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Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

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Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#201

Post by noirbot »

greenonions wrote: post #161
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Criticizing cars is the only way to wake people up to the damage they have caused in our society. It's a way to make you look like an out-of-touch loony, who therefore gets ignored. If you want to reduce car use in the US, dial down the rhetoric, and work on increasing the convenience of not using a car. You're going to win more hearts and minds by making available something better than you are by constantly carpin…

Hard to mince words regarding the statistics on cars. You read and responded to the comment, so they clearly drive engagement. Walking, biking, taking the bus, carpooling are incredibly convenient for anyone willing to try, and I certainly support efforts to improve the facilities for these at all opportunities. There are uncomfortable truths that need to be addressed about cars, however, and you don't get anywhere b…

I'm not sure if "convenient" is really the right word for it. I recently moved to a new job, and my commute is now 20-30 minutes by car. My new office has bike facilities and showers, and isn't too far from public transit, and is generally about as optimal as you can get for non-driving commuting in this city.

I still drive because biking is A. pretty physically grueling in a number of common weather conditions ( greater than 100 degree or less than 32 degree temps for much of the year, carrying my bike up 2-3 flights of stairs... ) B. Going to take 2-3x the time per day, before time spent showering on each end of an hour-long ride in brutal heat... Public transit is a 1+ mile walk/ride on either end of it (same problems as above), means I can only get in/out of work at specific times, and still takes 2-3x longer than driving.

That's before we get into the 2000 serious injury-causing accidents that people get in on bikes per year in my state, many of which are in my county. I really hate cars, but I'm mostly driving slow and on low-speed roads. I'm very unlikely to die or be seriously injured. That's not something I can rely on on a bike commute.

I'm looking to move closer to the office so I can mitigate some of these because I earnestly hate driving this much, but I wouldn't claim that that's going to make biking/walking "incredibly convenient", just acceptably less inconvenient.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#202

Post by rtkwe »

thebean11 wrote: post #195
tomphoolery wrote: post #188

The only real reason why we don't have car-free side streets in Philly (the ones that are too skinny for a car to get through anyway, forcing people to park on one of the sidewalks) is due to handicapped people becoming immobilized. I like the concept, but I'm curious how it will be implemented whilst also solving the problems for a large percentage of the population...

I might be way off base, but wouldn't those people have electric wheelchairs or something similar?

There's a middle ground where someone isn't wheelchair bound but does have a lot of trouble moving around where people fall through the cracks without cars or other vehicular transport.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#203

Post by Wowfunhappy »

wcarron wrote: post #104
tomtheelder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly fine, sometimes a problem. It's pretty much like regular bikes (or cars for that matter): some might not work well if there is significant snow/ice, but then you will just need one that is suitable for those sort of conditions. The scooter companies are putting out very low end models that aren't designed for any sort of adverse conditions, and they are scared of lawsuits/blowback from accidents. This sort of…

I hope e-scooters never make it out of infancy. Bikes are infinitely more practical and capable. They are more stable at all speeds. They can have significantly more cargo carrying capacity. Bikes can be fitted (for the most part) with different tires/wheels to handle adverse conditions more easily than a scooter can. I hope for the infanticide of e-scooter transportation. It's a grotesque, subooptimal solution than…

I bought a non-electric, but large-wheeled kick scooter a few months ago for getting around NYC.

I absolutely love it. Bikes are a little annoying to stop and start; "walking" your bike for a short stretch requires physically dismounting. My scooter allows me to constantly transition between standing, walking, and riding as environmental conditions require.

Also... it's stupid, but if I have to wear a helmet to do something, I'm not going to do it. I can't imagine riding a bike without a helmet, because it would be too easy to hit a bump and fall over. On my scooter, however, I feel relatively safe without a helmet. There have been a couple times when I've lost control of my scooter for some reason or another, but because I'm basically standing, I've just kind of jumped off.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#204

Post by quadrangle »

rootusrootus wrote: post #153
maxsilver wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not in the suburbs... Which, as a reminder for urbanists, really translates to "Not in the only place 90% of the nation's population is allowed to live"

Basically any city that isn't one of the biggest four or five, and even then just the core. Lots of mid-size cities, like Portland, are nearly 100% suburb.

