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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?

#261

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

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.

Believe it or not, not everyone on HN is a libertarian.

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

#262

Post by Kluny »

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…

How do they move furniture though? Was there some kind of exception made for delivery vehicles?

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

#263

Post by coredog64 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #207
DailyHN wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$50 for parking is affordable?

Yes, because when you factor in the cost of transit and the schedules its either cheaper or the same to drive in dollar terms or way cheaper in terms of time. Everyone gushes about how awesome transit is, but that’s only true for a few areas of Manhattan and Brooklyn. If you need to take a trip that isn’t in the happy path, a car is way better.

Uber gets me from the Upper East Side to LGA in 20-25 minutes. Public transit takes over an hour, requires changing from bus to train to train to train.

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

#264

Post by all2 »

Kluny wrote: post #262
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…

How do they move furniture though? Was there some kind of exception made for delivery vehicles?

And the emergency vehicles? How do they get where they're going?

I could see something like this working out well if appropriate provisions were made for these things.

State St. in Madison WI is paved, but only allows mass transit, emergency, and local deliveries.

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

#265

Post by bdamm »

all2 wrote: post #264
Kluny wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they move furniture though? Was there some kind of exception made for delivery vehicles?

And the emergency vehicles? How do they get where they're going? I could see something like this working out well if appropriate provisions were made for these things. State St. in Madison WI is paved, but only allows mass transit, emergency, and local deliveries.

Yeah, presumably the same way they solve it everywhere, which is that police, ambulance, fire, and city all have the same keys to the same bollards. And when they don't, they just use their bolt cutters or drive up over the sidewalk. No biggie.

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

#266

Post by SECProto »

mruts wrote: post #235
brownbat wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sounds fine too me. I’m not saying there should be no wheelchair accessible stations, but seeing that they are a miniscule minority, I don’t think that my tax dollars be paying to make everything accessible to them. It’s not possible, anyways, without incurring massive costs. Imagine what would happen to rents if the government mandated that all apartments and houses to be wheelchair accessible. It would be a total d…

Subway stations in many systems around the world are accessible. It doesn't take much for a minimum viable product - drop a 5m diameter tube for a single elevator from street level down to platform level, put separate ticket gates on it. Impact on surface infrastructure is much less than that 5m. Retrofit it in a few stations a year over the next couple decades.

Your take seems rather shallow. Accessible infrastructure includes curb cuts (originally designed for wheelchairs, also make sidewalks useable by the elderly, strollers, etc who have issues with a 6" step), audible crossing signals (meant for visually impaired, also alert those who are looking at their phones), bike lanes (meant for cyclists, improve the conditions for pedestrians and residents too), .... The list goes on and on where minor improvements in infrastructure design create massive improvements in public spaces.

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

#267

Post by portlander12345 »

Someone wrote: post #213
Jommi wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just ban the most common forms of car throughput. Moving vans would be allowed.

You can also move most, if not all, furniture that fits through a house’s door or elevator on a small electric van or even a (three-wheeled) bicycle. Electric vans also could be the preferred method of supplying shops with goods. That need not be much more expensive if containers can be moved from larger vans onto such smaller vans at city boundaries. If you have furniture that’s so large that you have to hoist it up…

Can confirm, have moved king-sized mattresses, large dressers and cabinets, etc via a trailer on an ordinary bicycle. It’s really easy!

Where I’m from there’s a tradition in the bike community called a “bike move”. When you’re moving, you invite everybody to show up on a certain day with their trailers and cargo bikes. Everybody packs and moves you in a distributed manner! All you have to do is provide coffee and donuts in the morning and pizza and beer for after. Fun, community-building way to move.

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

#268

Post by gambiting »

dan_mctree wrote: post #242
gambiting wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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.

That's not the argument I'm making. I'm saying that it's better to have a pollution-spewing plant outside of the city than drive thousands(millions?) Of vehicles right next to the areas where people walk and live and work and eat. A taxi driver idling their shitty diesel outside of my window at 2am wouldn't be an issue if their vehicle was electric. A major throughway next to a kindergarten wouldn't be an issue if those vehicles were electric. At least not due to pollution, there are still other problems regardless of the fuel used.

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

#269

Post by Merrill »

_ph_ wrote: post #97
nightfly wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but they still need roads. Lots of these plans seem to include re-purposing the roadways, without considering the remaining vehicles that still need roads.

There will still be roads. They are needed for pedestrians and bicyclists. But they are not commonly open for car traffic. Here in Munich, there are large pure pedestrian zones. But some of them a free for bicyclists after 9pm in the evening and in the morning hours (like 8-10) delivery traffic is allowed. And the police and ambulance cars can drive it any time it is needed.

Pedestrian and bicycle roads aren't necessarily built to support 25000 kilo trucks, e.g. a concrete mixer truck on the way to a construction site.

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

#270

Post by ahartmetz »

sasaf5 wrote: post #204
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…

> "We won't be able to move furniture!" Also frequently used to justify buying a big SUV, just to learn that the average piece of furniture doesn't fit in the average SUV.

SUVs waste interior space on ground clearance and tend to have rather short trunks. They are not very suitable for transporting things.
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