In a talk last month to the Auto-Free New York group, Pucher reported travel trends in Muenster, in northwestern Germany (pop. 270,000), Freiburg, in the southwest (pop. 180,000), and Munich, the capital of Bavaria and Germany's third largest city (pop. 1,245,000). Between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s, a period in which car use boomed worldwide, the share of trips by cars in each city stayed in the 35-40% range. The "green modes" of public transport, bicycling and walking account for almost two-thirds of all trips.

Over the same period, the share of U.S. urban trips accounted for by cars, high at 80%, increased to 84%, while shares for cycling, walking and transport all fell.

Modal Splits in Munich (% of trips by mode; figures for Muenster and Freiburg are similar)

Year	1976	1982	1989	1992	1995
Car Driver	29	30	31	29	30
Car Passenger	13	8	9	7	8
Motorcycle	2	1	0	0	0
Public Transport	19	22	24	25	25
Bicycle	6	10	12	15	14
Walking	31	29	24	24	23



The one sour note for urbanists, the decline in walking, is partly due to longer trip distances. But in German cities the lost walk trips are largely replaced by bicycle travel, with no net increase in ecological or social harm. Pucher puts cycling's modal share in German cities at 12%, an order of magnitude higher than in the U.S.

Pucher does not attribute these trends to any diminution in the cultural status of cars, which he says continue to have "huge symbolic value" in Germany. Rather, he credits them to interlocking strategies reinforcing a pluralistic system, which he puts in four categories:

1. Improved Public Transport, including:

• Physical expansion of bus and rail systems
  
• Modernized vehicles and stations
  
• System integration with linked schedules and fares and direct connections
  
• Fare subsidization, particularly for monthly and annual passes
  
• Effective marketing

2. Pedestrian and Bicyclist Facilities

• Extensive car-free pedestrian zones
  
• Traffic calming in residential neighborhoods
  
• Fully networked on-road bike lanes, converted from car use, along with off-road bike paths and bike parking 

3. Disincentives to Car Use 

• Restricted and expensive parking
  
• High taxes on car ownership and use
  
• Little or no urban road expansion
  
• Auto-free zones and traffic calming (noted above)

4. Anti-Sprawl Land Use 

• Zoning protection of farms and forests
  
• Pro-density policies leading to population densities 3-4 times those in U.S.