There are many efforts from different countries to reduce car usage.  Countries like Germany, France, Colombia, and the United States are trying to raise awareness and get people to not use their car as much.  These countries are raising awareness for example by having car-free days, banning driving for a day, turning suburbs into car-free communities, and rasing awareness about how cars affect the enviroment.  These counrties are making the efforts to reduce car usage because they know that there are great advantages if citizens limit their car usage.

In Vauban,Germany, low-car suburban life is their motto.  Car ownership is allowed , but with a price.  As a result, 70 percent of Vauban's families do not own cars and 57 percent sold a car to move to Vauban.  Heidrun Walter says that she is happier without a car and when she did have a car, she says she was always tense.  Vauban is an example of the efforts and new idea that Europe, United States, and elsewhere have to reduce car usuage.  Some advantages of this low-car concept is that now stores are being placed in walking distance and malls and resturants are also within walking distance and close to each other.

Because of air pollution and smog due to cars, Paris had to start banning people from driving certain days.  If you  were caught driving when you weren't suppose to, a fine was inforced.  Almost 4,000 drivers were fined according to Reuters.  Diesel fuel was the blame of the smog because France perfers diesel over gas.  Diesels make up 67 percent of vehicles in France according to Reuters.  Paris has more smog than most European capitals.  This is really hurting the enviroment.  While Paris was banning cars, congestion was down 60 percent.  Besides car congestion being down 60 percent, other advatages to this car banning was that non-hybrid car companies lost revenue while hybrid and plug in cars were not.  This shows how people are aware of the pollution of cars.  Also, because of the reduced driving, the smog in Paris was cleared enough to stop banning certain vehicles from driving.

A big event in Bogota, Colombia is their car-free day.  Only buses and taxis were permitted.  Violators of the car-free day faced a fine.  The turnout was large even though there was rain.  "The rain hasn't stopped people from participating", said the Bogota Mayor Antanas Mockus.  Citizens of Colombia were happy participating in the car-free day.

"It's a good opportunity to take away stress and lower air pollution", said buisnessman Carlos Arturo Plaza as he rode his bike.  Municipal authorities from all over the world came to see this event. The city's mayor also says that the day without cars is part of an improvement campaign that began in Bogota in the mid- 1990's.  The advantage of the car-free day has made parks and sports centers more popular to go to and other advatages is that the old sidewalks are being replaced with new paved ones.  The traffic has also reduced.

In the United States, President Obama goals are to curb the United States greenhouse gas emissions.  The Enviromental Protection Agency is promoting "car reduced" communities.  The efforts to reduce driving is paying off.  A study found that driving by young people has decreased 23 percent between 2001 and 2009.  Mr. Sivak's research shows a large drop in the percentage of 16- to 39 year olds getting a liscense.  In New York, there is a new bike sharing program and that can help people to choose to take bike instead of riding in a car.

All these efforts are helping people make the decision to limit their car usage and based on the facts, there are alot of advantages if you limit car usage.  This is only a start to raise efforts to reduce car usage, but I feel in the future we will be seeing a lot more people walking and biking than riding their car.