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It's time to ban cars from Manhattan?

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Re: It's time to ban cars from Manhattan?

#161

Post by JshWright »

davidmr wrote: post #156
izacus wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My home city (capital of the country) did exactly that and it brought a huge amount of life and new businesses to the city center. Not to mention that tourism exploded as well - the city center is now a very pleasant place to go out and grab a coffee next to a river or on a street with no loud and smelly traffic to be seen (picture during summer: https://files.stocky.ai/uploads/2019/01/image-Preseren-squar... ) Of co…

Just for my own curiosity, since I don’t recognize the city from the photo, where is it? I’m wondering how it compares in size (both area and population) to Manhattan.

The URL gives you a hint...

Preseren-square-Ljubljana-capital-of-Slovenia

Re: It's time to ban cars from Manhattan?

#162

Post by maxsilver »

chrstphrknwtn wrote: post #10
HenryKissinger wrote: post #2

Unfortunately, New York City was built at a time when people rode horses, and its streets reflect that. And you can't just widen a street, certainly not in a city like NYC. You would have to destroy every building on one side of a street, and build new buildings, all for a gain of a few feet. Large megapolises like NYC need to start exploring the concept of 3D streets. Instead of having a single street level, on the…

Rem Koolhaus calls this thinking the “culture of congestion” in his 1978 book “Delirious New York”. It’s fascinating, and these ideas have all been explored before. Have multi-level streets ever worked?

> Have multi-level streets ever worked?

They work well everywhere they've ever been built. Chicago is probably the most well known example.

Re: It's time to ban cars from Manhattan?

#163

Post by grepthisab »

Yes, it is time to ban personal transport vehicles from Manhattan. Leave buses and delivery vehicles since everything is stocked by them, and work vehicles like police perhaps. The problem is this will never get implemented on any non geologic timescale. We need a clear vision like this, but also a non-racist version of Robert Moses to just make it all happen.

Re: It's time to ban cars from Manhattan?

#164

Post by izacus »

davidmr wrote: post #156
izacus wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My home city (capital of the country) did exactly that and it brought a huge amount of life and new businesses to the city center. Not to mention that tourism exploded as well - the city center is now a very pleasant place to go out and grab a coffee next to a river or on a street with no loud and smelly traffic to be seen (picture during summer: https://files.stocky.ai/uploads/2019/01/image-Preseren-squar... ) Of co…

Just for my own curiosity, since I don’t recognize the city from the photo, where is it? I’m wondering how it compares in size (both area and population) to Manhattan.

It doesn't and the closed-off area is relatively small. And yet the benefits are very clear - there's pretty much no reason why you can't create several such closed off areas in Manhattan and leave traffic/public transport flowing between them.

This pattern has started showing up in several European capitals these years - I know for certain of Vienna, Berlin, Zurich, London and I've seen some in Barcelona as well.

It doesn't have to be 100% closure obviously and it doesn't have to be a dumb implementation that just closes off full traffic to an area with 1.7mil people without addressing major downsides. There IS a place for nuance in this world ;)

Re: It's time to ban cars from Manhattan?

#165

Post by izacus »

emidln wrote: post #153
izacus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? Aren't people capable of walking for a few blocks?

Not all people.

Sure, but in my city that was supplemented by (free) electric vehicles for people who can't walk. Why isn't that possible in rich US hosting companies like Uber and Lyft? Aren't they capable of providing zero EV transport in closed enclaves?

Re: It's time to ban cars from Manhattan?

#166

Post by PeterStuer »

izacus wrote: post #146
acd wrote: post #52

I think cars should be banned from most densely populated city centers in general. There is a word describing it "Pedestrianization" Reasoning: Cars pollute the air which makes the people living and walking in the city centers sick. Cars pollute with noise. Cars cause pedestrian and bicycle accidents. Its nice for peoples health to be able to walk and run in open areas. Streets which previously was used by cars can b…

My home city (capital of the country) did exactly that and it brought a huge amount of life and new businesses to the city center. Not to mention that tourism exploded as well - the city center is now a very pleasant place to go out and grab a coffee next to a river or on a street with no loud and smelly traffic to be seen (picture during summer: https://files.stocky.ai/uploads/2019/01/image-Preseren-squar... ) Of co…

It is exactly the same story each and every time. The same old objections, the same old fears and the same old success.

You would have thought by now the pattern was well recognized and we could skip the middle part, but no, it seems like we have to go through the same ride over and over again.

Re: It's time to ban cars from Manhattan?

#168

Post by CydeWeys »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #154
izacus wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My home city (capital of the country) did exactly that and it brought a huge amount of life and new businesses to the city center. Not to mention that tourism exploded as well - the city center is now a very pleasant place to go out and grab a coffee next to a river or on a street with no loud and smelly traffic to be seen (picture during summer: https://files.stocky.ai/uploads/2019/01/image-Preseren-squar... ) Of co…

Unfortunately in the US most of the major cities have essentially been designed (or redesigned) around private vehicles, so banning them is not going to happen. However you are absolutely correct - walking through Times Square in NYC is a pleasure (aside from all the guys in Batman costumes) with traffic removed compared to turn of the millennia. I don’t care to bike but the bike lanes squeezing out all the auto traf…

The most recent part of Manhattan to be designed was still over two centuries ago in 1811, so we're not going to have that problem at least.

But I think you're over-estimating how hard it would be to get rid of traffic in many other urban cores in the US. You don't need to do the entire city; you can just do the densest parts. It's not that hard to beef up a city's existing bus services and use them to totally replace cars.

Re: It's time to ban cars from Manhattan?

#169

Post by brownbat »

melling wrote: post #141
geofft wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in Manhattan and live in Brooklyn, and my office overlooks the Holland Tunnel (connection to New Jersey). Roads are a backlogged mess every evening, where "evening" on Friday seems to start at noon. Traffic cops are in a half-dozen intersections around the Holland Tunnel entrance manually restricting flow and more importantly rerouting cars to keep all the possible entrance routes roughly balanced. The vast ma…

We need a lot more subways. And they need to extend into NJ. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_Subway_Extension

And more of them should be accessible by wheelchair. Currently it's only around one in five stations.

Re: It's time to ban cars from Manhattan?

#170

Post by CydeWeys »

throwaway122378 wrote: post #131
kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of which there are orders of magnitude fewer, though.

Throw in taxis, Uber, lyft and you have all your cars again. A city like Manhattan would not make it without taxis

No, you definitely don't have exceptions for taxis.

Why are you saying that we wouldn't survive without taxis?? I almost never take them except to the airport, and I'm easily willing to give that up if it means I don't have to tangle with horrible congested car traffic on a daily basis.

Do you live in Manhattan? What makes you so sure we couldn't survive without taxis, given that we have the densest subway network in the United States, even more bus lines than that, and Citibike?

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