Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 245 posts

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#91

Post by pcwalton »

rayiner wrote: post #12
thatfrenchguy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from Paris, NYC has pretty terrible transport (and Paris’s isn’t that great either)

Yes, and almost everywhere else in the US has even worse transport, and it costs us five times as much to build it as Europe. Which is why the idea of banning cars in the US pretty much anywhere outside of Manhattan and maybe a few downtown roads is fanciful.

> Which is why the idea of banning cars in the US pretty much anywhere outside of Manhattan and maybe a few downtown roads is fanciful.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to do so is safety. For example, it's universally agreed that banning cars from Market St., which was approved yesterday here in San Francisco, is going to save many lives over the years. It is a very dangerous street and was never designed for the traffic configuration it has today. (Search for "sf market st deaths" on Google.) Even if you were to suppose that prohibiting private vehicle traffic on Market is just going to shuttle it onto nearby roads (which is not typically what happens, empirically, but anyway), that itself would be a large safety improvement, because it would help to separate pedestrian/bicycle/streetcar traffic from private autos.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#92

Post by dan_quixote »

jandrese wrote: post #85
brenden2 wrote: post #3

I'm so happy to see this idea starting to get mainstream attention. I predict that in 50-100 years we'll look back on the age of the automobile as one of the biggest mistakes in urban planning. Automobiles are dangerous, kill thousands of people every year, contribute significantly to pollution, and cause health problems by discouraging physical activity. They're expensive, inefficient, and cause more harm than good…

The idyllic dream of vendors lugging their wares through the subway and city streets every day... When construction companies hire armies of people to walk individual I-beams through the city for every project... Where I get to haul my garbage a dozen blocks to the nearest accessible trash pickup location... In the end you still need roads. You don't get to convert all of that space into a park even if you ban cars.

Meh, just watch how construction happens in the central district of any European city. It's not as simple as just backing a flatbed up to the door, but they get by just fine.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#93

Post by ItsDeathball »

criddell wrote: post #82
beefield wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self-driving cars are going trigger a new wave of automobile growth, at least in the US. They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate. My guess is that you are wrong. At least what comes to driving in cities. As the (current) main problem of cars in cities is not accidents, emissions, lack of convenience or even cost. It is the massive amount of space…

Couldn't part of that be "fixed" by sprawl? Get the density low enough then all you have to worry about are high capacity corridors across the city. Right now I live in a suburb of Austin. I rarely go to downtown as all the places I go during the week (work, my kids' school, movie theater, grocery stores, restaurants, doctors) are out here as well and parking is plentiful.

This is what's been tried from about 1960 to now. It turns out to not be anything near sustainable financially, because the low density development doesn't provide enough tax revenue to pay for maintenance on the infrastructure. Once an inner-ring suburb needs to raise taxes to replace its water pipes, it starts emptying out to newer suburbs farther out that don't have to support legacy infrastructure and things like pensions. If you look at closer-in suburbs built 30 years ago, you'll see abandoned former Walmarts and Pizza Huts that followed the growth outwards once their buildings were fully depreciated. Austin might be slightly different because it's changing to fit the mold of an expensive coastal city from the inside out, but the pattern holds in other areas that aren't as trendy right now.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#94

Post by zaphod4prez »

damnyou wrote: post #78
yohannparis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mention cities, you are talking about suburbs. Nobody wants to remove cars from the suburbs because it is the backbone of it. Remove the cars => no more suburbs.

Yes, but less auto dependence means less suburbs right? "Sprawl" is criticized a lot. A transit oriented suburb would be like Japan. The houses would be less big, there would be less space to suspend the normal rules of society around things like nudity, and so on. I get why cities are great, but suburb living leads to a very different — and for me vastly better — quality of life.

I'm not sure why "less auto dependence [would mean] less suburbs."

Here's one alternative: If we get rid of cars in cities, have commuter rail from the city to each surrounding suburb, and allow cars in the suburb? Then... there you go. This is called a "hub and spoke" pattern iirc

There are plenty of suburbs in the US that operate like this— where most people who work in the city commute via rail, but most families also have cars, and there is a spread-out spacious feel (some towns in NJ come to mind).

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#95

Post by ItsDeathball »

damnyou wrote: post #78
yohannparis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mention cities, you are talking about suburbs. Nobody wants to remove cars from the suburbs because it is the backbone of it. Remove the cars => no more suburbs.

Yes, but less auto dependence means less suburbs right? "Sprawl" is criticized a lot. A transit oriented suburb would be like Japan. The houses would be less big, there would be less space to suspend the normal rules of society around things like nudity, and so on. I get why cities are great, but suburb living leads to a very different — and for me vastly better — quality of life.

