Cars are a highly inefficient mode of urban transport with significant negative impacts. Electric
vehicles make it possible to eliminate direct CO2 emissions (though the total over a vehicle’s
entire life cycle greatly offsets the advantages) but leave unchanged – or even aggravate – all
the other negative effects on the quality of urban environments. Three visions for urban
transport were presented: automobility, multimodality and accessibility. The first dominates
North American cities, the second European one. The anomalies of these two visions have been
examined. The automobility cities cannot manage the congestion and the attempts are self-
defeating. The anomalies of multimodality city are related to the public space consumption for
mobility and the impossibility to plan spatial proximity. The sustainable vision, that resolve the
anomalies, is represented by the accessibility city in the Triple Access System (TAS) version
which, however, still has a long way to go to be accepted and implemented.