From the moment horse-drawn buses took passengers through a rapidly-growing London in 1829, all the way to modern wonders like magnetic-levitation trains that whoosh along at 400 kilometers per hour, a fundamental part of city life has been moving people from place to place.

Although London was not the first place to introduce buses - it copied them from a service introduced in Paris a year earlier - London's 20-seater buses, pulled by three horses, marked the start of a series of public transport initiatives in what was the pre-eminent city of that era.

Much of London's subsequent expansion was fueled by public transport; first overland rail lines and then the world's first subway system, the Underground, the initial section of which opened in 1890.

This picture was mirrored around the world. Yet especially outside Europe, modern cities use one, more recent form of transport far more than any other - the car.

Especially in the United States, where relatively few urban areas have extensive public transport systems, the car has not only dominated cities, it has defined them, bringing ever-greater urban sprawl and shifting shops and businesses outside traffic-unfriendly inner areas.

In recent years, choked by traffic, city planners have tried a series of solutions to end congestion. In London, drivers must now pay a daily fee to use roads in the center. At the other end of the technological scale, authorities in Shanghai spent more than a billion dollars building a magnetic-levitation rail line which whisks passengers to and from the airport in only eight minutes.

Yet some argue that a more fundamental re-think is needed.

Dr Hermann Knoflacher, head of the Institute for Transport Planning and Traffic Engineering at the University of Technology in Vienna, believes that city-dwellers must be forced from their vehicles.

Cars are "like a cancer. They eat up the healthy body of the city," he says.

"The city is a thing that came from social contact, social relationships, economic relationships," Knoflacher says.

"In a very deep-rooted way, people are more connected to their cars than to other people or to cities. So they destroy the cities."

The inevitable outcome, he argues, is an urban sprawl of endless suburbs and out out-of-town shopping, with no sense of social interaction.

"We call it a city but it is nothing to do with a city. It is not a city at all, because a city is not only a physical structure, it is a social structure."

Knoflacher's remedy is simple but radical: ensure that the distance people have to travel to reach their cars is no smaller than the distance to their nearest public transport facility, even if this means barring people from parking outside their own homes.

"What hasn't been understood is that parking is the key issue and not traffic flows. Traffic flows are only the symptoms," he says.

How can we stop cars from choking cities?

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Look no farther than Singapore. It is one of the world's densest cities, yet there is no traffic. Why? Because it has a good public transport and infrastructure system, good management of the car population and disciplined citizens.

As long as we give more importance to personal liberties and comfort, versus the welfare of the general population, we will always choke our cities with cars. It's as simple as that. We all need a little sacrifice on our part.

Cheaper public transport and more cycle routes for cyclists -- see Denmark.

Urbanization happens when the population becomes larger and the area expands. It is a natural process, even when cars are not invented. But now the overburdened cities with crowded populations and private cars are not quite a natural thing.

People rush into the big cities for more and better opportunities, for it is an 'in' thing, some sort of status, even the work they do is the lowest paid (especially true with Chinese people who attach great importance to their status).

Not only the individuals -- companies also prefer to chose large cities when they set their foot on a new territory, because there is greater purchase power.

So, traffic is only one factor contributing to the present situation. People are more aware about their privacy, due to which, private things like villas and cars are invented and enjoyed.

Increase the price of petrol.

I looked at every comment here, and I definitely agree many of the comments, but not all.

The problem with us is that we tend to see problems only on the surface. What we should do is to dig deeper into the problem -- why are city thoroughfares so congested?

Firstly, I think it is because cities are magnets for middle-class people who can afford "wheels." They tend to show their new status by having cars. And living in the cities is an "in" thing. Second, cities attract people looking for more lucrative jobs, especially fresh graduates.

When these people go to the cities, they do not only buy cars -- they also transmit a signal to others in society, like businesses, to operate there also because there are more customers to buy their products. This leads to additional "wheels" moving into the city - delivery trucks, cargo carriers, buses, taxis, etc.

I have an idea to provide affordable housing in the inner city as well as having businesses in the inner city.

Here in San Diego, public transportation is a joke. We have a trolley but its main purpose is to take you from shopping mall to shopping mall and you have to drive or take a bus to get to the trolley station. Utterly useless.

Call this an over-generalization if you will, but people are selfish. No one wants to share a bus with 30 people when they can drive around in their SUVs while talking on their cellphone.

Our sense of community and patience is eroded to the point of extinction. Plan cities with good public transportation, close shops (and I don't mean Starbucks) that provide basic needed services, and affordable housing. Also build up not out -- yes tall buildings are blight but they are a necessity. And a better one then urban sprawl.

I don't really know how we can completely stop this problem. But one way we can surely improve on the severity of the situation is reduce the size of our vehicles -- for example, the oversized, lifted 4x4 trucks that drive on public highways and roads.

