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Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

citylab.com

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Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#121

Post by vinay_ys »

The framing of this city planning problem in my mind is like this:

The appeal of a big city is potential to connect with lots of people from different backgrounds, skills and culture. This enables richer commerce and social interactions.

This doesn't happen without huge amount of commute and lots of social gathering places like offices, schools, restaurants, malls, bars, sports, gaming, park etc.

A city fundamentally has to make it possible for a lot more number of N x k connections – where N is city population and k is number of people any one person can potentially meet – for much larger N and much larger k.

THis is the fundamental difference between a big city vs a cluster of small towns/villages which are fairly disconnected from each other. Basically, towns and villages scale down both N and k.

Okay, so the question is how do we make it possible for such a large number of N x k commutes to happen? To support large N and large k the commute has to be faster and over longer distance. It has to solve for flexibility of hours of the day and also be accessible for young/old, men/women, kids, disabled etc. There are cost affordability considerations too.

In some countries, like US, they have social culture where young and old don't live together, those with kids have different lifestyle than those without etc. Then in others like India, young and old do live together along with kids.

Solving for high N x k for mixed demographics in a large urban sprawl is fundamentally more challenging.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#122

Post by Heliosmaster »

Noos wrote: post #64
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article it's clear that the intention is to replace car use with biking and walking, not use of public transport. e.g. (from the article): As a result, Milan is going big on cycling and walking. Over the summer, the city core will be partly remodeled to give over 22 miles (35 kilometers) of road space previously used by cars to bikes and pedestrians. Those cars that are allowed into the center must adhere to…

These are two different use cases though. If you could bike or walk you'd generally do it; usually the car is for things where it's too much time to try.

Not really. It depends a lot on the habit. Plenty of people in Italy take the car to drive less than a km to go a shop, and then come back, especially in mid-to-small cities

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#123

Post by Thlom »

ekianjo wrote: post #114
danbolt wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tokyo can get pretty crammed, but I always feel more like cattle on a crowded highway than I do on a crowded train.

Not sure how you can compare the comfort of sitting in a car with your own space versus standing for an hour or more stuck in between everyone's armpits with no space to move beyond an inch.

The alternative in Tokyo (and most other big cities), if everyone felt like cattle on public transport and decided to move to their own personal vehicle, would be an eternal gridlock of the city. You would have your own space, but you would also be stuck in your own space for hours on end barley moving forward.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#124

Post by vinay_ys »

olcor wrote: post #98
ekianjo wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I live in Tokyo and I can assure you that living car-free is lovely So you really enjoy packed subways that make you feel like cattle pretty much every time of the day? Sorry but Tokyo is the best example of "best in class public transport" being completely over capacity for the amount of people they have to transport every day.

In my personal opinion, better that than trawling slowly through traffic jams. If their train system is over capacity, more people moving through cars would be even more of a nightmare. The feeling of independence (or not feeling like “cattle“) is substantially reduced in big cities, where you are subjected to a lot of traffic rules, overcrowding of cars, jaywalkers, accidents, potholes, diversions, expensive parking…

I've always wondered why they don't do 'assigned seating' in a metro train. It is feasible to know everyone's destination station at the time of boarding. And it is feasible to know current occupancy of each car in the train. So potentially, people can be assigned to a specific car (need not be a specific seat), such that crowding in each car can be capped and more cars per train can be added without having to increase the platform length. Also, even when platform length isn't a constraint, I have seen metros running with less cars and preferring to keep it crowded. Why is that?

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#126

Post by luckylion »

ollo wrote: post #106
luckylion wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bikes and scooters cannot replace public transportation though. I live at the very edge of a large city. Fortunately, I don't work in the city, but if I were, it would be a 30 minute train ride. Sure, I could also do that by bike, but it would take me ~90 minutes. That's not a realistic alternative. Scooters are fine if they are to replace buses that you'd take for two or three stops, e.g. a kilometer or two. And we…

> And we still occasionally get bad weather. I predict that scooter and bike usage will drop extremely fast once it rains for a week or two, or, god forbid, we get a real winter once again, with snow and sub-zero temperatures Live in the Netherlands for a week and you'd be amazed at the resilience of Dutch bikers in bad weather.

Maybe living with the knowledge that the sea lurks to drown you gives them fortitude ;)

I live in northern Germany, we've got plenty of bad weather and always have, and you can see lots of cycling when spring blesses us with a sunny and warm day, but it drops when it rains.

Maybe it's intention ("I want to ride my bike to work because reasons") vs opportunity ("I can take the bike, it's so nice outside") that helps create all-season bikers.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#127

Post by [deleted] »

ekianjo wrote: post #115
renewiltord wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, NY handled everything poorly. Taipei has a metro. It's fine. New Orleans has no metro. It's fucked.

You will see the numbers in Japan in a few months time where everyone in cities travels by train/rail every day. COVID19 is far from over yet.

[deleted]

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#128

Post by Aachen »

ollo wrote: post #104
c2h5oh wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not moving away from public transit, but adding more viable alternatives to cars.

Milan, for instance, will dramatically reduce the number of people that can access public transportation.

... for covid-19. The reason isn't because PT sucks but to maintain distance between occupants, the article says.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#129

Post by pietrovismara »

bootloop wrote: post #18
jasonv wrote: post #11

I'm perplexed by the comments here. Some cities have seen greater business increases on pedestrian and bike converted through-ways because people in cars weren't just passing by. Bikers and pedestrians stopped and shopped in the areas they were traveling through. I, for one, look forward to making a choice to move to a place where I can live car-free and hope more cities accelerate plans like this.

There was so much fear-making in Vienna when they pushed for a pedestrian-first shopping mile in the city center. It would destroy economy.. People wouldn't come anymore with there car to buy stuff.. And what happened? A lot more people came, people going just for walks etc. Business increased substantially and now the chamber of commerce (which was heavily lobbying against it) wants even more "Begegnungszonen" as th…

Are you talking about Mariahilferstraße? If yes it's really good now, can't believe there was resistance to make it pedestrian-first. Hard to imagine how much less livable was the area with regular car traffic.

One thing that puzzles me, living in Vienna as an expat, is how much the average Austrian cared about banning smoke in bars/restaurants/etc (which is fine, don't get me wrong) but how little they do about car smog.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#130

Post by pietrovismara »

ekianjo wrote: post #93
cafxx wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Tokyo and I can assure you that living car-free is lovely. I used to love driving, then moved here and stopped caring altogether when I realized that public transport here is significantly faster (and cheaper) than using your car to go from point A to point B.

> I live in Tokyo and I can assure you that living car-free is lovely So you really enjoy packed subways that make you feel like cattle pretty much every time of the day? Sorry but Tokyo is the best example of "best in class public transport" being completely over capacity for the amount of people they have to transport every day.

Visit Vienna then. World class public transportation, not crowded at all.
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