There certainly were some attempts to introduce more cars to the city centers in Europe, tram lines used to be closed etc. but thankfully a lot of streets were too narrow to handle an ever-increasing traffic so they just had to give up. Not to mention that a good network of public transport has already been there, so people have always been accustomed to it. Nowadays most of my friends here don't use their cars in the cities, because it's way faster to get everywhere by bus/subway/tram or even bike.