A radical proposal for "Green Streets"

I'm fed up with our cities. Developed nations, such as the U.S. probably have the worst cities on the planet. Why? Because they aren't built for people. They are built for automobiles. The concessions made to other forms of transportation (bicycles, pedestrians) are exactly that, concessions. Our cities are dumbly built for large, noisy, dangerous, inefficient, environmentally devastating, pervasive automobiles.

As you can tell, I am not an automobile fanatic, but I do have an appreciation for them. Some (very few) are very appropriate, well-built transportation machines, designed with purpose and with the future in mind. They have their place, but that place is not cities.

I don't want to share the road with automobiles as a bicyclist. It means that any accident is likely a fatal accident. I don't want to be a pedestrian at *any* traffic intersection.  I want green streets. I want human navigable spaces that span a city. I want most of the city to be like a university campus, where the automobile is the least efficient method of transportation. I want a city where people and bicycles and skateboards are safe from the stupidity of the automobile.

There are many reasons why I prefer taking the "scenic" route through campus instead of hitting a city street right away on my route home every day. I feel safer. It takes longer, but I don't really notice because I don't have to worry about being killed by a haphazard driver. The scenery really is better. Much better. I enjoy it so much that I sometimes go to campus on the weekends just to ride around. What if the whole city were this enjoyable for human-powered-locomotion? Do you think that we'd cut down on greenhouse gas emissions? What about fitness? How many more people would ride a bicycle to work?

So here is my radical proposal:

1. Convert 50% of navigable roadways in every city into a walk/bike/skate space with walk and ride paths and green foliage.
2. Ensure that these human-navigable-spaces span a city so that we can navigate anywhere without traveling any more than a block on asphalt-and-automobile streets.
3. Partition existing city funding such that our automobile roadways are better AND we get fabulous human navigable spaces to travel in.
4. Do this over a period of 10-20 years; saving money, ourselves, and the environment

If we need some additional evidence to support the effort, do studies concerning the total cost of automobile roadways compared to the total cost of the proposed human spaces.

For example:
Automobile roadways incur many costs:

1. Construction and maintenance
2. Accidents and hospitalization
3. Environmental cost
4. Personal health costs
1. Physical fitness
2. Psychological costs (stuck in traffic, frustration, road-rage)
5. Lost energy
1. Lost energy costs due to asphalt heat-absorption/dissipation
2. Lost energy costs due to lack of green spaces
6. Personal financial loss
1. Cost of gasoline for 1-10 mile commute
2. Cost of automobile ownership and insurance
7. ...
8. ...

Human navigable spaces have some costs as well, but most are significantly lower or actually beneficial. When compared to costs incurred to construct, maintain, and use automobile roadways it seems inane to be designing our cities in any other way.

Check out this recent graphic on fatalities and serious injuries in the UK.  Zoom into the street level and look for regions where *you* would want to live -- I guarantee that these are going to be green streets.