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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?

#271

Post by freehunter »

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.

I was recently in Rostock Germany and I saw plenty of pedestrian areas closed to traffic but with signs saying "feuerwehrzufahrt" which means "fire truck access road". The pedestrian area was protected with bollards or fences that could be unlocked by emergency vehicles who needed access.

So many problems that we Americans fight about have been solved ages ago in other countries around the world with far less drama. We're not as unique as we think we are.

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

#272

Post by freehunter »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #227
sasaf5 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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.

The average SUV is a fastback car with a few extra inches of ground clearance. Just modernized versions of the Tercel 4WD.

There's a big difference between "the average SUV" that you're talking about and "a big SUV" that the other person is talking about. A Ford Escape is just a taller hatchback, but a Ford Explorer or Expedition are a different story.

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

#273

Post by [deleted] »

chroma wrote: post #41
inferiorhuman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bet if you ran the stats, you would be far more likely to be a victim of crime on bart than while driving in the bay area. Then run the numbers instead of wildly waving your hands. If you'd like anecdotes I've never been robbed at gunpoint on BART, nor have I ever had anyone threaten to stab me on BART. The only disadvantages of driving are traffic and parking. And air pollution, risk of a crash or injury, cost of…

It's very frustrating to discuss this topic with you because you keep editing your comments after I've replied to them. This makes it appear as though I've ignored points you made, when in fact they simply weren't in the version of the comment that I read. Of all the links you added, most are criminals shooting each other or cops shooting criminals. Neither of those are likely to affect me, as I don't rob places or b…

[deleted]

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

#274

Post by _ph_ »

Merrill wrote: post #269
_ph_ wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, the roads still could be built to support the load of an occasional heavy truck, whatever the traffic limitations on that road are. And in most places, there are existing roads which carry the necessary loads. The repurposing would at most affect the topmost layer.

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

#275

Post by vinceguidry »

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

They had to really look hard to find a part of downtown that looks like that. If you zoom out a bit you can see how all that parking came to be - the nearby stadiums / conference centers.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Forsyth+St+%26+Trinity+Ave...

Atlanta's pretty run down in parts, but downtown really isn't that bad.

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

#276

Post by peterwwillis »

Has anyone calculated how fast you could go from downtown to uptown with a bicycle and no traffic? Maybe the best way to galvanize public opinion is with hope: show them things can be much better, and they will want it.

You could plan a day to shut down some street for 100 blocks and do a series of stunts. Mock up bus and bike lanes, and do trial runs all day of bikes and buses moving up and down the corridor. Then run the results in the paper with the title "the future is here".

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

#277

Post by telchar »

missosoup wrote: post #194
izacus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Fuck everyone with disabilities yeah? ALS? Just walk a few blocks! Parkinson's? Just walk a few blocks! Dystrophy? Just walk a few blocks! Life isn't hard enough for these individuals so let's kick it up a notch by rolling out exclusively ableist transportation.

You say that like electric wheelchairs and scooters don't exist. People too disabled to even use those already require assistance anyway, so they're no worse off requiring assistance in a (nearly) car-free environment.

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

#278

Post by peterwwillis »

pentae wrote: post #260
jacques_chester wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You make good points but its not ‘all or nothing’. Small, efficient modes of transport like bicycles, ebikes and scooters attached to sharing apps is a correct step forward in urban mobility. If we zoned cities pedestrians first with smart public transport we have plenty of room for ‘ev bike lanes’ for small personal mobility vehicles across huge areas (think 14 x 14 city blocks) it would look vastly different to the…

Yes!! There is no one-size-fits-all transportation method.

And some people - notably, those with disabilities - are at a disadvantage with most options. It shouldn't be a requirement, for example, to spend multiple hours on buses just to run one errand because it's the only accessible solution.

Cars are designed for high speed, multi-use, multi-environment, safety-critical use cases, that are a byproduct of the environment cars have to drive in, and how they are operated. Take out most of those requirements and we'd have lightweight, cheap, tiny contraptions that fit cities better. You can even build cars that fit in bike lanes!

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

#279

Post by jcranmer »

vinceguidry wrote: post #275
Pxtl wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They had to really look hard to find a part of downtown that looks like that. If you zoom out a bit you can see how all that parking came to be - the nearby stadiums / conference centers. https://www.google.com/maps/place/Forsyth+St+%26+Trinity+Ave... Atlanta's pretty run down in parts, but downtown really isn't that bad.

But you can compare to, say, Baltimore, where there's barely any surface parking around the convention center there, despite the fact that it's right next to a major sports stadium.

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

#280

Post by ip26 »

ekianjo wrote: post #107
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…

> 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. So this means that densely populated areas are not welcome for older people, like the ones who can't really walk as much anymore? Interesting way to discriminate.

FWIW those people are poorly served indeed by a car-only city when they are no longer fit to drive & lose their license.
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