The size of these trucks is uncalled for. There is no reasonable need for a truck that size to be on city roads. Not only are trucks oversized, but SUVs like the Tahoe or the Yukon are also way too big. They not only take up too much space but they are a threat to people driving and/or walking around them.

People buy these vehicles to paint an image of themselves to portray to the public. They believe they look or feel powerful driving this huge mass of oil and metal. THERE IS NO PRACTICAL USE TO DRIVE A HUGE 4X4 TRUCK ON HIGHWAYS AND COMMERCIAL/RESIDENTIAL STREETS!

These vehicles waste our gasoline reserves, take up space, and pose a threat to those around them. So society I ask you why? Why do we continue to develop as a society in a direction that is so obviously inconsiderate, dangerous, and environmentally harmful?

One reason why people use car is that people find it easier and more comfortable to ride in their own cars. So, people buy cars and they choke cities.

The idea here which I am presenting is that people will always want to buy cars as long as there exists a threat of their convenience and comfort. So, a probable solution is to improve the kind of facilities that are already present in order to attract people onto the facilities, in turn meaning people would no buy cars.

In economics, if people are satisfied then they will not spend more just to be satisfied.

How do we stop cars from choking cities? By providing adequate, convenient, affordable and safe public transportation 24x7x365.

I live in Miami and used to live in Merida, Venezuela. Coming from such a small city to such a large one has allowed me to apreciate some key things.

The public transportation in Miami is terrible and I partially blame it on the fact that it is operated by the county. Back in Venezuela, public transportation was mainly private and to move aorund the city was no problem.

My suggesiton is let transportation be private but with goverment checks to ensure that no price gouging exists.

Cars are choking our cities because they can ... and must.

Fewer people live in the center of cities that they work in, and they commute in cars because the infrastructure is built that way. It's easy to commute to work by car -- it's difficult to commute by public transportation. Fuel taxes support roads, nothing supports public transportation.

Suburbs are too attractive with respect to cities. The air is better, the schools are better, the stores are better.

Cities are not only social structures, but they are physical structures. In addition to keeping the social area intact, we should also encourage people to interact with their environment.

When it takes you eight minutes to do something that might take 30, you don't see as much. You don't have to interact as much.

Same can be said when comparing cars and walking. Walking allows you to understand the city much better than driving. But perhaps driving might help you to understand the city better than a subway. Just a thought.

Simple.... Don't let conditions get so bad that people are forced to migrate into the cities. Provide them with the opportunities in the villages and they will surely not want to come to the cities. Provide them with a better standard of living and they won't overcrowd the cities.

I have read the comment of Saba from Pakistan. I beg to disagree.

Let me put it this way -- providing villages with opportunities will make villages turn into cities in time. So, it is really not a solution for choking cities, it simply serves as an anti-catalyst to the present problem.

The very reason is to have an efficient facilities that will lessen the usage of personal cars. Why build an auto for four persons than a bus for 50 persons? Think! (The exclamation mark serves as a challenge not an insult.)

Simply put, let's stop making affordable, desirable housing available only outside urban limits. We can't solve the problem without correcting the actions that create it -- here are the three key challenges:

First, homebuilders are allowed to continue to build communities on the fringes of urban areas because land is inexpensive, restrictions are limited, there is at least one major freeway nearby and first-time home buyers are easy to attract.

Therein lies the problem -- roadways, shopping centers and public transportation are not convenient to these fringe communities which forces residents to drive everywhere, including the cities.

So rather than living near conveniences and employment (where real estate is at a premium and conveniences can be reached by foot or mass transit), many people make the choice to live miles away in order to afford a home or enjoy a more peaceful, less polluted atmosphere.

Second, you can't tempt people to leave their cars behind and rely on mass transportation if the transportation isn't reliable, convenient, safe, easy to use, and affordable.

Third, infrastructure and mass transit always seems to be an afterthought to addressing traffic congestion, following the development of communities housing thousands of families.

Integrated transport and land-use policy that focuses on quantifiably reducing transport energy requirements is needed.

Here is an abstract of a possible solution: transport energy resources are largely finite, subject to constraints and a major cause of pollution.

Transport-energy planning is not currently included in traditional transport and urban planning. However, transport energy is related to both land use and transport systems, therefore transport-energy policy has the ability to positively influence urban design.

A new tool has been created, the Transport Energy Specification, which is intended for use within existing local government urban planning frameworks.

In order to use this tool, a transport-energy limit is first defined by planning authorities that sets a quantifiable design boundary for urban and transport system development.

The Transport Energy Specification is then used to ensure development occurs within the defined design boundary.

A case study was performed to demonstrate the required process to achieve a Transport Energy Specification for an urban region.

Karlsruhe, Germany was selected for the case study and the results showed that a minimal 0.97MJ of transport energy per person per week was required, the equivalent energy a 60W light bulb uses in four and a half hours.

This was largely due to: high residential density, many activities located within the residential area and the ease and safety of active transport (cycling and walking).

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