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What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

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

#221

Post by simongray »

bb123 wrote: post #183
simongray wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still believe that for a vast majority of humans, the automobile is their private abode, that takes them to places. We are explorers by heart and ever since the invention of the wheel, we have coveted vehicles. They are our private sanctuaries that propel us from one location to another. No other mode of transport, be it a bus, train or god forbid a plane, provides this level of comfort. I think this is a cultura…

But your comment glosses over the part about rural people though. The reason these people love them is because there is no alternative and I don't really see how we can change that. Mass transit doesn't make sense in rural areas.

> But your comment glosses over the part about rural people though. The reason these people love them is because there is no alternative and I don't really see how we can change that. Mass transit doesn't make sense in rural areas.

I didn't gloss over it, it just wasn't relevant to the point I was making. The topic is banning cars in cities, not banning them in general.

Anyway, I don't see a reason to force rural people to not use a car. There's plenty of space out in the country, so let them have their cars. Obviously, we need to transition all cars away from combustion engines in the near future, but that is a separate issue.

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

#222

Post by magduf »

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…

I totally agree with beefield, and like the idea of banning cars, however you're wrong about the tech cost. The only tech needed is a computer and some sensors, and computers aren't exactly expensive these days. The Tesla model S already has a fair amount of self-driving tech, and it costs well under $100k. Cameras aren't exactly expensive either; the big question mark is LIDAR, but some self-driving companies seem to be eschewing that in favor of pure-camera driving (though I really question if that's a good idea because LIDAR isn't affected by weather as much).

The bottom line is that the extra tech needed to make a car self-driving isn't very expensive, and the hardware costs are continually falling. The big problem is just software, which as we've seen with mobile phones, becomes very cheap when deployed en masse.

You have a point about the 9s, but given that our current (American) society places almost no emphasis on safety, and will happily let you drive around any piece-of-shit car you want in most places regardless of how unsafe it is, I have a very hard time believing society is suddenly going to demand 9-9s reliability from AutoCarOS.

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

#223

Post by magduf »

acdha wrote: post #214
jdnenej wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could be a more realistic option is electric velomobiles (a recumbent bike with an outer shell) which have a capacity of one person and a few bags. You get the benefit of weather protection and convenient speed while being extremely safe and space efficient.

I think there’s a lot of room in the e-bike space but don’t forget transit even if it’s not cool enough to get VCs interested. If the city planners do their jobs competently few things beat a bus in a priority lane for getting a large number of people around a city quickly with low to no CO2 emissions.

>If the city planners do their jobs competently

That's expecting way, way too much in America.

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

#224

Post by arpa »

opportune wrote: post #101
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.

I agree we will still need roads in the foreseeable future, probably the rest of our lifetimes, but it’s not out of the question for materials to dropped into a construction site using drones. Maybe even entire prefabbed buildings or segments of buildings There are significant benefits to this approach other than not having to use roads, but of course the tech isn’t there yet

The main drawback i see straight away is the vastly different failure modes: trucks' engine gives out, the truck stops. Not much potential for damage in most scenarios. Drones' engine gives, and you have tonnes falling out of the sky. Very dangerous in most scenarios.

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

#225

Post by magduf »

Razengan wrote: post #167
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…

> My dream is that one day most streets ... will be closed to car traffic and replaced with green space full of trees, flowers, children playing, and usable public space. While I share that dream, and rarely ever need a car myself, I cannot currently imagine a better alternative to having a personal car in your home for the following situations: • The most obvious: People who need to be chaperoned: children, the elde…

>• The most obvious: People who need to be chaperoned: children, the elderly and people with disabilities.

Children don't need to be chaperoned. In Japan, children as young as 4 go on errands to the local store to buy things for their parents, and children as young as 6/7 walk themselves to school.

>• Following on the previous point: Going out with the whole family as a single unit, with provisions for taking care of infants etc. right there.

A family can easily walk together in a city, take a subway together, etc. People in other countries seem to have no trouble carrying "provisions for infants" in a bag with them.

