More anti-car drivel. Sure there must be a balance but car-free isn't the way and won't be a thing. They had to scrap the Streatham Wells LTN after a three-mile bus journeys took two hours - and not everyone can walk three miles, let alone the entire route.
People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
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Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#42So, living in one of those cities (AMS) I have a few takes. I'm not ranting, just expressing my frustration:
1. Cars exists because they are more comfortable. I don't care that biking should better, it's not when it rains sideways, it's cold and windy. Biking sucks. I would pay top money to not be in a bike, not be outside getting drenched, and usually do ubering everywhere to the dismay of Dutch people,
2. Cities designed around biking are uber tied to public transport. I'm a lefty, I think that's great, but it's not, because the first time there are cuts to public service you find yourself living in the middle of nowhere and can only bike, because cars are too expensive to own. This happened in the Netherlands with NS slashing intercity trips, and increasing prices. I had colleagues now that now to live several hours per day in a packed commuter train. I can't see how that's better.
3. Any type of DIY activity becomes a nightmare. Want to rent move a couch? Good luck! Back home, you could load the thing on a nice Volvo and be happy.
4. Electric bikes are effectively not policed because it's the new thing we need to incentivize, and it becomes immediately super dangerous. I know people that had serious injuries because of crashes. Cars are inherently safer, especially modern SUV like volvos or tesla,
5. Accessibility becomes a nightmare, especially if you are in a wheelchair, your commute times are going to skyrocket,
All this "bikes are amazing" just reeks of some bad degrowth ideology. There is a duality between cars are bad and hydrocarbons are bad. Except they are literally the engine of growth, and for some reasons we decided that we should phase out hydrocarbons and replace them with some silly not reliable energy alternative (solar, wind). I can't see how this ends in a different way than how it went in Europe with our energy policy.
Cities are meant to grow and drive the economy, not to be Disneyland parks. If I want to bike I can go to Italy on a seaside town, I don't need to bike 356 days a year.
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#43Not even sure how you'd start off hating the idea. Less noise, less pollution, shorter commute, cheaper infrastructure, more green, more walking, improved health...I mean...just off the top of my head I'm thinking of tons of advantages. I can't think of a single disadvantage. The only reason I need a car is because the city / neighbourhood is configured around the expectation that everyone has a car.
I don't have a car and I'd love my city to be car free.
But some people think they need their car because they think they need to move a lot of stuff regularly, for instance between their home and their parents, and their parents don't leave in a place easily reachable without a car. This stuff can include pets, like cats. I think some of these people could do things differently, but maybe some of these people might genuinely have these needs.
Going to work daily to a place that needs a car is another concern. Sometimes at times outside the public transport hours. Very good public transport could mitigate this. But some people might also need to move a lot of stuff (tools, materials) for work, which might be complicated with public transports.
And when you move, public transports won't cut it.
But we could have almost car-free cities that allow these specific cases (possibly with special authorization), addressing most people / most cases with good public transport.
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#44Car free cities are great but you have to have a lot of problems solved for them to work . You need high density, lots of public services from libraries to pools all these need to be close. Public transport has to be safe so you have to actually enforce laws and arrest vagrants. Car free needs a lot of things to go right where car full cities can be pretty disfunctional
That’s not true. 2/3 of Parisians don’t even own a car and Paris is a very average city when it comes safety. Density is also pretty low for one of the biggest European cities. And it’s just a known example, there are a lot of cities way smaller than Paris where it’s easy to live car free.
The French work week is 7 hours so they get an extra hour to fuck around with public transportation a day. So that might help quite a bit. Still I’d be curious how upper middle class folks with kids survive without cars. Maybe that 33% covers the affluent folks with kids tho.
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#45Car free cities are great but you have to have a lot of problems solved for them to work . You need high density, lots of public services from libraries to pools all these need to be close. Public transport has to be safe so you have to actually enforce laws and arrest vagrants. Car free needs a lot of things to go right where car full cities can be pretty disfunctional
That’s not true. 2/3 of Parisians don’t even own a car and Paris is a very average city when it comes safety. Density is also pretty low for one of the biggest European cities. And it’s just a known example, there are a lot of cities way smaller than Paris where it’s easy to live car free.
