city, by answering the question: "Which government policies have shown or are regarded by experts to be effective and feasible in contributing to the realisation of low-car or carfree cities and what are thereof the implications in achieving carfree cities?". With use of a literature review, desk research and interviews we found that there is a wide variety of possible policy measures to achieve a low-car of carfree city, however, often without a clear evaluation of their effectiveness and feasibility. Generally spoken, measures concerning ’Price measures and restraining cars’ have a potentially high effectiveness, but low feasibility. There is a lack of clear data about the effectiveness of measures in the group ’Improvement and innovation of collective transport services’, but feasibility is regarded as high. Regarding the group ’Making slow traffic more attractive’, in general, the feasibility of this group is regarded as (very) high, but convincing evidence of the effectiveness is lacking, or shows only a limited effectiveness. Above all, it is advisable to implement measures as a package, in which push and pull measures are combined, good alternatives are offered and the liveability benefits are emphasised.Complex Systems Engineering and Management (CoSEM