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Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

citylab.com

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Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#51

Post by notatoad »

Jamwinner wrote: post #4

We get it citylab, you hate cars, and think everyone lives in the downtown of a metropolis. Meanwhile, the rest of us have places to be, and 99% of my country has no public transport. While I agree that city centers need more walking room, the categorical exclusion of longer distant transport options will just create more parking lots at the border of such areas. The more modern planning ignores the forest (countries…

> just create more parking lots at the border of such areas

afaik, most proponents of car-free streets or dense urban development regard parking lots at the border of the dense area ("intercept parking") as a good idea to be encouraged. The point is not to wage war on cars, it's to make downtowns a safe and pleasant place to be.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#52

Post by dashundchen »

ogre_codes wrote: post #27
Jamwinner wrote: post #4

We get it citylab, you hate cars, and think everyone lives in the downtown of a metropolis. Meanwhile, the rest of us have places to be, and 99% of my country has no public transport. While I agree that city centers need more walking room, the categorical exclusion of longer distant transport options will just create more parking lots at the border of such areas. The more modern planning ignores the forest (countries…

> the technological and class divide will only widen. Car friendly infrastructure widens the technological and class divide. They create a base state where you are required to own and maintain an expensive piece of equipment in order to be an equal member of society. You are required to have parking for those cars, both at home and at your work. Forcing people to pay thousands of dollars per year to participate in so…

Not to mention making a car a requirement for transportation doesn't just exclude those who can't afford it - it excludes children, teenagers, elderly and disabled who can't get a license or car themselves.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#53

Post by tomtheelder »

skocznymroczny wrote: post #17
Jamwinner wrote: post #4

We get it citylab, you hate cars, and think everyone lives in the downtown of a metropolis. Meanwhile, the rest of us have places to be, and 99% of my country has no public transport. While I agree that city centers need more walking room, the categorical exclusion of longer distant transport options will just create more parking lots at the border of such areas. The more modern planning ignores the forest (countries…

Even having public transport doesn't mean the car is useless. Public transport fails if you have a lot of groceries to deliver, or some big products. Also public transport often takes much longer than a car, because it's stopping at every little stop, while a car can go directly, or even take a shortcut in some cases.

> Public transport fails if you have a lot of groceries to deliver, or some big products.

That's commercial traffic, car-free policies are usually designed with support for commercial vehicles. It's really about eliminating private automobile traffic in city centers. If you mean going to the store to buy large items, delivery is probably the solution there. Deliveries like that can be grouped into a smaller number of larger vehicles, or done at off hours, or only on certain roads, or all sorts of different things.

Car-free isn't the greatest moniker in the world. It really means eliminating private automobile traffic, not eliminating vehicles altogether.

> Also public transport often takes much longer than a car, because it's stopping at every little stop, while a car can go directly, or even take a shortcut in some cases.

This isn't typically true in dense urban areas with high quality transit networks. Those are the areas that are suitable for car-free. Certainly most places would suffer greatly from the elimination of cars, but those areas aren't the target.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#54

Post by dahfizz »

benrbray wrote: post #16
Jamwinner wrote: post #4

We get it citylab, you hate cars, and think everyone lives in the downtown of a metropolis. Meanwhile, the rest of us have places to be, and 99% of my country has no public transport. While I agree that city centers need more walking room, the categorical exclusion of longer distant transport options will just create more parking lots at the border of such areas. The more modern planning ignores the forest (countries…

America is certainly decades (if not centuries) behind in public transportation. However, these CityLab articles are doing a great thing by highlighting our unhealthy dependence on cars and making it a part of everyday conversation. If we're ever going to change we need to start by agreeing there is a problem and discussing realistic solutions. I don't quite understand your point about the "technological and class di…

The EU is over 3x as population dense as the USA. Any plan to make the USA transportation system to look like the EU's is doomed to failure from the beginning.

You need to be realistic. You are never going to win hearts and minds by railing against cars - Americans love their cars, and for good reason. A bus is not going to pick you up at your front door the second you walk out, and it's not going to drop you directly where you want to go. Cars are a tremendous convenience. And they are not nearly as expensive as people seem here seem to think - they are certainly cheaper than city rent.

It may make sense to reduce the number of cars in city centers, but so few Americans live or go near city centers. You have to understand that HN is not a representative sample of the world population. Not everybody is a single, young person trying to start their own businesses.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#55

Post by ghaff »

tomtheelder wrote: post #29
big_chungus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely true. If the goal is to move people, "just banning cars" is not the solution. Living inside a city is simply too expensive, and that sort of position is reserved for those with cushy jobs and a very specific life style. It's the ivory tower shouting down at the un-educated, un-washed masses once again.

The car free concept is strictly about city centers, and has nothing to do with those who live in the suburbs or rural areas. Absolutely no one is advocating removing cars from those areas. This has nothing to do with elitism, and everything to do with optimizing transportation for different environments. Proponents usually advocate for better metro transit networks, which would benefit those who live outside the cit…

>Absolutely no one is advocating removing cars from those areas.

You'll find plenty of people here who will be happy to argue that living outside of dense cities is unsustainable and has to end. They're wrong. But it's their opinion.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#56

Post by kibwen »

FussyZeus wrote: post #37
benrbray wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America is certainly decades (if not centuries) behind in public transportation. However, these CityLab articles are doing a great thing by highlighting our unhealthy dependence on cars and making it a part of everyday conversation. If we're ever going to change we need to start by agreeing there is a problem and discussing realistic solutions. I don't quite understand your point about the "technological and class di…

> America is certainly decades (if not centuries) behind in public transportation. However, these CityLab articles are doing a great thing by highlighting our unhealthy dependence on cars and making it a part of everyday conversation. If we're ever going to change we need to start by agreeing there is a problem and discussing realistic solutions. Then let's discuss some realistic solutions: Outside of densely populat…

To me this appears to be a straw man. Nobody is suggesting outlawing cars wholesale.

The primary observation is this: densely-populated areas of human habitation require denser sorts of infrastructure. The most obvious example is housing: by definition you can't have dense habitation if all you have are large-lot single family homes. Transportation is similar: one person per four-door sedan simply doesn't support the density of a city.

For areas that aren't densely populated, like the backwoods and suburbs where I spent the first 28 years of my life, cars are a great solution. But cities require different solutions (which happen to become economically feasible because of their density, benefiting from economies of scale).

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#57

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

kevinqiu1 wrote: post #24
big_chungus wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely true. If the goal is to move people, "just banning cars" is not the solution. Living inside a city is simply too expensive, and that sort of position is reserved for those with cushy jobs and a very specific life style. It's the ivory tower shouting down at the un-educated, un-washed masses once again.

In a Western context with our property situation perhaps but look at Japan. 91% of the population lives in an urban area and even in the most desirable metropolis Tokyo it is relatively affordable: https://www.curbed.com/2017/2/3/14496248/tokyo-real-estate-a... Not every city in the world has to be like New York or San Francisco. Cars should be banned (more or less) in cities. And it should viable for someone to live…

It's expensive to live in a city that's 40% asphalt to move cars around and park cars in. You basically need to pay 40% more for the same living space, since you don't really pay for the moving space. Great way for car companies to force externalities onto everyone else. Don't like cars? "Oh well, you're paying for the road and parking anyway. You can't beat the problem, so you may as well join it."

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#58

Post by jjoonathan »

ogre_codes wrote: post #27
Jamwinner wrote: post #4

We get it citylab, you hate cars, and think everyone lives in the downtown of a metropolis. Meanwhile, the rest of us have places to be, and 99% of my country has no public transport. While I agree that city centers need more walking room, the categorical exclusion of longer distant transport options will just create more parking lots at the border of such areas. The more modern planning ignores the forest (countries…

> the technological and class divide will only widen. Car friendly infrastructure widens the technological and class divide. They create a base state where you are required to own and maintain an expensive piece of equipment in order to be an equal member of society. You are required to have parking for those cars, both at home and at your work. Forcing people to pay thousands of dollars per year to participate in so…

Decreasing someone's range increases their costs, a lot, because it effectively makes real estate more scarce and removes distant retail competition (in addition to increasing the real estate cost of retail).

My intuition says the effect size is going to be a multiple of what it costs to maintain a cheap car.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#59

Post by lm28469 »

agensaequivocum wrote: post #28
NPMaxwell wrote: post #2

Part of the change is due to the appearance of alternative powered vehicles. In Tokyo, it seems like every mother is riding an electric cargo bike with covered seating for two kids and room for groceries -- the minivan of bicycles. In Seattle, the morning commute is full of electric skateboards, scooters, onewheels, and wheelchairs. It looks doable.

Not really when you have 5-7+ kids.

To be fair if you have 5-7+ kids you already gave up on a lot of things. In developed countries very very few families have more than 3-4 kids

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#60

Post by adimitrov »

ctdonath wrote: post #49
tzs wrote: post #45

> When asked what they like most about a city they have visited [...] It's the people who live there you need to ask. People visiting a city generally have different goals and different constraints than people who live there.

If I can't drive to near my destination, I'll not likely visit that city.

Honest question: why?

It seems patently absurd to me, especially when you're visiting. I'm visiting Berlin right now. It's a car friendly city in a car friendly country and I wouldn't want to drive anywhere here if you paid me. Too much of a hassle. Besides driving is so incredibly boring. If you're visiting, you're not going to really experience the city from behind the windows of a metal box. Maybe Northern American cities are different, but I haven't yet visited a European city where driving would be clearly preferable.

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