131–140 of 325 posts
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Even if you ban regular cars you're still gonna have to deal with commercial/emergency vehicles (ambulances, moving vans, delivery trucks for local businesses.
Of which there are orders of magnitude fewer, though.
A city like Manhattan would not make it without taxis
The American worldview on (the necessity of) cars is going to be hard to shift, but boy oh boy would it change your country for the better. Sincerely, A European.
When you go to the US you will see that apart from very dense city centers there are a lot of people living pretty far away from the next town with nothing in between. There is no practical way, right now, to live without a car if you are in such a situation.
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When has building more roads for cars ever resulted in fixing traffic. The solution isn't to try and make the city more car friendly, it's to remove the cars entirely. Move to streetcars, subways, trains, busses, anything that moves crowds of people rather than 1-5 people. Cars are such an incredibly inefficient model for moving people around in dense areas -- every person gets their own engine, several chairs, stora…
> why would I need to own a car if public transit served my every need and I could take a zipcar/car2go/taxi for those rare, rare cases when I needed my own vehicle? Many kids growing up in NYC rarely get to leave the city. They don't get to go upstate, see real nature and open spaces, go camping, hike a big mountain, swim in a natural lake, or experience the things that a large city cannot offer. Many never get a dr…
Is it really faster to drive a rental car from NYC than to take a train out, especially on a Friday evening?
Also, one reasonable approach to this particular problem is to permit cars on West Side Highway and FDR Drive but not otherwise in Manhattan. You can go around the city core but not through it.
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The Velove Armadillo is a containerised last mile delivery cargo bicycle especially appropriate for dense city centers. Its use is being expanded in Germany and the Netherlands, by DHL, the big German carrier. https://www.velove.se/news/dhl-express-taking-the-next-step-...
This is certainly a nice idea. But this is only usable for transporting smaller goods in small or medium amounts. This would not suffice to stock a busy grocery store, for example.
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Latent demand does exist (not "induced", it was always there!) but it isn't infinite. There's a point where you could actually have enough supply. They just don't want to spend that much money and knock down that many buildings (give up Manhattan's density), so they say it wouldn't work.
Demand is only limited by travel time. The amount of traffic will rise to the maximum amount of time people are willing to endure reaching their destination.
Banning cars, congestion pricing, Uber and taxi surchages, taxing parking spots and rental cars ... under the current NYC political consensus, personal motor vehicles are in the cross-hairs. I actually would support this if it was part of an honest effort to improve transportation and livability in the city, but most of these proposals make it harder to live here, not easier. I suspect the real motivation is a mix of…
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You could use "electric mobility scooter"; In Netherlands they are widely available for people with the need. https://www.google.com/search?q=electric+mobility+scooter+di...
I saw these all the time when I lived in Copenhagen as well. NYC needs to make its subway be more accessible for this to be a proper solution, though. In Copenhagen it's easy to take your scooter on the Metro or S-Train for longer distances, and then drive in the bike-lane network for shorter distances. But many NYC subway stations are ancient and don't have accessible entrances, so you can't get a mobility scooter f…
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What does someone do if they twist their ankle badly and are on crutches for a month?
What everyone who has done this and does not have a car does. Why do people pretend there are situations they can't live without a car, when most people in the world do it, and even a lot of people in your city do it.
The thing that I like about this particular change they implemented in manhattan is that it notably increases the bus-accessibility of the city. But if we’re widening the conversation to “just ban cars”, we really should look at what impact that would have on plumbers, drummers, and the elderly.
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Your legs also solve the first and last mile problem.
Most of the comments mentioned very good reasons were legs were an unsuitable solution - carrying art, cameras or other equipment. All of this produces economic value and cannot realistically be carried 5 blocks. If you are an able bodied 20-something then public transport already solves the transport of your body. But it's not just for transporting an adult - it's for children, economics and more
My Dad used to carry a bushel basket of corn on his shoulder, from the bin to the troughs in the barnyard, with no apparent effort.