2/3s sounds like a lot but it would be better to count how many households have no car.
And the US is covered with cities that can be lived in car-free; but the tradeoffs are too great for most people. (By definition any rural town that’s about a square mile or two is walkable.) Cars are so cheap and so good that most everyone grabs one when they can.
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#46People's aversion to change, even when the change is for something that is objectively better in every way, is really really annoying.
It seems to me that your "objectively better in every way" is subjective. If it were objectively better in every way, I'd give my car up obviously. But there's the _small_ matter of major inconvenience with places inaccessible by public transport, erratic public transport, bad last-mile solutions with private transportation waiting to fleece us for all we're worth, leaving me questioning my life choices when the last…
> But there's the _small_ matter of major inconvenience with places inaccessible by public transport, erratic public transport, bad last-mile solutions with private transportation waiting to fleece us for all we're worth,
Where do you live? I see places becoming inaccessible by car due to missing parking places and traffic jams and just love to take a bike / scooter / public transport (which could be much better even if we'd put more focus there, and would also help the poorer people) or by feet. The very few occasions I need a car could be handled by car sharing or delivery services.. I regret having bought one (:
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#47I was back in Taiwan last year after an extended absence. It's pretty amazing how easy it is to get around with a combination of the mass rapid transit (MRT) system and high speed rail (HSR). When I was last there, you still needed to take a bus or taxi from TPE to the city center. Now right from TPE airport, you can be in either Taipei city center in 30 minutes (MRT) or on the other end of the island in short order…
The way Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea fund trains is a big difference with the US (though ironically is similar to how the US used to fund trains in the 1800s). The companies (usually in some kind of private-public partnership from my understanding) who build and run the trains in East Asia typically get land around the train stop to develop into malls, shops, apartments, etc. These sales and rents then f…
This is sort of the model that Brightline (Fortress Investment) is using. They are spending money on the train service in hopes of increasing the values of their real estate investments.
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#48People's aversion to change, even when the change is for something that is objectively better in every way, is really really annoying.
>> People's aversion to change...
When cars first became affordable in the US in the 1910's, due to mass production and financing, they were very quickly adopted in massive numbers. So I don't think it is fair to say that people have an aversion to change.
Are you sure the annoyance isn't that they just don't want the changes you want them to want?
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#49I would have expected the article to give some clear pool/metric/statistics about "people hate the idea ... ". There are indeed loud people and big interest groups that oppose car free cities, but I am not sure about "people" in general. Sure, you need means of transport and to be able to live, and you can't change things over night, but if you would ask people "would you prefer to have a supermarket 5 minutes away o…
> but if you would ask people "would you prefer to have a supermarket 5 minutes away or one 20 kilometers away" I doubt anybody would say "no I want only things far to be forced to use a car".
For most people it's not about the supermarket. Those are a dime a dozen and all the same. It's easy to provide those in sufficient amounts everywhere.
Now try it with jobs. Not any job, but your job. Is it possible to have your job be 5 minutes from your home. How about in 5 years when your job is underpaid or unfulfilling? Is your next job also 5 minutes away? Or do you now have to move? And 5 years after that, when you're laid off?
I find that loads of people start out enjoying the car-free experience. And then they get a job in the next town. And/or they get kids, so commute-time takes away from kids-time. Life becomes too busy to spend the extra 30 minutes commuting per day that public transport would cost.
Between the trade-off bad job, no time, and car/public transport, the car quickly becomes the best solution. Even if you don't like driving.
Re: People hate the idea of car-free cities until they live in one
#50I have to live in a bubble then. I never heard people express hate of care free cities, but I hear the opposite all the time, people complaining how horrible car-centric cities are. But I’m a Western European who lived in cities all my life, don’t have a driving license, and has zero interest in cars ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Never move to the US - you’ll find yourself behind the wheel of an F350 with triple gun racks before you know it and not even realize it ;)