It's time to ban cars from Manhattan? • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by wefarrell » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 3:39 PM UTC

speedplane wrote: post #48

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…

The idea that they’re banning cars for environmentalist reasons is a straw man argument.

Compared to all other forms of transportation in the city, cars transport the smallest number of people and take up a lot of space. Removing cars would free up space for other means of transportation that transport more people and use less space, such as buses, bikes, scooters, etc...

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

#242

Post by dan_mctree » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 3:42 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #69

maelito wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they want to ban cars due to effects on the environment, they should say that maybe promote electric vehicles. Electric vehicules are usually better than thermal ones, but they're still a big carbon emitter. Except if they're shared. No individual vehicule heavier than 50kg can be considered good in terms of climate impact.

>>Electric vehicules are usually better than thermal ones, but they're still a big carbon emitter My argument here is always that even if all electricity was produced from coal power plants(it isn't) surely it's much better to have one big carbon emitter far outside of the city, than thousands of smaller carbon emitters in the middle of the city. Yes, it is just externalising the emissions, but I think it's important…

That would make sense if all things are equal, but there are efficiency issues here. Having to take the extra step to convert the fossil fuels into electricity first (plus the later battery storage) means the same fossil fuels don't deliver as much power to the vehicles. That said, it's probably a wise move to move to electricity powered vehicles anyway because of the slow shift to reusables.

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

#243

Post by jccooper » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

brownbat wrote: post #169

melling wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Any new ones would be. The inaccessible ones are all old... as is most of the subway system.

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

#244

Post by rocgf » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

randallsquared wrote: post #200

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately you get to a point where no-one _does_ have to drive in a city, yet still people do. Oxford (UK) is a case in point. There are park-and-rides at every entrance to the city, good bus and train services, and conversely, awful congestion and exorbitant car parking costs. Yet I still know people from my town (15 miles outside) who choose to drive into Oxford even though there's an express train that takes u…

> Eventually you can't offer any more carrots and you have to start using a stick. At least you're open that you want to force them to do what you prefer, instead of what's best for them. Most people who want to force their preferences on others are not so clear-eyed.

And at least you're open that you care little about anything else apart from your personal comfort. All the externalities associated with you driving while having perfectly good alternatives should be suffered by the rest of us.

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

#245

Post by jacques_chester » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 3:55 PM UTC

PeterStuer wrote: post #166

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…

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.

All politics is local. Nobody ever believes that experiences elsewhere apply to their polity, which is different and special.

Having lived in a few places I've seen it again and again.

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

#246

Post by CydeWeys » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 4:00 PM UTC

Pxtl wrote: post #224

CydeWeys wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 replac…

There are many old, great US cities that have been converted from dense, manhattan-like landscape into 90% parking lots. https://mobile.twitter.com/Pxtl/status/1180325377996201985

I've seen this image before (and many more like it), and it's truly sad what we've done to our cities.

But the good thing is, parking lots are huge opportunities for developers. I'm from DC, and the city has radically developed itself over the past few decades in turning what used to be entire blocks of surface parking lots into massive apartment and office buildings up to ten floors tall. It's very easy to develop a parking lot; that land tends to be relatively cheap to acquire and demolition costs basically nothing.

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

#247

Post by jacques_chester » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

ravitation wrote: post #239

delfinom wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do not mix subway with rail. NYC has a subway system, it more or less functions independent from NYC's rail network. NYC's rail network covers 4 boroughs and goes all the way to the end of Long Island. They are spending $100 million just this year alone building additional freight transfer points in Brooklyn & Queens and adding more marine barge terminals explicitly to remove more trucks entering NYC. NYC's subway ne…

Significant sections of train lines are selectively closed at night and modified on weekends all the time for maintenance and improvements.

Don't you dare suggest that it was hyperbole.

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

#248

Post by CydeWeys » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 4:03 PM UTC

suchow wrote: post #212

CydeWeys wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 replac…

FYI, Battery Park City is part of Manhattan and was designed in the 1960s to 1980s, with the land created during excavation for the World Trade Center.

To be fair, BPC, at 92 acres, is 0.4% of the total land area of Manhattan. It's a rounding error.

There's been a lot more reclaimed land than that added to Manhattan since 1811, but they mostly slotted into the pre-existing established grid system.

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

#249

Post by jacques_chester » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

pentae wrote: post #150

I believe our governments should designate a new class of Urban car, similar to the Japanese "Kei cars". The "Urban EV" would have to meet strict requirements: Electric Vehicles only, within a small size of footprint (smart car sized) and have pedestrian anti collision safety features. The EVs could have cargo trays as well for deliveries. Pedestrian zones with Urban EV access (scooters, ebikes included) could utilis…

Freeing road space with smaller cars are equivalent to adding roads. You wind up with the same induced demand problems and it is still stupendously less efficient than buses, trains and pedestrian space. The same goes for folks waving self-driving cars as a magical talisman that will "fix" car traffic. You can't fix car traffic. You can only replace it with different modes of transport.

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

#250

Post by apaprocki » Sun, Oct 06, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

Merrill wrote: post #143

This seems to ignore freight. First, since there are no freight railroads into Manhattan; everything consumed by the residents and the much larger daytime population has to arrive by truck. Most freight into Manhattan comes via the Hudson River bridges and tunnels since the container port is in New Jersey and the rail yards are also there. There is little barge traffic, although I think that garbage is barged out via…

Worth mentioning that the NYPD does absolutely nothing (in my view) to enforce existing laws. 53’ trucks routinely barrel down non-truck routes at the same time as my kids’ school bus. They routinely attempt to turn down the same street and get stuck, blocking traffic for 15-30 minutes, and no one cares.

POV from someone that lives here: Leave an exception for electric trucks no bigger than a Sprinter between the hours of 4am (when bars close) - 8am. Force delivery fleets to innovate and rely more on dispatch software and small vehicles to get the job done more quickly and efficiently.