We have a model for transit-oriented suburbs in America. Pre-WW2 streetcar suburbs are still spacious and have nice private backyards, but also have transit within easy walking distance. Transit-supporting density was generally achieved through smaller front yards, narrower streets, and less parking.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#96

Post by smileysteve »

dudul wrote: post #26
drstewart wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you're guessing that because you live in a world that's been designed for cars for 50 years, so you naturally see it as the most convenient option -- because it's been designed that way. Even in NYC. Design cities for people first and not automobiles and you'll be asking why anyone would take a car over a train/bus/bike because it's more expensive, takes longer, and is more of a hassle.

If at 3AM my kid starts feeling very sick, how do I get him to the doctor/hospital in a city where cars are banned? And I'm not trying to be facetious, I think the theory of car-less cities is really appealing, but I honestly don't see how this is a good solution.

To be nostalgic, in a non driving world, perhaps there is a neighborhood doctor's office.

To relate to the other comments talking about health policy change; you should already be looking for a local urgent care for most issues.

And to put the question further in U.S. medical politics perspective; if you're a rural American in a state that hasn't expanded medicaid, your local Level 1 Trauma hospital is likely too far away anyway...

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#97

Post by criddell »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #79
beefield wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self-driving cars are going trigger a new wave of automobile growth, at least in the US. They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate. My guess is that you are wrong. At least what comes to driving in cities. As the (current) main problem of cars in cities is not accidents, emissions, lack of convenience or even cost. It is the massive amount of space…

I'd also like to point out skepticism to "unbelievably inexpensive to own". To operate, sure. But to own? The tech in these cars alone could easily be $100k. And there's no reason to think society will allow you to operate a car that's 99.999% safe when you could be operating a car that's proven to be 99.99999%. As time goes by, more 9s will keep accruing. And the extra 9s will keep the tech costing the same or more…

Eventually they will be cheap. How much would you spend for a computer with the processing power of an iPhone in 1990? Thirty years from now that $100k tech package will be $500 and it will be orders of magnitude better.

When cars stop colliding with each other, safety standards can be relaxed. Get rid of heavy bumpers and structures added to withstand 50 mph offset crashes. The cars become very light weight which lets you decrease the size of the drivetrain and batteries. You end up with something closer to a fancy golf cart than a Camry and they will cost less than $10k.

Your 99.9999% argument doesn't sound right to me. In the US at least, we have a very high tolerance for danger when it comes to cars. We could eliminate thousands of deaths per year by simply limiting the top speed of all cars to 25 mph. But we don't because we are willing to accept the risk that comes along with 85 mph speeds (in Texas) for the convenience.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#98

Post by damnyou »

zaphod4prez wrote: post #94
damnyou wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but less auto dependence means less suburbs right? "Sprawl" is criticized a lot. A transit oriented suburb would be like Japan. The houses would be less big, there would be less space to suspend the normal rules of society around things like nudity, and so on. I get why cities are great, but suburb living leads to a very different — and for me vastly better — quality of life.

I'm not sure why "less auto dependence [would mean] less suburbs." Here's one alternative: If we get rid of cars in cities, have commuter rail from the city to each surrounding suburb, and allow cars in the suburb? Then... there you go. This is called a "hub and spoke" pattern iirc There are plenty of suburbs in the US that operate like this— where most people who work in the city commute via rail, but most families…

You're describing the BART model, and parking is slowly being removed from it in favor of apartments.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#99

Post by jcranberry »

dan_quixote wrote: post #92
jandrese wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idyllic dream of vendors lugging their wares through the subway and city streets every day... When construction companies hire armies of people to walk individual I-beams through the city for every project... Where I get to haul my garbage a dozen blocks to the nearest accessible trash pickup location... In the end you still need roads. You don't get to convert all of that space into a park even if you ban cars.

Meh, just watch how construction happens in the central district of any European city. It's not as simple as just backing a flatbed up to the door, but they get by just fine.

They do, with roads. The point GP was making that it's not feasible to convert roads into bowers.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#100

Post by [deleted] »

jandrese wrote: post #85
brenden2 wrote: post #3

I'm so happy to see this idea starting to get mainstream attention. I predict that in 50-100 years we'll look back on the age of the automobile as one of the biggest mistakes in urban planning. Automobiles are dangerous, kill thousands of people every year, contribute significantly to pollution, and cause health problems by discouraging physical activity. They're expensive, inefficient, and cause more harm than good…

The idyllic dream of vendors lugging their wares through the subway and city streets every day... When construction companies hire armies of people to walk individual I-beams through the city for every project... Where I get to haul my garbage a dozen blocks to the nearest accessible trash pickup location... In the end you still need roads. You don't get to convert all of that space into a park even if you ban cars.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN