This image floats around the internet fairly often. It purports to show how much space a group of people take up when the all drive cars (no word on occupancy factor); and in picture 2 the same group in a bus (although buses can hold a lot of people their average load factor is a lot less); and in the third shot, cyclists(?).

I wonder if these are “real” photos, or photoshopped. The street remains very uniform, only one person-hole is visible. I even wonder if it was taken at one of those “miniature villages” … I recall visiting one of those somewhere in The Netherlands. Does anyone have a link to the original source? One can also question why the autos are spaced apart (but not far enough to actually move) but the cyclists can somehow cycle in a very tight pack.

Regardless of nitpicking, it does illustrate very well why trying to cater to ever more automobiles leads to ever less dense cities and suburbs until the space required to drive and park the automobile eats up all other land uses.

If the above pictures were to be taken in Ottawa in 2020, the street might be eerily empty: we’ll all be 10 stories down in a tunnel.