simplesleeper
Independent and second hand shops have really benefitted from these events and they usually offer discounts and gift bags for crawlers
I have worked in transport for over 5 years in software and have read most of the technical books in the internal London Underground library. I generally have read >50 technical books a year.
In my blog I collect and distill what I have learnt. I write about transport, software development and things I feel others should know.
Frankly, cars are the most efficient means for individuals to travel - they may result in poor traffic flow on some single links, but otherwise they have huge benefits.
It is also worth noting that banning cars will affect the poor the most negatively. While poor people use cars less as a percentage of their population (about 9/10 the percentage of the amount that the rich use them), there are far more of them. Poor people are often the ones who have to manage multiple cases - a family and a job, a few jobs etc and often are unable to love near their workplace, or to find a (decent) job near their suburban homes. All of this means that the value of a car is much higher for them, as it can be the means for them to manage their more complex life scenarios efficiently (see "Disrupting Mobility" for more details - it's a great book)
2. Sadiq Khan has already tried to Pedestrianise Oxford Street, but was blocked by parliament.
3. There are cycle lanes and cycle highways and there is a lot of development in the cycle space - and will no doubt be continued. Bus lanes and schemes to improve buses are constantly being tried, but their uptake is low, meaning that it is difficult to increase the service, as they are not very profitable
In London, we have been collaborating with google waze - we provide them with information at the local level. Streets that waze should not use for route finding (e.g. roads with schools) can be blocked for use by Waze. Both local councils and TfL can provide this data.
The main difference between Waze and Google Maps is that Waze uses real time traffic data. There are multiple map providers that do this in London. There is a plan to provide different data to different TfL data consumers in the future to try and get map providers to seperate traffic across roads (at the cost of surrendering absolute truth).
London is also host to discussions of taxing roads - this is unsurprising when the roads are mostly paid for by the cost of the London Underground (LU makes the majority of public transport money, but 80% of revenue goes into road, traffic and bus management). The London Assembly (who supposedly keep the London mayor accountable) have written a paper "London Stalling" to suggest road taxing related to mileage across London. This, they no doubt expect, will cut down the traffic. However, from my understanding of embellished models of Braess' paradox, this will only result in similar traffic (on maybe slightly different roads) with an optimum equilibrium between how good a route is and what the cost of it is - meaning people may just take longer to commute and pay more tax.
https://www.ccpress.pl/produkt/Dowody_ontologiczne._W_900._r...
It has multiple formalisations of both Anselm's and Gaunilo's arguments, and critiques of each approach