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Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#161

Post by andrepd »

Saline9515 wrote: post #124
microtonal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you could just make a city car-free. There are so many benefits besides fewer particles in the air. People can walk and cycle safely. Kids can play in the streets. The atmosphere is so much nicer, since people are not isolated by walls around them. I have lived in a city with a (nearly) car-free city center (+ separate bike lines for many roads outside the center) for most of my adult life [1] and it is just glori…

Kids can't play in streets as now the new predators are cyclists who don't slow down or get down of their bikes. Besides, cars are a staple for families, and hardly substituable. Good luck doing groceries for 6 without one.

It's mind boggling to me that this is a genuine comment.

I suggest this yt channel as a start to open your eyes as to how yes, another world is possible https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#162

Post by paulcole »

grg0 wrote: post #31

Cars in cities, let alone designing cities around cars, is one of the greatest tragedies of modern life.

At least in the US people absolutely fucking love their cars.

They will lie about how much they hate them but ask them to actually change their behavior and you get nothing but a litany of excuses.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#163

Post by foldr »

jfengel wrote: post #43
pluc wrote: post #38

Don't have to ban cars - the UK has adopted a speed limit of 20/30 mph in cities and I'm sure it helps. Surely helps with the noise and the safety

A lot of the problems occur where you couldn't go 20 mph. The City of London famously has a congestion charge, which also helps lot. A similar plan just got started in Manhattan and already has big wins.

The congestion charge applies to a zone within London that’s much larger than just the City of London.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#164

Post by skort »

flomo wrote: post #138
epolanski wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's one of the biggest promoters of inequality. I am an European who studied at OSU in Columbus for a semester and it was absurd to me how on one side there was lots of work downtown, yet you could live 20 miles of it and it would take you two hours by public transport to get there, an odyssey. People without a car, insurance, poorer parts of the society were cut off from the job market for not having a way to c…

In the USA, the working poor generally don't work downtown, and it's really the industrial areas where there is awful transit service. So cheapo used cars are a must for these folks. There is some awful HN bias here where young healthy well-paid tech workers live in some boogie part of SF/NYC/Boston/etc and enjoy the "car-free lifestyle" (and I've been there), without any idea how the other half lives.

I've seen this "car free utopia" idea dismissed as an idea by and for "elites" (see Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy's comments on people who ride the subway in NYC) plenty of times as a tactic to avoid doing anything about reducing dependence on cars. It's quite a counterproductive argument in my opinion. Even if there are well paid tech workers who are able to enjoy a "car-free lifestyle", why should it end there?

Just because the system we created means that currently the only affordable place for the working poor is in suburbs where they must rely on cars doesn't mean that it needs to continue to be that way. You can support building infill housing and adding transit to eventually reduce the need for so many people to have cars.

It's one thing to call it "bias" and use that as an argument to not make things better instead of coming up with ways to help make car independence available to everyone across classes.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#165

Post by rebolek »

timewizard wrote: post #105
grg0 wrote: post #31

Cars in cities, let alone designing cities around cars, is one of the greatest tragedies of modern life.

There are cities not designed around cars. We just call them "rural." You could not have had your urban city without cars. There is absolutely nothing "tragic" about this. Meanwhile you live in a world where petty wars are fought over resources to enhance the wealth of an extreme minority of the population. That's an actual tragedy.

I lived car-free life in a (European) city without any hassle. I moved to "rural" and can't imagine I would be able to live there without a car. In city, you can afford to have public transport on every corner going every ten minutes. In the rural area it's impossible.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#167

Post by gniv »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #6

How much of this has to do with the policies highlighted - removing 50k parking spots, adding bike lanes and green spaces - and how much has to do with cars having better exhaust? How much less cars are on the road today vs then? The charts and title make it look like there's no cars in Paris anymore. That's not the case, at all.

Like another commenter in this thread I suspect it's mostly due to banning cars with Crit'air > 2.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#168

Post by Saline9515 »

andrepd wrote: post #137
Saline9515 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly have a non-existent knowledge of French political life. This referendum had a participation rate of 4%, and only 62% of the voters voted yes. So around 2% of the total voters. By the way, the French metro's air is highly polluted, due to tire degradation and brake dust, making it unfit for children or pregnant women. So yeah, it's manageable for young people. But when a baby arrives, it's hell. Same if yo…

Dutch people seem to do just fine with baby seats on their bikes, or bakfiets if you have lots of kids. Anecdotally, kids are also much happier when they can just bike to school/sports/activities with their friends instead of having their parents drive then everywhere on the back of the family SUV.

Dutch people using bikes for everything is a meme, they have as many cars per inhabitants as most of the developed nations. Anecdotically, they are a small, dense, flat country, with an oceanic weather.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territ...

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#169

Post by michaelcampbell »

gre wrote: post #25
TulliusCicero wrote: post #5

Those are some really awesome changes. If only we could get more of that for cities in the US.

Right when covid started I drove around Austin to pick something up. There were hardly any cars on the road and the air looked pristine after several days of people mostly staying at home.

Immediately followig 9/11 in the US, there were a number of atmospheric scientists that were able to conduct studies for the first time without jet con-trails in the air.

Re: Air pollution fell substantially as Paris restricted car traffic

#170

Post by Der_Einzige »

Saline9515 wrote: post #100
oblio wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be real here, a huge chunk of car traffic in cities is purely for convenience. Once that's reduced by say, 50%, everything becomes much better, but nobody gives up convenience voluntarily.

The problem is that, among casualties, you create an environment that is hostile for families and disabled people.

A lot of car drivers will respond with “good” and Darwinian arguments about their lack of fitness for the harshness of life.
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