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Oslo made its city center basically car-free

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251–260 of 505 posts

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like the cable car?

Just a modern one. I know cable cars are a tourist attraction in SF, but even the ones on Market are like 50 years (seriously) behind what you can see in Europe.

Ive often thought how neat it would be to have a pirate cable car which was capable of putting a clamp down on the cable and moving along, releasing when it needed to move about like a normal car.

Source: actually born in san francisco and have thought this since the 80s

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#252
post #58

I want this so bad. My hatred for the automobile grows every day. The cost, the noise, the time wasted in traffic, the pollution, the ridiculous space wasted on parking. When you really add up the costs, both individual and to society, it’s absolutely insane. I wish the cost of gasoline was high enough to internalize all the costs and change behavior. Like really high. A dollar a mile. We are slaves to the automobile…

I'm amazed that so many people who consider themselves inclusive in their thoughts don't realize how exclusionary anti-automobile policies are. As someone who suffers from mild arthritis, the trip to the back of a Wal-Mart can be painful for me, and a walk or bike ride across a city block absolutely foreboding. On the bad days, even standing in line at a checkout for an extended period of time can send my knees and h…

The first thing you should realize is that pedestrianized spaces are really nice for traveling in a wheelchair or mobility scooter. The second thing is that there are cars available in Europe, called Cantas, that are conventional gasoline ICE cars with purposely shrunk engine displacement. You'd never take one of those on the highway, but the underpowered engines make them safe (and legal) to take on any sidewalk or bike path.

All in all, a car free space can be far better for the disabled than what we have right now.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#253
The problem is really not cars, but (if any) the way they have to be built. You could easily fit 4 people in a 400kilo vehicle on 2,5m length and move them safely at speeds of up to 100km/h. But crash regulations are so strict and the buildable types of cars so restricted that we all have to have the heavy, expensive, has driven cars that we now have.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#254
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holland is flat and the winters are mild. Try getting a cargo bike up a 200 climb in minus temperatures. It is not something I do every day.

Electric bikes are getting more and more popular here in Norway (and we got hills and cold weather). Studded tires and an electric motor doing most of the work helps.

I know no one commuting on an electric bike...

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#255
post #58

I want this so bad. My hatred for the automobile grows every day. The cost, the noise, the time wasted in traffic, the pollution, the ridiculous space wasted on parking. When you really add up the costs, both individual and to society, it’s absolutely insane. I wish the cost of gasoline was high enough to internalize all the costs and change behavior. Like really high. A dollar a mile. We are slaves to the automobile…

I'm amazed that so many people who consider themselves inclusive in their thoughts don't realize how exclusionary anti-automobile policies are. As someone who suffers from mild arthritis, the trip to the back of a Wal-Mart can be painful for me, and a walk or bike ride across a city block absolutely foreboding. On the bad days, even standing in line at a checkout for an extended period of time can send my knees and h…

Do you need a two tonne steel box, or could you make due with an electric wheelchair?

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#256

>...as in other cities that have converted some streets to pedestrian-only areas... These "pedestrian-only" zones certainly aren't unique to Oslo. See Drottninggatan[0] in Stockholm, Grafton[1] in Dublin, Strøget[2] in Köpenhamn (Copenhagen), Kärntner Strasse[3] in Vienna, ad infinitum... I'm nonplussed that this is in any way news-worthy; however, it seems to be an American website, so maybe that's why? [0] - https:…

Isn’t part of the interest here that Oslo made a shift, rather than always having had it this way? This is starting to catch hold in cities of all sizes in the USA, too. Usually a couple roads in an already somewhat-popular commercial district will be shut down, either certain days or all the time, and many cities are seeing noticeable impacts on economic activity.

> Isn’t part of the interest here that Oslo made a shift, rather than always having had it this way?

Copenhagen made the shift in 1962. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Str%C3%B8get

Interestingly, many local merchants opposed the shift in fear of losing customers. But then soon saw how the pedestrianized street started to boast more shoppers to their stores.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, but the reasons more people don't use motorcycles are 1. They're harder to drive. 2. They're more dangerous for the driver. 3. They're uncomfortable in rainy weather. (And even more dangerous during icy weather.)

