I live in a suburb of Seattle, I haven’t owned a car for about two years. It used to be owning a car was liberating, but now I think the day I sold my car was one of the most liberating days of my life.
Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality
41–50 of 619 posts
Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality
#42Can't come soon enough.
Cars within dense cities are a cancer.
Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality
#43On vacation in Rome this summer, there is so much foot traffic on the major streets there is often no room for cars, and they need to inch forward until the people in front of them notice them and move out of the way.
Seemed like almost all the cars were taxis, too.
So navigating the city with a personal car seemed completely impractical.
Same with Florence and Cinque Terre.
Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality
#44I wish the UK was a little more forward thinking when it comes to small electric mobility devices but they actively fine you here for using them on public roads and cycle lanes.
Imagine that people have been riding electric scooters for a hundred years and along comes some new technology, a diesel van. It can transport all the things we buy online to our doors and would be beneficial to society. The problem is that there have been a few fatal accidents between vans and scooters. One of the van drivers was a celebrity. The scooter drivers die, no one else gets hurt. The government decides to ban the new vans because they are too dangerous to OTHER people. There is a big uproar and people would rather scooters be banned instead because that solves the problem too (well, except for bicycles and... people).
Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality
#45I'm glad this works for the people who live there and makes them happy. As for myself, I refuse to live in any city dense enough to even have a public transportation system.
Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know how it is in the USA but in France (and I suspect most old European cities) the richer people who can afford to live in the city center are generally in favor of removing cars because they either don't have a car or can afford to pay for a private parking spot while people who live in the suburbs and take their cars to work every day have to suffer the consequences. So you end up with this "class warfare…
This is exactly how it is in the USA too, for about the past 20ish years now. Wealthy people have largely eliminated poor/middle class people out of the core urban areas, and moved them mostly to the suburbs/exurbs. Then, wealthy people tear down the functional public transportation between the urban city and the rest of the metro (mostly roads and freeways), and replace them with pretty but function-less "public tra…
Then, wealthy people tear down the functional public transportation between the urban city and the rest of the metro (mostly roads and freeways), and replace them with pretty but function-less "public transit" (mostly buses in the midwest).
I don't understand... you are saying they replace roads and freeways and replace them with buses?
That's like replacing a glass with water. It makes no sense.
Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality
#47EU has the advantage that most of its small and old cities are very dense. I think it makes a lot of sense to start removing cars from their city centers. Cars are not particularly efficient or convenient anyway in narrow streets. That being said I really wonder why Amsterdam still allows cars to drive in its rings.
It's not just the narrowness of the streets: they're also short and not on a grid. They're not designed for throughput, which really amplifies the benefits of a subway/metro vs. buses/trams.
> It's not just the narrowness of the streets: they're also short and not on a grid.
The US suburbs with their hierarchical residential < collector < highway system were designed for cars, however most networks in the US city centers were designed before the invention of the car.
Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality
#48Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality
#49Its amazing to me how cheap these changes are, and how much people love them after they are implemented. You go to a neighborhood meeting in the US and all you hear about is "loss of parking", "traffic", but when you remove the cars, everyone loves it.
I never knew loss of parking was even a thing in the US. I can't imagine it being as bad as within European cities where most of the streets (and adjacent buildings) have been built before cars were a thing. Probably one of the main reasons why alternatives to cars are well-received is that cars have never been an option anyways, especially in historic districts. Big cars are another dimension of this problem. Americ…
See 35th Ave NE in Seattle.
Re: Europe is edging towards making post-car cities a reality
#50A thought in the back of my mind is fear of government oppression in a world without prevalent cars.
If you have a car you can travel hundreds of miles with few limitations and it's particularly hard to quash this even in an oppressive state.
If you only have your feet and public transit you are very limited to distance and location and tracking movements is an easy feature of the system. Things going wrong? The government can shut down the trains at whim.
A car grants a whole lot of freedom that many progressive people are really excited to give away.