Oslo made its city center basically car-free

Anti-automobile policies need to be careful to accommodate the disabled but it's unfair to label them as "exclusionary" compared to the racist and classist history of automobile adoption and according public infrastructure support. From Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, America's most influential and prolific public planner and builder, The Power Broker:

“Underlying Moses' strikingly strict policing for cleanliness in his parks was, Frances Perkins realized with "shock," deep distaste for the public that was using them. "He doesn't love the people," she was to say. "It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people. . . . He'd denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. 'I'll get them! I'll teach them!'... [...]

Now he began taking measures to limit use of his parks. He had restricted the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families in the first place, by limiting access to the parks by rapid transit; he had vetoed the Long Island Rail Road's proposed construction of a branch spur to Jones Beach for this reason.

Now he began to limit access by buses; he instructed Shapiro to build the bridges across his new parkways low—too low for buses to pass. Bus trips therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouragingly long and arduous.

For Negroes, whom he considered inherently "dirty," there were further measures. Buses needed permits to enter state parks; buses chartered by Negro groups found it very difficult to obtain permits, particularly to Moses' beloved Jones Beach; most were shunted to parks many miles further out on Long Island. And even in these parks, buses carrying Negro groups were shunted to the furthest reaches of the parking areas.”

Also detailed in this book is destruction of poor and minority neighborhoods and communities by the common policy of appropriating their land for roads and highways. The lasting effects of these practices is plainly obvious in so many US cities and will not go away without active efforts to reverse the damage. In comparison, disabled-friendly infrastructure is frankly more easily solved.

I would honestly hope that this would facilitate a move to a more even distribution of businesses in neighborhoods. Perhaps making local deliveries cheaper and more feasible. Might make lighter transportation such as smaller, short range electric vehicles more of an option and cheaper as well.

> 1. They're harder to drive.

This is pretty subjective, but I disagree. There are some ways in which they're slightly more difficult (e.g., a manual transmission) but that's an incredibly minor additional challenge. On the other hand, on narrow city streets, they're often much easier to drive since your margins of error on either side of you are so much larger.

It's just a matter of what you're used to. Now when I hop into the driver's seat of a car I'm amazed at the extra cognitive load of having to pilot a vehicle ten times wider than myself where I can't see the sides or edges, where my vision is obstructed by the A-frame, and where I can't use aural cues to know what's happening around me. It's just different, not harder.

> 2. They're more dangerous for the driver.

Fair, but IMO this is a tragedy of the commons. For every car on the road that's replaced by a motorcycle, the road becomes net safer. This is the same situation with SUVs just in reverse: SUVs are often safer for the driver than a passenger car, but they make the road more dangerous for everyone else.

We should find way to disincentivize driving over other forms of transit like motorcycling, public transit, and cycling to help combat this.

> 3. They're uncomfortable in rainy weather. (And even more dangerous during icy weather.)

Honestly, they really aren't even slightly uncomfortable in rainy weather. Most motorcycle jackets will have a waterproof liner in them, helmets are intrinsically waterproof, many armored gloves are waterproof, you can buy a pair of overpants for like $20 that slip over whatever you're wearing in ten seconds and are totally waterproof.

The only thing that won't necessarily be waterproof are your shoes (unless you're ATGATT). But you can choose to wear boots on rainy days, or even if not, most shoes will hold up long enough to get to your destination (for common weather and distances in San Francisco, which GP was discussing).

FWIW I'm not arguing with your thesis that these things are often why people don't ride. It's true! I just think that these concerns are actually more overblown than people realize.

I don't think making the entire island of Manhattan car free is on the table, but there are certainly sections of Manhattan that could be made so that at this point are already de facto off limits to cars, like the narrow lanes of Lower Manhattan.

This article is complete bullshit.

Yes, there are some streets that are mostly free of cars during the day, but the surrounding streets are as busy as ever. Reducing parking spots and increasing bike lanes has not made a noticeable difference in the number of cars on the road, at least from a pedestrian standpoint.

I would love to see fewer cars in Olso, especially during days like today when they lowered the speed limit due to the weather causing increased pollution, but even with everything the current government has tried, it isn't making a real difference.