I understand drawing that line there, but the "suburb" of a good portion (half?) of Portland is the urban, neighborly sort that isn't the post-WWII culdesac sprawl. I mean, I guess suburban sprawl is the [awful] norm in the U.S., but then there's the non-sprawl suburb stuff like Portland's walkable grid with narrow streets…

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#205

Post by noobermin »

ourlordcaffeine wrote: post #176
onreact wrote: post #90

Yeah, I live in Berlin and we have an increasing number of car free zones here where people can move around without being afraid of getting killed. Even children play outside again in such areas without risking their life. Not to mention the lack of noise, pollution and clogged up space with parking cars. Cafes thrive and people stroll around to spend their time and money. Businesses return from the outskirts etc. It…

Interesting. Whenever there is talk about pedestrianizing a street in my town, the usual suspects immediately claim that this will make local businesses go bankrupt since "people can't drive up to them". Never mind that stopping isn't allowed anyway on those streets. I don't understand the logic.

Americans are really unaware to how cars ruins cities, particularly how much of the cities after urban renewal were demolished instead of improved to make room for the six lane sroads.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#206

Post by sachdevap »

rocgf wrote: post #159
greenonions wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars kill ~40000 Americans annually. Is that cheap? Criticizing cars is the only way to wake people up to the damage they have caused in our society. Sure, cars are wonderful for people with mobility issues. For the vast majority of us to design our cities around two ton death machines is a tragedy. Our cities would be dramatically cheaper to live in with fewer cars. Less parking and road space allows higher density.…

I am very against cars and very pro-biking, and yet I find your comment immensely simplistic. You seem to be forgetting that buildings can't be moved and big infrastructure projects go into the billions. The USA was build with cars in mind, you can't simply undo all that and now ask people to simply get rid of their cars when everything was built specifically for cars.

The more roadways you build to accommodate cars, the more cars fill up the roadways, as long as more people have cars in the city. [0] On the other hand, public transit can be designed to ease congestion and allow movement between densely populated areas. Moreover, cost of building public transit keeps on increasing [1].

The solution is not more roadways to magically reduce congestion. It's to build public transit today before it gets more expensive. See the success of the Delhi Metro in India, for example, where New Delhi was never built with a local subway system in mind. [2]

[0] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/09/citylab-unive... [1] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/04/why-new-york-... [2] https://www.globalmasstransit.net/archive.php?id=26471

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#207

Post by triceratops »

rtkwe wrote: post #202
thebean11 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I might be way off base, but wouldn't those people have electric wheelchairs or something similar?

There's a middle ground where someone isn't wheelchair bound but does have a lot of trouble moving around where people fall through the cracks without cars or other vehicular transport.

Electric trike?

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#208

Post by noobermin »

Balanceinfinity wrote: post #165

Some cities simply can't do this, such as Los Angeles, Dallas, and Atlanta. It's not in their DNA. Things are simply too far apart and the infrastructure couldn't hold it. Other cities are moving toward "no cars" by simply allowing gridlock to make driving a car worthless. I visit NYC very often, and we used to take cabs all the time. Now, we never do, unless we have so much luggage we can't manage - it's a nightmare…

One thing I'll add, the "allowing gridlock" is like "allowing water to fill a container". It more or less is what an incompressible fluid does which is essentially what traffic is. That's why road widenings don't neccessarily decrease congestion, when you take into the non-linear effects (induced demand).

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#209

Post by noobermin »

joejerryronnie wrote: post #177
abyssin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you have 5-7+ kids, you don't have them all at once. By the time you're having the last ones, the eldest can cycle on their own.

The anti-quint/sext/septuplet bias in this comment is astounding.

Chasing a rabbit trail here but how many parents have >4 children in the US?

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#210

Post by noobermin »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #114

My city of roughly a half million was mostly developed post-WW2. Even the denser areas are not really walkable. They tried painting bike lanes on existing roads, but that has just increased the number of bike fatalities. Maybe expanding bus service 500-1000% and having it run 24/7 would work. Anything less means low-wagers will still need a car. Passing a Fair Scheduling Act and giving low wage workers a daily $10 to…

A lot of research found painted bike lanes don't help without protection.
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