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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

#161

Post by lovemenot »

dvcrn wrote: post #147
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.

Living in Tokyo as well and yeah, the subway is a nightmare. It's GOOD, gets you everywhere pretty fast but for daily morning commuting - nah. Taking an overcrowded train every day squeezed into heaps of people that all don't want to be there gets very depressing with enough repetition cycles. A good reminder of how insignificant everything is. I am glad I have flex time and can avoid peak-time trains. But Tokyo is a…

Even before this corona-virus, Tokyo Metro had been providing small incentives to get people to commute before or after the crush hours. I imagine such attempts will be magnified in future.

I use this system every day and for me, it's not just good, it's fantastic. The number of routes, frequency and reliability of service is unsurpassed in any city. Notorious crushing may stick in the mind, but moving around the entire city at any time of day...

That visceral image of over-crowding is real but not really representative. From now we'll all need to do more efficient sharding of work schedules and locations.

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

#162

Post by doktrin »

jeltz wrote: post #159
adreamingsoul wrote: post #119

My family (child, spouse) and I live car free in Oslo, Norway. It’s amazing. We used to own two vehicles when we lived in the States. I did take public transportation during the week, but still had to drive almost everywhere else. When everything is designed around cars, it can be extremely difficult to try and go without. Oslo was mostly built before cars, so roads are smaller and highways go below or around the cit…

Hm, I think most of Oslo was actually built after cars. Oslo has about twice the population today as it had in 1950.

> Oslo has about twice the population today as it had in 1950.

That's a weird supporting argument. Can you name any urban centers that have not seen significant population growth since 1950?

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

#163

Post by stevesimmons »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #85
throwawaysea wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find this type of anti car narrative to be disingenuous, because it doesn’t pass a sanity check of the common sense reality around us. Pedestrians are not impeded in getting around as long as sidewalks or enough roadside space is available. And cyclists are an exceedingly small minority in most places compared to car drivers. That’s because cars are the fastest and most convenient way to travel from point a to poin…

First, there is a lot of development that falls under what I call "Fuck you pedestrian" development. It's not uncommon for intersections in big cities to require a pedestrian to cross all three ways to get to the other side or walk a block to cross at all. I've been to strip malls where fencing forced pedestrians to walk the long way around, following the same route and going through the same entrance as a car, inste…

Amsterdam promoted cars and was very bike-unfriendly from the 1920s to the 1970s. It took a lot of concerted campaigning to get Dutch politicians and urban designers to start prioritising bikes again.

Here is a newspaper story about the changes:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...

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

#164

Post by Symbiote »

jariel wrote: post #31
Symbiote wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing in the article to suggest they're reducing service. There's also nothing in your comment to suggest you read the article, so I don't think you're aware of what's planned. > the floors of metro cars and buses will be marked out with circles showing passengers the right level of distance to maintain. If the system looks like it will exceed the passenger numbers that makes this level of distancing possi…

"There is nothing in the article to suggest they're reducing service" "Accordingly, says Milan Mayor Beppe Sala, the city plans to maintain its metro system’s capacity at less than two-thirds of its pre-pandemic activity. Instead of the 1.4 million average trips it saw daily before the pandemic, it will accommodate a maximum daily ridership of 400,000."" Is literally from the article and the comment I was responding…

> By cutting service in specific routes

You invented that bit.

It is perhaps clearer in the original announcement from the head of the Milanese transport authority:

"Our metro carried around 1,400,000 people every day. To maintain a distance of one meter, while keeping the maximum service, as in the height of the winter season, this number will have to drop to 25-30%."

https://www.radiolombardia.it/2020/04/21/granelli-a-milano-p...

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

#165

Post by choeger »

pimeys wrote: post #142
acd wrote: post #113

I hope we remove cars from city centers in Europe and replace them with more bike lanes and public transport. Ie the small particle pollution from cars is making pedestrians and cyclist sick. I hope we put car parking centers outside the city center and offer good inbound public / private transport. I would say clean air is an example of Tragedy of the commons, where the pollution is an externalized cost. https://en.…

As an asthmatic person, I hope this too. Berlin is quite bad on some streets, especially due to people's love for diesel cars. This also includes trucks and diesel buses.

I don't want to trash your hopes, but the particles are pretty much independent from traffic nowadays (see how Stuttgart is doing these days). The drought around Berlin will probably kick way more fine particles into the city than all Diesel cars together. The only thing that could help would be more trees and less dense cities.

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

#166

Post by vinay427 »

mjmahone17 wrote: post #73
ghaff wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I lived in Boston--as opposed to a fairly far out exurb--I could imagine not owning a car given that I mostly work remotely. Though I probably still would so I could get out to mountains, etc. for the weekend. In any case, I would certainly want to be able to drive so I could do various vacations and sometimes necessary work driving. Some of this is less common in Uber days but certainly not non-existent. My point…

When do you need to? If your family never drives, you wouldn’t see a need to. It’s almost like asking “well wouldn’t you want to be able to go camping?” Sure, if you grew up camping you might know you want that. But if you didn’t, why would you even think about going camping? Similarly, if you’ve only lived in a city where you can hire a driver (cabs, moving vans, etc) as needed, why would you ever think you need to…

I've lived without a car for years but I still find a license invaluable for the few times I'm moving or helping someone move. It's much (much!) cheaper where I live to borrow a car from a friend or car share service than pay a moving service. I aim to never use a car except when moving or visiting family inaccessible to public transit.

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

#167

Post by adrianN »

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.

The alternative would be that almost everybody can't get to their jobs. A subway line running at full capacity can't be matched by cars in throughput. Tokyo as it exists today would be literally impossible without public transport.

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

#168

Post by bjohnson225 »

arcticbull wrote: post #150
acd wrote: post #113

I hope we remove cars from city centers in Europe and replace them with more bike lanes and public transport. Ie the small particle pollution from cars is making pedestrians and cyclist sick. I hope we put car parking centers outside the city center and offer good inbound public / private transport. I would say clean air is an example of Tragedy of the commons, where the pollution is an externalized cost. https://en.…

Milan plans to reduce metro capacity to about 1/3 permanently. Talk about learning the wrong lessons here, oof. This feels like one of those near-sighted decisions that leads to tons of negative knock-on effects.

No, it’s temporary. They’re planning reduced capacity for the metro as part of phase 2 of Italy’s coronavirus response - a careful reopening of the economy with some significant restrictions remaining in place. Eventually it’ll be safe to stand in packed train carriages again, but not yet.

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

#169

Post by tonyedgecombe »

acd wrote: post #113

I hope we remove cars from city centers in Europe and replace them with more bike lanes and public transport. Ie the small particle pollution from cars is making pedestrians and cyclist sick. I hope we put car parking centers outside the city center and offer good inbound public / private transport. I would say clean air is an example of Tragedy of the commons, where the pollution is an externalized cost. https://en.…

Ie the small particle pollution from cars is making pedestrians and cyclist sick.

It's making car drivers sick as well, they have to breath the same air and often air intakes are close to the exhaust of the car in front.

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

#170

Post by jfim »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #169
acd wrote: post #113

I hope we remove cars from city centers in Europe and replace them with more bike lanes and public transport. Ie the small particle pollution from cars is making pedestrians and cyclist sick. I hope we put car parking centers outside the city center and offer good inbound public / private transport. I would say clean air is an example of Tragedy of the commons, where the pollution is an externalized cost. https://en.…

Ie the small particle pollution from cars is making pedestrians and cyclist sick. It's making car drivers sick as well, they have to breath the same air and often air intakes are close to the exhaust of the car in front.

That's why most cars have a cabin air filter though.
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