These past week I have been walking up the middle of the road just because I can. There have been no cars in suburban Auckland under Level 4 lockdown. Almost total silence to boot. Bliss.

I even took the bike out a few times on these empty streets. I tell you, it’s very surreal to cycle around a big city without missiles whooshing past.

We’ve now dropped down to Level 3 in kiwi-land, which means stuff-all your social life, just that more businesses can now open, including takeaways. That’s “take-out” or “to go” for some of you out there.

The roads have started to fill back up with cars.

In a country like this, with fairly terrible (though improving!) public transport, the return of cars won’t cause additional traffic problems because most people here are already car-for-life addicts.

But in places with real public transport, the worry is that everyone will switch to cars as Covid-19 restrictions ease to avoid getting infected on public transport.

Happily, lots of plans are underway to try to push people on to their bikes instead.

New York City is closing down streets near parks for biking, walking, and jogging only. New York of all places!

Milan is to transform 35 km of streets with walking and cycling zones over the summer. Here’s one of their plans:

Paris continues its war against cars by opening one of its most famous main roads—rue de Rivoli—to bikes, buses and taxis only.

It’s also looking at adding cycle paths to the roads that follow key metro lines in order to maintain “capacity” on those routes as fewer people head underground to brave the confined spaces and infamous sticky metro poles.

Other cities with cool initiatives include Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Vancouver, Oakland, Winnipeg, Denver, Calgary, Budapest, Berlin, Bogota, and Mexico city.

Bravo!