Car-Free Cities may be pretty damn hard to pull off in North America, but there's no doubt that -- for a whole slew of environmental, societal and financial reasons -- getting people out of their cars, where it's realistic to do so, is the best of all transportation plans.

One tool that makes it more realistic is a well-designed parking tax. Vancouver is looking to implement what looks like a pretty good one. The tax would apply to nonresidential parking stalls and run about $28 Canadian per year, with the revenues going to transit and transportation infrastructure.