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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

#231

Post by Barrin92 »

petre wrote: post #80
Barrin92 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growing up we didn't have a lot of money and my family didn't have a car, (and a license in Germany is quite expensive, about 1k and it involves a ton of lessons) or vacations, so I basically just bolted to a university town when I was 18 and as a developer in an urban environment, I've never needed one since. Nowadays as an adult, I think on vacations it might actually be a good thing because I've found just taking…

You should probably see the trains in some Eastern European countries then. Slow and dirty.

I've been to Eastern Europe several times over the last few years. In some countries public infrastructure is so-so but that's mostly a function of the countries still not being super wealthy. Overall I had a good experience.

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

#232

Post by astura »

spodek wrote: post #47
btilly wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Moreover, Hoboken had to ban smoking too to regain its residents preferring smoke-free bars and restaurants in the city -- the opposite of naysayers' expectations. It will happen with cars and plastic here (NYC) too. I hope the polluters don't resist as much.

I'm a member of a private club (not in ny) that allowed smoking well past the law disallowed smoking in the public places. Business started struggling several years back, finally, they realized that the problem was they allowed smoking so they voluntary banned it and now business is much better.

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

#233

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

bootloop wrote: post #173
pietrovismara wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, I meant the Mahü. 1908 - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Mariahil... 2006 - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Mariahil... Today - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Wien_07_... Smoking was definitely the much bigger problem. The average Austrian, if he doesn't life in Vienna, is simply not confronted with smog. I guess what helps tremendously to cover up the…

>The average Austrian, if he doesn't life in Vienna, is simply not confronted with smog.

"coughs in Graz smog"

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

#234

Post by [deleted] »

new2628 wrote: post #216
petre wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An average of 35 km/h is okay? I could probably do that with my bike.

I very much doubt that the average train speed in EE is 35 km/h, and I traveled extensively by train from the baltics through the balkans over several decades. If you take the average EE train, it is worse than Western Europe or Japan, comparable or better than US, with more extensive coverage.

[deleted]

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

#235

Post by ghaff »

lh7777 wrote: post #230
arcticbull wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does buying a car really make sense in a Zipcar/Getaround/Silvercar world? The numbers just don't work out IMO. Not once you factor in fuel, maintenance, damage, insurance, interest, car payments and/or depreciation, $300+/month in parking fees and the fact I still have to rent a bigger car if I need to pick stuff up or drop stuff off or shuttle more people. I gave my car to my parents a couple years after I moved to…

What's availability like, though? I know that my car doesn't make any financial sense, but my primary use case is getting out of town to go hiking, skiing, etc. I've looked into Zipcar before, but it seemed like I'd have to reserve a car ahead of time to have any chance of getting one on a nice day. In Seattle, we used to have ReachNow, Car2Go and Lime in addition to Zip, but those others recently closed down so I'm…

Personally, I've always had a car since school but I've been in on things like a ski house with people from NYC and I lead hikes in New England on the weekends. People can (and do) carpool, rent cars, etc. but it's quite a pain if you do it regularly. Most of the people I know who liven in Boston and are active in weekend outdoors activities own a car because of the hassle of renting.

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

#236

Post by cafxx »

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.

> you feel like cattle pretty much every time of the day

First of all this is not true, so I would start questioning whether you know what you're talking about at all, or whether you're not trying to have an informed conversation based on facts.

Outside of peak rush hours, roughly between 8-9 in the morning and 6-7 in the evening, and mostly on a few well-known lines, it is extremely unlikely for trains to be anywhere close to "packed". Let alone making you feel "like cattle". This kinda already undermines your point.

It is true though that during those peak times, on those lines, the system is over capacity. And this is where working for a company that has flexible working hours and that allows work from home helps tremendously. While this is still not widespread, there are active policy campaigns to push more businesses to enact the same measures - exactly to ease congestion in those peak times. So the problem is not structural, and there is a clear direction that can improve things.

Furthermore, even today with some planning and knowledge you can avoid the worst of the congestion (see my point about reach in my first comment).

Anyway, to answer your question: no, I don't enjoy packed subways, as I don't enjoy being stuck in traffic, or being robbed at gunpoint. But to me (your question asked whether "_I_ enjoy packed subways") it really does not matter, because both are things that I normally do not experience.

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

#237

Post by cafxx »

ekianjo wrote: post #116
olcor wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> In my personal opinion, better that than trawling slowly through traffic jams. I think the best way to describe it is that it sucks either way to commute in Tokyo no matter what means of transports you end up using, except if you can live very close to your office, which is not the experience of 99% of people.

As mentioned in my previous comment, it really does sound like you don't know what you're talking about.

Commuting in Tokyo is not without problem, but consistently better than commuting anywhere else I've been.

Also, you seem to completely ignore the point that the alternative "everyone commutes by car" (or you have other alternatives?) would result in a constant gridlock given Tokyo's scale - so it would be orders of magnitude worse.

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

#238

Post by 3131s »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #176
hnarn wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is US-centric though. As noted elsewhere, I'm pretty short of sleep, so I no doubt could have said some things better. Yes, some of what I'm describing is very US-centric. But not all of it. When I was growing up, most of the world lived and worked on farms. Within my lifetime -- in fact, within the lifetime of my children -- that changed and we now have more people living in cities worldwide than on farms. The…

I really wonder what fantasy world you live in where the elites are just clamouring to institute a UBI.

So far only a single congressperson that I am aware of has advocated for it, and that's Ilhan Omar, who is a hero of mine.

Why is it impossible to have a UBI alongside other nice things? What better proposal do you have to reduce wealth inequality?

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

#239

Post by adreamingsoul »

jononor wrote: post #134
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…

The highways today mostly go below the city. But that is a quite recent thing, the last parts of the Opera tunnel for example was opened only 10 years ago. Car traffic was a big problem in the 1970-2000. Making modern Oslo nocar-friendly and Oslo center pedestrian/bicyclist friendly is the result of massive investments in infrastructure over several decades.

Thanks for sharing. It is impressive to me that a city of Oslo's size was able to achieve that. I know of one similar sized city in the States that has similar high-level plans to re-route major roads and highways, but they never make much progress beyond committee meetings.

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

#240

Post by adreamingsoul »

jeltz wrote: post #194
doktrin wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I think you missed my point. If more than half of Oslo was built after 1950 it kinda invalidates that the city was built before cars. Oslo, like most cities, expanded heavily in an era where cars existed. So it has less to do with when cities were built and more to do with what urban planning policies different cities had. Different cities went with different paths despite all of them expanding at the same time. But…

Valid point. Thank you for pointing that out.
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