Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by DoreenMichele » Mon, Apr 27, 2020, 8:08 AM UTC

3131s wrote: post #238

DoreenMichele wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I spend a lot of time on Hacker News where, for a time at least, articles regularly appeared here about the desire of Sam Altman and Elon Musk to institute a UBI. A quick search would readily turn them up.

Sam Altman has grown quieter about it, but his desire to make it real persists. He put $5 million of his own money into a UBI experiment when he was president of YC and, more recently, he backed some presidential candidate who was proposing UBI as part of his political platform. I think the candidate's name was Andrew Yang.

My proposals:

We fix the housing supply issues we have and institute universal health coverage in the US. Those two things would go a long ways towards improving things for the lower classes.

I don't necessarily think it's impossible to have a UBI alongside "other nice things." I just know that what I've read so far doesn't at all bode well for UBI being a positive.

Should I start hearing different things, I would be amenable to changing my mind. Given some of what happened during the pandemic, I'm cautiously hopeful that someday things will be different.

But today does not seem to be that day.

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

#242

Post by anigbrowl » Mon, Apr 27, 2020, 9:09 AM UTC

throwawaysea wrote: post #81

anigbrowl wrote: post #48

San Francisco and Oakland have implemented a 'slow streets' initiative, gradually closing off some streets to through traffic (residential/emergency vehicles only) to allow more room for exercise. Predictably people have begun to deploy street furniture of their own (flower planters and so on) to make it more permanent. Nobody wants all the traffic and associated pollution back. Hard to predict how this will pan out…

That’s obnoxious. Cars and vehicles are necessary for many people and many purposes and cities should not use this crisis as a Trojan horse to force changes hastily. Deploying furniture to make it permanent sounds like the doing of a renegade cycle club and not everyday people, however.

People who live there or are servicing residents (deliveries etc) still have access, it's only through traffic that's disallowed. This is unlikely to add more than a few blocks to your journey.

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

#243

Post by cafxx » Mon, Apr 27, 2020, 9:20 AM UTC

TulliusCicero wrote: post #219

vinay_ys wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you took my "assigned seating" literally. I obviously didn't mean _seating_ but more of an assigned spot in a train car. The point of an assigned spot is that there can be different designated areas for different people – elderly, women, kids, disabled, those with cycles, those with luggage, general etc. and now with Covid19, these assigned spot density could be appropriately adjusted.

I still don't see how that would help. What does adjusted mean? The problem is there isn't enough capacity, yeah they could just reduce how many people can take the train, that means people being late to work or otherwise with an impacted schedule. And they already know which train routes at which times are crowded, if they could just add more capacity they'd have already done it.

Most stations already have posters telling you:

- which cars are normally less crowded

- which cars are recommended for getting off at a certain station, based on proximity of the exits at that station to each car

Google Maps (as well as other apps) also show similar information when asking for transit directions (for the former it only gives you the average on the whole train, not by car)

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

#244

Post by bluGill » Mon, Apr 27, 2020, 12:13 PM UTC

secondraft wrote: post #66

bluGill wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the point. There are people who want to go somewhere but congestion is making them not go. Eventually you get a head of it and things are free flowing while everyone gets where they want to go. In middle of nowhere rural area everything is this way. In big dense cities you would need 30+ levels of bridges (at much great expense per user than rural gravel roads). I will fully agree that cities should build som…

One way of looking at it is to consider the area of road required per citizen during transportation. If a car consumes 10 square meters of road and a bike only consumes 2 square meters of road, converting a car lane into two bike lanes should immediately reduce traffic congestion. If and only if, of course, enough people are able and willing to do so.

Cars can go a lot faster than a bicycle (assuming safety is a concern, there is a reason I don't have a motorcycle - which isn't to say cars are safe) thus per unit time you can get more distance in a car. Which is back to my point: you are throwing away the point of the city with that argument. I realize parking takes more space, but it will be ages before the city rebuilds to the new reality and until then it isn't functioning like it should.

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

#245

Post by covidSurvivor19 » Wed, Apr 29, 2020, 8:36 AM UTC

DoreenMichele wrote: post #88

covidSurvivor19 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't know why you are downvoted, your ideas are very good and insightful. Thanks for bringing up the idea of the separation of public and private spheres, it was something I couldn't articulate for a long time as to why somehow the suburbs always felt better and healthier for me. I still don't understand my peers obsession with living in downtowns (you can always drive downtown if you want to go there). I do find is…

I do find issue with your need to re-envision our social fabric. My feeling is that there is a failure to communicate somewhere here. At the risk of just digging my grave deeper, if only because I'm horrendously short of sleep, let me try a second time to explain what I mean. Our demographics have simply changed a great deal. It's not unlike saying "We can't weave what you want us to weave. We don't have the right ma…

Got a bit busy, but came upon an essay today and reminded me of this thread. It is super interesting for me and I think you will enjoy it as it talks a lot about the context of the creation of suburbs and how society changed. https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastpsychiatrist/comments/93jztv...

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

#246

Post by DoreenMichele » Wed, Apr 29, 2020, 8:38 AM UTC

covidSurvivor19 wrote: post #245

DoreenMichele wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do find issue with your need to re-envision our social fabric. My feeling is that there is a failure to communicate somewhere here. At the risk of just digging my grave deeper, if only because I'm horrendously short of sleep, let me try a second time to explain what I mean. Our demographics have simply changed a great deal. It's not unlike saying "We can't weave what you want us to weave. We don't have the right ma…

Got a bit busy, but came upon an essay today and reminded me of this thread. It is super interesting for me and I think you will enjoy it as it talks a lot about the context of the creation of suburbs and how society changed. https://www.reddit.com/r/thelastpsychiatrist/comments/93jztv...

thx