Nearly two-thirds of motorists in Strasbourg believe that cars in towns are "a thing of the past", according to a recent survey. The mayor, Mr Roland Ries, agrees: "The city does not belong to the car. Cyclists and pedestrians have more right to use the city."
Calling for political courage to deal with traffic, he said it was up to politicians to spell out what was at stake if unlimited car use continued - and to propose alternative solutions. Otherwise, he warned, "our cities will deteriorate into formless heaps" with ever-expanding sprawl. The mayor's predecessor, Ms Catherine Trautmann, championed the most radical change in Strasbourg transport during her two terms in office. Her policy was based on "reducing the hegemony of the car" by banning through-traffic from the city centre and improving public transport.
The most beautiful trams in Europe now glide through the city, winning an approval rate of 92 per cent from the public. After the first tramline opened in 1994, with attractive park-and-ride sites to serve it, planners began work on an extension and, more recently, on a second line.
Passenger numbers on Strasbourg's public transport system have doubled since 1992 and car traffic entering the inner city has dropped by 17 per cent. Some 50 per cent of passengers use the park-and-ride facilities on weekdays; most of them would have been car commuters.
Incredibly, traffic volumes in Copenhagen are down by 10 per cent on their 1970 levels. Apart from roads associated with the Oresund link to Sweden, the city's road infrastructure is no larger than it was then; what has made the difference is public transport and a lot of cycling.
Copenhagen's planners are determined that the total level of road traffic in the city does not increase. So, all the time they are working to improve the public transport system and provide better facilities for cyclists, including covered secure parking at every rail station.
Traffic calming and reduced speed limits are being introduced in the city centre, not only to reduce traffic levels but to make the streets safer for pedestrians and cyclists. On-street parking, none of it available for commuters, is gradually being replaced by underground car parks.
The Austrian city of Salzburg also restricts access to its central area. Private cars must pay a toll equivalent to £10 to enter, in addition to the usual parking charges, and this measure has reduced traffic levels and made more room for the thousands of tourists exploring Mozart's birthplace.
ALL over Europe, cities are increasingly pursuing similar policies. "They realise that unbridled use of cars for individual journeys is no longer compatible with easy mobility for the majority of citizens," according to the former EU environment commissioner, Ms Ritt Bjerregaard.
She believes that traffic is having "a detrimental impact on the way of life of about 80 per cent of European urban residents, with multiple harmful effects on their local environment increasingly confirmed by the results of scientific studies on the health effects of air pollution".
European Commissioner Mr Neil Kinnock said traffic congestion was now "so bad at peak periods that the principle of free movement underpinning the Single European Market is compromised". Thus, the development of "sustainable forms of transport" is now a Commission priority.
It also has a powerful weapon to help achieve it. Under the EU air framework directive of 1996, local authorities are required to implement action plans to improve urban air quality where it does not comply with pollution limits, as has been the case for several years for ozone.
The directive obliges towns with more than 250,000 inhabitants to keep them informed about ambient air quality and to adopt improvement plans to deal with 13 pollutants, mainly from traffic. It also empowers towns to suspend traffic should the authorised peaks be exceeded.
By affirming the right of citizens to quality air, the directive has prompted local authorities to take alternative measures, including the promotion of cycling and public transport. In France, any renovation or construction of urban thoroughfares must include provision for cyclists.
France has also led the way in developing modern tramways, starting with Nantes and Grenoble in the late 1980s. Valenciennes, near the Belgian border, has become the 13th French city to join that club, following the successes achieved elsewhere - notably in Strasbourg.
La Rochelle, where the Luas trams for Dublin are being manufactured, has pioneered the use of electric cars, scooters and vans. In 1997 it held an experimental "car-free day' in the city centre, an idea that was adopted by 35 French towns last year. It was another great success.
"If you ask the inhabitants of a town which transport policy should be followed, they will not choose the car", says Mr Ernst Joos, of the Zurich transport authority. "They are much more intelligent than politicians believe and have higher values than merely standing still in a traffic jam."
Delivering a lecture in Dublin last June, he declared that cities could not expect to solve their traffic problems by building more roads and car parks. And he pointed to Zurich as "living proof" that the economy of a city does not suffer from a transport policy based on restraining car use.
Over the past 20 years, in a series of referendums, its citizens defeated plans for an underground metro system in favour of reallocating road space for the benefit of buses, trams, pedestrians and cyclists. This also showed that people were "ahead of the politicians" on the issue.
Mr Pierre Laconte, of the International Union of Public Transport (UITP), says urban areas must be planned primarily for people, "allocating to the motorcar only the space which is compatible with a good quality of life", while taking decisive steps to upgrade public transport. There is another reason for adopting this approach. According to Mr Laconte, public transport "generates twice as much employment per thousand passenger kilometres as the use of the private car, and it gives those without cars greater access to jobs".
An opinion poll commissioned by the UITP among 1,000 citizens in each EU member-state found that 83 per cent on average agreed that public transport should receive preferential treatment over private cars while 73 per cent would favour a similar priority for cyclists.
Commenting on the poll, the EU Commission's cycling handbook said: "Politicians and technicians are more timorous than any other group of persons questioned, including motorists, perhaps because they confuse their own mobility requirements with those of the average citizen."