#Car-free

Journalist Randy Essex of the Detroit Free Press took to those same digital pages last week to discuss how great his new car-free life is, even during the life-threatening cold of the polar vortex.

To which I say, good for him. If he’s happy living a car-free life in Detroit, more power to him. But his article is just the latest part of a conversation happening, at least in certain circles on social media, about going car-free.

This isn’t to pick on Essex. Again, if not having their own car works for him and his wife, that’s fine with me. To each their own, you do you, all that jazz. But going car-free won’t work for everyone, and urbanites, especially urbanite auto journalists, need to remember that.

When you’re in conversation with a self-described urbanist, it’s usually impossible to avoid numerous references to Amsterdam, that progressive utopia of bikes, tulips, marijuana-smoking tourists, and more bikes.Well, expect to hear about it even more, now that Dutch parliament has passed a Dutch Labor Party motion to ban the sale of internal combustion vehicles in that country after 2025, according to Auto Express. The bill, which requires senate approval to become the law of the land, would see existing gas and diesel vehicles grandfathered, and the sale of new ones banned.

Government officials in the capital city of Norway said Monday they would like to ban vehicles from a region in its city center by 2019 to reduce greenhouse gases, according to The Guardian.The plan has had mixed reaction according to the newspaper, Verdans Gang. There are only about 1,000 residents in the zone where vehicles may be banned, but roughly 90,000 workers commute there everyday, according to the newspaper. Residents have said that a ban on vehicles could add up to 45 minutes to their daily commute.In its statement, the Oslo city government said the city would be free from fossil fuels by 2030.