45 years ago, a row of houses was demolished in Bauska to turn a town street into a section of the Vilnius–Tallinn highway. This summer, the highway will be narrowed back into a street, with the warning that on weekends it will be declared a courtyard and closed to traffic.

At the time, the demolition of Bauska’s old town was forced upon the town by the Soviet state. It cannot be called deliberate malice, because fifty years ago people all over the world were convinced that wide streets were better than narrow streets, just as wide roads were considered better than narrow ones. It was believed that not only drivers, but also townspeople would benefit from increasing the speed of traffic. The faster cars drove, the sooner they would leave, no longer bothering those living or walking along the sides of the street with engine noise, vibrations, and exhaust fumes. Such views were difficult to change even after the restoration of independence in the Baltic states, when the increase in the number of cars reached a symbolic level where the highway was honoured with the title “Via Baltica”. It became increasingly apparent that the number of cars was growing faster than the ability to accelerate traffic by any means to truly create breaks in the flow, where one batch of drivers had passed and the next had not yet arrived. On the contrary, the ability to drive faster increased the volume of drivers and closed traffic gaps faster than they could open. (...)