>• Privacy for groups of people, with group activities (e.g. playing music, making out) confined to the automobile's enclosure.

I don't see how privacy when making out is some kind of urgent need in society. Get a room. Or go to a public park. Seriously?

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

#226

Post by magduf »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #213
bkor wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the most highly paid people at my office take public transport. This despite having their "VIP" parking place, living in suburbs, etc. Your example seems to be pretty unique in that it's really close to car industry. Some of your assumptions are completely off though. In Netherlands our Prime minister takes a bicycle to work. He has way more influence than the top paid people in my office. If you look at the…

I understand your point but countries like The Netherlands and Denmark are totally different animals. They build their bike infrastructure for decades and never adopted a car culture. The rest of mainland Europe is totally different. Getting people now to bike everywhere isn't easy when all the jobs and homes have been built around driving distances for decades.

> The Netherlands and Denmark are totally different animals. They build their bike infrastructure for decades and never adopted a car culture.

That's not true at all; Netherlands was more of a car culture several decades ago, and had to work at bringing cycling back.

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

#227

Post by tonyedgecombe »

sfink wrote: post #216
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite the fact I despise cars I can't help feeling poor people are going to get shafted in this transition.

I don't think so. If only poor people use X because wealthier people have Y, then X will suck. If Y is prevented by law/ordinance, then X will get the attention and investment it requires to keep the wealthy people happy, and most but not all of those improvements will be relevant to the poorer people. (As opposed to the split situation, where X will get the bare minimum necessary for housekeepers and store clerks fr…

If only poor people use X because wealthier people have Y, then X will suck.

That is what happens now, it's the better off buying new cars, poor people get the hand me downs. This is fine because eight year old cars do the job.

If there are no eight year old cars to buy because the better off stopped buying new or because they bought electric which only have a practical life of eight years then they are stuffed.

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

#228

Post by magduf »

dudul wrote: post #48
judge2020 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming the city is made for people as the parent comment said, you would go to your (very close) train station and get a ride to the nearest hospital or the nearest urgent care.

So I would have to walk like what? 15 minutes with my kid who is crying, then wait another 10 to 15 minutes for a train to show up, then wait on the train for 15 to 20 minutes, then walk from the station to the hospital for maybe 5 to 10 minutes. So this is roughly 60 to 80 minutes, with my crying child, and all assuming a fairly efficient public transportation system. I think that's always the problem when we get pi…

>then wait another 10 to 15 minutes for a train to show up

You seem to be assuming that every country has train systems as horrible as America's.

>and all assuming a fairly efficient public transportation system

No, you're not.

>having a car can literally save your life.

You don't need a car to save your life. This is why ambulances were invented: if you have a real life-threatening emergency, you call one of those. If you're having a true emergency, you have no business driving yourself anyway: you're a danger to everyone around you.

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

#229

Post by magduf »

Alupis wrote: post #121
pwinnski wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many human-oriented cities around the world in which mass-transit reigns, and they manage to make life work. I've been in Hong Kong a lot, and I'm not sure I can pick two points in Hong Kong that are 80 minutes apart from each other. I mean, maybe getting to the New Territories from Sai Wan Ho or something, but they have their own closer hospitals, so... It's hard to explain dry land to a fish, but life wit…

> There are many human-oriented cities around the world in which mass-transit reigns All of which are densely populated cities. This concept simply doesn't work in majority of America, where the average city is sparsely populated and quite spread out. People living in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Portland, Austin, Los Angeles, etc... quickly forget what life is like in say... Fiddletown, California.

If Fiddletown, California were forced to pay for its own road construction and upkeep, instead of getting free money from the state or federal government, they'd have to massively raise their taxes, and the town would become a ghost town as people moved to the large cities that have lower per-capita infrastructure costs.

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

#230

Post by magduf »

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.

Maybe we could try not making things cost 5 times as much as over in Europe?

Seriously; (western) Europe isn't exactly known as a cheap-labor place, and is generally regarded as having a lot of bureaucracy and high taxes, according to conservative Americans. So if it still costs us 5x as much to build things, then there's something obviously f-ed up here.

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