London, Paris, Rome - all have a gasp workable public transport (can't speak for Shanghai or MC), dwarfing the vehicular traffic. Unless I had no option to choose at all, separated public transit beat the car traffic each and every time; even the delay of leaving the car at the outskirts and taking the train downtown is quicker than hopping along, a meter a minute (and then getting the privilege of hopping around blocks, trying to find a parking spot, with everyone else doing the same). Not the buses, of course; those get stuck in traffic like everyone else - but the trains get you wherever. Yes, I understand it's unfashionable, and you don't get a coffee cup holder or your own comfy chair for the whole trip ;) But it works. (Yes, there are other people on the metro. Well if you can't stand people, what are you doing in a city - which is a concentrated blob of people by definition?)
The approach in the UK is increasingly to regard the gridlock as an educational opportunity, whereby drivers learn to leave their cars at home and take public transport. combined with decent public transport investment, heavy road calming on non-main roads and progressive removal of parking spaces in town centres it's really having a very positive impact for everybody except the people who bizarrely still choose to sit in the gridlock.
Fair enough, but that tells you that the solution is not "just provide public transportation". That was my point and, I suspect, the original commenter's point as well.
while this clearly does happen, urban residential streets in the UK are usually much narrower and invariably reduced to a single lane by parked cars. They are also less often in a grid pattern which supports rat-runs, and most problem rat-runs have been identified and either blocked or traffic-calmed to death 20 years ago.
London and Paris have great subway systems, and yet somehow the streets above the subways are always gridlocked just as much as any American city I've seen.
Indeed. But it's then up to you to choose which is more convenient to you: gridlock in your private bubble, or getting places with the rest of the public.
