Oslo made its city center basically car-free • Hacker News Board

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#491

Post by frabbit » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 3:45 PM UTC

andys627 wrote: post #204

coding123 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol definitely agree that this thread is mostly filled with extremeness. I don't think people should be advocating the removal of all cars/vehicles on the planet until there is a reasonable way to replace their functions (how do people, goods and large-scale construction projects get around in in normal and emergency situations). Similarly I don't think providing specific car free zones in small 1 mile blocks is the…

Agree. We've really put all our eggs in one basket in the USA... you NEED a car to reasonably participate in most parts of society. Sure public transit or biking are options, but they are much less efficient than driving. This is the problem. We've spent 75 years building this way, now when we want to take small steps towards reversing that, the steps are widely misunderstood. In a sense we've been extremely car orie…

  > you NEED a car to reasonably participate
  > in most parts of society.

Not for most people. Unless they have a very severe mental or physical disability. Driving is much less efficient than biking and/or public transit in how I have planned my life.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#492

Post by point78 » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

danjayh wrote: post #58

themagician wrote: post #8

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…

As an American you just don't know anything else.

Do you think there are people with arthritis and disabilities in Europe?

So many city centres make cars a nightmare, but they are infinitely better places to live than the US.

Not to mention our healthcare but that's another thread...

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#493

Post by yardie » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

mLuby wrote: post #356

smsm42 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Borrowing handicap permit is already illegal, and AFAIR carries pretty hefty fine. Of course, enforcing it is hard - would you demand a spot physical endurance exam from everybody parking in a handicapped place? How would you even know? I used the temporary handicapped placard once for a while, when I broke my leg. When recovering, on some days, I could walk for a bit. On others, I could only walk with crutches and f…

It would be reasonable to spot-check driver's license (which they necessarily have for driving said vehicle). Should be easy enough to verify against the handicap permit.

Completely unreasonable as far as I am concerned. ID checks are done as part of safety checks: drunk driving, speed traps, etc. But they cannot be done without another violation occurring. And that’s more than enough government in my life.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#494

Post by themagician » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

tom-_- wrote: post #308

themagician wrote: post #8

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…

Hello fellow SF resident. Sounds like you have much experience walking our fair streets. Do you enjoy the strolls across our fecal matter smeared pavement, littered with heroine needles and adorned by snoozing outdoor denizens, who have been known to physically assault pedestrians from time to time?

Don’t have those problems where I live. Those are mostly isolated SOMA/Mission/Haight problems.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#495

Post by Fins » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 6:36 PM UTC

adrianN wrote: post #442

Fins wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how do you propose to relocate all of these people to live in that urban paradise of yours, where they walk to anything and everything? Are you even going to ask them if they want to? Not everybody wants to live in a big city and values the same conveniences as you do.

In the same way you relocated them out of cities when cars became common. Slowly and over an extended period of time.

It's a non-answer, and in any case these people never were relocated "out of" cities. They never lived there, and don't want to.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#496

Post by apendleton » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 6:52 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #427

apendleton wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both rail and bus are heavily subsidized -- buses come nowhere close to paying for either their operating or capital expenses with fare revenue. It is probably true that if you broke down the WMATA budget and looked at the degree of subsidy per passenger mile on rail vs. bus, you'd get a higher number for rail than bus, but it's tricky to do an apples-to-apples comparison because the rail figure will include the cost…

That might be a relevant point in some cities, mainly New York. But in the DC metro area, only a tiny fraction of commuters take rail to begin with, in part because Metro is geared to getting people in and out of DC while most jobs in the area are outside DC. I’ve always found it very odd that folks who work ordinary jobs in the suburbs subsidize the relatively high income professionals that work in DC and can afford…

> only a tiny fraction of commuters take rail to begin with

If you define "metro area" expansively, that's true, but rail mode share in the closer-in suburbs (Montgomery county, Arlington county) is decently high, and individual counties' contributions to WMATA's budget are commensurate with use. Not many people in Loudoun county use metro, but they also don't contribute very much, and nobody it Charles county does, but they don't contribute anything.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#497

Post by gotocake » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

pertymcpert wrote: post #449

gotocake wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re not living in the Bay Area, this is not a conversation this comes up very much. People tend to love their cars, and the freedom it gives them, and frankly that doesn’t seem to be changing outside of some cities which were built in medieval times and suit walking better. A lot of “every thinking person believes X” topics you find here simply don’t exist on any significant scale outside of this bubble. My poi…

Uh, this comes up quite a bit in Europe too. You say the Bay Area is a bubble and yet you seem trapped in it all the same.

I don’t live or work in CA, so that would be quite a feat for me wouldn’t it.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#498

Post by rootusrootus » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 8:32 PM UTC

karmelapple wrote: post #193

leesec wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever lived any where that's not a major city in the US? It is common here in Michigan to drive 20 miles to work.

re: driving a long ways in Michigan - absolutely! I’ve lived in many states where I drove plenty to get to work or school. Why have suburban areas, and cities in some places, been built with this kind of sprawl? Partially because there was no significant downside not to spread out. I’m curious if people actively enjoy driving 20 to 30 minutes, and what kind of policy or other changes or incentives could be introduced…

How many people actually manage sub-20 minute commutes using any method? Short of finding an apartment a couple blocks from where you work, that's tough. And then if you move jobs, you have to move apartments too, which is a pretty big hassle.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#499

Post by rootusrootus » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 8:36 PM UTC

Fins wrote: post #389

rootusrootus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the net effect, yes. Although honestly, $1/mile isn't that unfeasible for many people. Many people pay close to that already, so it wouldn't be like making 10x as expensive or something.

Must be nice living in that SV bubble. How about we make it income-tested, and charge everyone who supports that idea, say, $10/mile and up? Even if you want to go on a road trip in a rental. Or get your kid to a hospital. At least that would be fair to people who actually work for a living, need to get places, and can't afford to live near transit because it has all been bid up through the stratosphere by techbros w…

SV meaning Silicon Valley? Unless that bubble is a couple thousand miles across, then no, I'm not living in that bubble.

In your hypothetical world, I would support splitting everyone by ideology so that the people willing to pay for nice things go to one city and the people who want to mooch go to the other. Let them each go their own way. We'd all be happier.

Re: Oslo made its city center basically car-free

#500

Post by aembleton » Sat, Jan 26, 2019, 8:40 PM UTC

elcomet wrote: post #355

danjayh wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can one of the people downvoting this into oblivion please explain? If a midsized city with little congestion could provide subsidized point-to-point transit for those who need it at a comparable cost to operating a bus system, what is the possible downside? This would be hugely beneficial to the people actually using the service, since they get all the time back that would have otherwise been spent waiting on transi…

Don't you think this is relying a bit too much on private corporation like Uber and Lyft? What if they shut down, or leave the city? How long would it take to reorganize public transport? Also, uber and Lyft would get to decide the prices, that could cost much more to the city. I think a public transport has to be public , ie publicly owned.

Why does it have to be publicly owned? For example, all of London buses are privately owned, but the bus companies are contracted to operate routes and the city sets the fares, colour scheme etc so that they all look the same.