191–200 of 246 posts
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Reminds me of bars in NYC back when smoking bans were implemented. They all thought they would lose business. They gained it instead as new customers who had been avoiding bars because of the smell of smoke flocked there instead.
Sounds like the opposite effect that it had in the UK.
Is this really corona related? I'm hearing this for many years now.
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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?
But the answer your question: Vienna. Vienna has smaller population today than it did in 1910.
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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.
I expected the train to work to be packed around 8:30am, but instead there was tons of space.
Most of the time the trains in Tokyo aren't super packed (though I'm sure this is accurate for some commuter routes).
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I never even got a drivers license and have lived just fine so I'm also always shocked by the comments here in transport-related threads when people talk about not having a car as if this is somehow a fantasy utopian vision. And this also I might add includes families with children. While I don't have any I know a lot of parents who don't rely on cars either.
I have zero trouble understanding that owning a personal car may not make economic sense in many cities. I have more trouble really grokking the no driver license. So many trips associated with both work and vacation experiences--or even weekend activities outside of a city--require renting a car. I guess you can consciously avoid those situations but it seems very limiting. (Certainly I couldn't really have done job…
When I moved to New Zealand after ~2 weeks I bought a car because it wasn't feasible to move around without one.
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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 increa…
Not to mention the trains stop every minute or two, and people don't, like, book that stuff ahead of time.
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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…
Tokyo is the opposite of what i would call bicycle friendly. People there are probably much more careful than in other cities, but i was amazed at the lack of infrastructure for bikes when i visited the city a few months ago. Bikes are either merged with car traffic, or simply go on the sidewalk, but i haven’t seen a single bicycle lane..
The current city doesn't work anyway. A lot of our development patterns were born of seeds planted in the 1950s during an era when the nuclear family -- with a male breadwinner, female homemaker and 2.5 kids -- was the assumed standard basic "economic unit" and one male breadwinner provided adequate money, healthcare benefits, etc for multiple other people. Suburbs grew out of the idea of a separation of the public a…
> Suburbs grew out of the idea of a separation of the public and private spheres. Please note the assumption there is that it separates them for the male breadwinner. This is US-centric though. The notion of downtown vs. suburbia is the complete opposite in Europe for example, and in many other parts of the world as well. I remember as a kid learning English and learning about the US that it was amazing to me that "d…