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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

#221

Post by criddell »

davidw wrote: post #138
tharne wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already do pay their own way. Gas taxes, tolls, vehicle registration, emissions fees, license fees, premium taxes on car insurance, traffic tickets, parking tickets, parking meters, sales tax on the purchase of a car. Very few things in the United States are taxed as exhaustively as private vehicles. I'm not sure when "subsidizing" came to mean "giving people something back for the money you took form them in th…

No, they do not: https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/ && https://taxfoundation.org/gasoline-taxes-and-user-fees-pay-o... Drivers are heavily subsidized.

Those are pretty interesting links. Thanks for sharing.

I wonder if there's any way to come up with a net value overall for those subsidies? For example, pre-K education is fully subsidized in some states and it looks like the total economic results over a long time are very positive. How would you go about figuring out if those road subsidies are too high or too low?

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#222

Post by amanaplanacanal »

noobermin wrote: post #192
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…

There is value on both ends. If you are too kind and effeminate on the causes you care about, no one will listen to you either and will think it doesn't matter. You need a mix of both voices in any movement.

Uh, effeminate?

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#223

Post by larnmar »

burfog wrote: post #158
benrbray wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is, right now our cars-first city planning means that things like groceries, schools, shopping centers, etc. are built far away from where people live so that you NEED a car to get there. Places like CityLab are advocating for future development that places these daily necessities within walking distance of where people live. Cars are great for long-distance travel, but it would be great to spend less time…

That is mainly a density issue. Most people don't like density. At an ordinary population density, supermarkets are about 2 to 5 miles from each other, which is probably 3 to 7 miles by road. Large stores require many customers in order to remain in business. If supermarkets are closer, then they lose efficiency. Prices must be higher. Variety drops; you'll get just 2 types of cheese and 1 type of apple if the stores…

It’s not even a population density issue, it’s just a bad planning issue. Where I live (in the middle ring of a large Australian city) we have density comparable to an American suburb, but I have several mini-downtowns within walking distance.

I did the maths a while ago; even if every house has a quarter-acre block (subtract actual street space from that to get a slightly smaller block) you can fit 4000 houses, about twelve thousand people, within a 1km radius of a mini-downtown point. Twelve thousand people is certainly enough to support a supermarket, a bunch of restaurants, cafes, specialty stores etc (think of what a town of twelve thousand people looks like). The only trick is actually zoning rows of shops in appropriate places.

Of course I still drive to the supermarket anyway, unless I’m only buying a couple of items. This isn’t an argument against cars, it’s just an argument that low(ish) density housing and walkability aren’t incompatible.

More broadly I think that Americans looking for solutions to their city-planning problems should look less at Europe (or god forbid, Asia) and more at Australia, since I think we’ve done a decent (though as always imperfect in implementation) job of combining European and American city planning virtues.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#224

Post by LIV2 »

Demoneeri wrote: post #215
HorstG wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This only works in bigger cities, where there is plenty of heavily subsidized public transport such as Berlin. Most smaller towns that went car free killed their businesses or made them move to shopping districts on the outskirts which are still reachable by car. Leading to "dead" inner parts of town and very unhappy citizens. Oh, and skyrocketing rents in the subsidized cities such as Berlin...

It's funny that you are using "heavily subsidized public transport" while using the entierly subsidized road system...

Just about all public road systems are subsidised but are public transport systems?. This will work better in cities with cheap/free public transport

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#225

Post by ogre_codes »

tomtheelder wrote: post #67
allovernow wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Great, so if we can't all have something, none of us should have it! Forget the fact that the vast majority of families own and benefit from personal transportation, the important thing is that we're all e…

> Great, so if we can't all have something, none of us should have it! Forget the fact that the vast majority of families own and benefit from personal transportation, the important thing is that we're all equal, even if the equal case is on average worse for everyone, right? This is entirely the opposite of what the car-free movement is trying to accomplish. Car-free is strictly concerned dense urban areas, where pr…

> Any increase in equality that comes along with it (honestly I'm skeptical it would make much of a difference) would be purely incidental.

"Equality" is perhaps a poor choice of words here. I will say that for people on the cusp—mainly young and poor people—having a car break down can spiral into a really bad situation or even homelessness. When you can't afford to fix your car and your car is required to get to your job, the situation can become untenable quickly.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#226

Post by monknomo »

everdrive wrote: post #15
monknomo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80% of Americans live in an urban area

Dense urban areas are harmed by cars, but where do you draw the line? Suppose I can drive through the suburbs of Philadelphia, but not the city center. What happens to the area around the restricted-driving zone? Does it become an crowded parking lot as people trade their cars for transit? I'm not suggesting that there are no solution here -- I'm genuinely asking what the solutions are.

Part of the solution might be using the local population density to inform how much of the street you devote to cars. For example, in rural areas, two lane blacktop with no shoulder and 100% devoted to cars is ok, because there aren't many cars, so people can still use the road even if they aren't driving. In the suburbs, car travel lanes should begin to narrow, sidewalks should appear, bike lanes should appear, etc. In the densest part of the city, the streets should give space to transit, delivery/infrastructure vehicles, low speed transport like bikes, scooters, etc. and people. Primarily people and transit

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#227

Post by taborj »

> When asked what they like most about a city they have visited, almost no one answers: “The cars whizzing by on the streets.”

Hi from no one. I bet folks interested in cars often mention seeing the different makes and models as highlights of foreign travel. I know I do.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#228

Post by rocgf »

sachdevap wrote: post #206
rocgf wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 to…

I do not disagree with anything you say. If I was in any position of power, getting rid of cars would be a top priority. My personal favorite country in the world is the Netherlands, specifically for its cycling and public transportation.

However, as I said, I believe you (and greenonion) are oversimplifying a complex problem. If you've ever been to any US city, you will see just how much influence the car has had in the development of the entire country. From the principles that you are stating, and that I believe are empirically correct, to the implementation of any viable solution there is a gargantuan gap, and I don't see any solutions being presented. Just "cars are bad, we should use public transport".

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#229

Post by 205guy »

The US has tons of car-free business districts, and they're well integrated into the cities and suburbs. They are surrounded by parking so that people who must drive can get there, then leave their car to walk around the shops. And they often has bus transit centers so that people can reach the area by public transportation.

Except we call them shopping malls, and they're all privatized, meaning they're owned by big corporations who set the rent, access is controlled (no homeless), and freedoms are limited (no protests, so no free speech).

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#230

Post by asavadatti »

ctdonath wrote: post #74
organsnyder wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often do you have those meetings? If it's once a week or less, you'd probably be better off with a carshare rather than owning a private vehicle. No single mode of transportation solves every use-case. My car is suboptimal when I'm going downtown, as well as for trips longer than 300 miles or so.

Except ... cars do solve every use case. Suboptimal, yes, but I can get whoever & whatever I need to practically every square kilometer of this country (4200 x 2500) within 50 hours (5400km). Public transport simply can't, because it can't have stations within anywhere close to each of 10,500,000 square kilometers - and even where it does, I'm waiting (maybe hours) for service, and am severely limited in cargo option…

I think you are being disingenuous. Yes it is suboptimal but we don't need public transportation covering the entire country. When you are trying to solve for the use case of dense urban areas it is far more efficient and optimal to have a functional public transport system
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