> 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 h…

> There are some ways in which they're slightly more difficult (e.g., a manual transmission)

Note the vanishingly small number of manual transmission cars on the market.

> IMO this is a tragedy of the commons

Yes it is.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#258
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm amazed that so many people who consider themselves inclusive in their thoughts don't realize how exclusionary anti-automobile policies are. As someone who suffers from mild arthritis, the trip to the back of a Wal-Mart can be painful for me, and a walk or bike ride across a city block absolutely foreboding. On the bad days, even standing in line at a checkout for an extended period of time can send my knees and h…

I broke my foot and ankle in several places in a rock climbing accident 1.5 years ago, and was put in a similar place to you (unable to stand for more than 20 minutes, unable to walk more than a few hundred yards, etc). This was a huge lifestyle impact to me -- before the injury, if it was less than a 30 minute walk, I almost always walked. If I wasn't in a hurry, up to 60 minutes. What helped me a lot was getting an…

Similar experience: I broke my leg, while I happened to be living both with a car, and in a building with underground parking.

This really made staying independent possible, for the months it took before I could walk properly. Sure it was slower to drive to the supermarket & park underground there, instead of walking... but much quicker than waiting for someone else to have time to help.

I agree that solutions other than a traditional car would be possible. But right now, thinking through other places I've lived fine without a car, they would all have been hell.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important to recognize, though, that in many cases, heavy road users' road use is subsidized by lighter road users. Roads are expensive both in terms of construction/maintenance and land use, they're mostly not paid for by user fees anymore (gas taxes cover a relatively small share, and same for tolls), and many people benefiting from these subsidies are doing so for lifestyle choice reasons and not out…

Actually, I'm going to argue for just the opposite: Let users of cars pay for the infrastructure they use (through gas and plate taxes), let users of public transit pay for the services and infrastructure they use (through ridership fees). Right now, public transit is heavily subsidized by income taxes and use taxes for cars (at least in my area). I think that if all transit users were forced to pay for their share o…

Everyone at this point is subsidized by general tax revenue; neither transit nor roads pay for themselves, so I'm not sure it makes sense to say one of them is subsidizing the other one. It may be true according to some ways of accounting that transit is more heavily subsidized than driving, depending on the specific transit mode, but if you actually charged rail users what it costs to run a rail system, many fewer people (as you say) would ride the train, and they just wouldn't fit on the roads in major dense metros because cars are so space-inefficient, so you'd need to build way more roads, probably seizing currently-not-road space by eminent domain, and you'd want to account for the loss of economic activity that came out of tearing down a bunch of buildings to replace them with highway. All of which is to say, I'm skeptical that an actual user-pays model would save drivers money over transit riders, at least in dense, transit-heavy cities.

Another way to think about it: you can view drivers paying for transit as a subsidy, but you can also view it as paying for decreased traffic, from which they directly benefit.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#260

I want this so bad. My hatred for the automobile grows every day. The cost, the noise, the time wasted in traffic, the pollution, the ridiculous space wasted on parking. When you really add up the costs, both individual and to society, it’s absolutely insane. I wish the cost of gasoline was high enough to internalize all the costs and change behavior. Like really high. A dollar a mile. We are slaves to the automobile…

as a multimodal traveler, i generally agree with most of the changes that oslo implemented, but let's not make cars villians. fast personal, point-to-point, at-hand, energy-dense transporation is great! and so is having grass and trees with kids and dogs playing. but there's no need to pit them against each other. so besides leaving some low capacity, slow roads above ground, let's put a few high capacity, fast roads…

> but let's not make cars villians.

"Over half of all vehicle trips are between 1 and 10 miles." [1]

~35,000 people die on American roads each year. [2]

Let's call a spade a spade. Cars are the villains. The over-reliance on your fast, personal, point-to-point convenience is killing too many people.

[1] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/pubs/pl08021/fig4...

[2] https://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx

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