But those cars, as has been explained to you, don’t do nearly as many trips per year. Mobility in families is actually higher, since each individual has sturdy legs, and highly likely, a bike after they’re about 5 years old. Kids often travel to school, after school events etc on foot, bike or public transport, not dependent as in many car-centric places on parents and their cars. Grandma is as likely to bike over fo…
Yes, but they still own them. In Paris, and many commenters here argue that you shouldn't own one.
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…
Suburbs are fine. We are in 2025, not 1925, there is no reason why work from home isn't an option for information workers and others who don't need to be physically on premises. You are completely ignoring how much that cuts down on traffic and would lower the cost of real estate, so more people who aren't millionaires could live downtown. We also have electric cars that have basically zero emissions, there is a tech…
Yet RTO is in full enforcement all over the place, sadly.
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.
I‘m currently visiting Paris for the second time in my life after 2008. I can tell you it’s much cleaner now than it has been back then. There are many electric (cargo) bikes, scooters, cars and buses. The city is much quieter and there is way less crazy traffic. There are few cars parked on the side of the street. However these parking spots were cleared for bike lanes and bike sharing parking. Biggest polluter are the garage trucks, which are still diesel and noisy. If they manage to replace them by electric ones, many parts of the city will be really quiet.
Because the truth is nobody has any real idea how to retrofit the last 70 years of American suburbia so that mass transit is actually effective and useful for people. "Transit-oriented development" really only helps downtown workers and doesn't get you to the grocery store or daycare. (And even in NYC, the subway is not great out in Queens/etc, so people own cars.) But it is nice to live in the Mission and take the t…
I find it fascinating how the debate around cars in cities evolves. Initially counter arguments always are that reducing cars is not desirable "nobody wants less cars in cities, people need to do their weekly groceries, nobody wants to bike in bad weather...". Once these points are refuted it always evolves into "yes it would be great, but it can't be done, because it's too expensive, politically controversial...". I…
You are putting a lot of pointless words in my mouth. As I said, I have actually lived the San Francisco car-free bike and streetcar lifestyle, and quite enjoyed it. So I have the perspective of why it does or does not work (for Americans). I would love to see some concrete solutions proposed here other than just the usual Cars Bad/Cars Good handwaving and downvoting.
(I just looked at Bodega in Google Maps, and it is significantly more dense than all but the most "boogie" American cities. Compare it to say Chicago.)
That is a statement that really needs citation and qualification to back it up. I'd argue that 'cheaper' is used in a vacuum here. By that I mean that the point of mass transit isn't how much it costs, but how much value it provides. By that measure the bus services that replaced streetcars and other mass transit really doesn't stack up. Busses have led to much lower ridership which has led to a massive amount of bad…
The citation is every American transit system in the 1950s. Even SF only kept the streetcars where they couldn't replace with a bus line. I think you're making a different argument, where trains attract a more well-heeled commuter. Which is why many cities have brought back LRT as part of a redevelopment plan.
The argument I am making is that you can only say something was cheaper if it provided the same level of service or better for less money. In the case of the bus transition it provided worse service as indicated by utilization dropping. I am also making the argument that evaluating the value of transit shouldn't rest entirely on the cost of that service and ridership but on the value as a whole it brings to a city. I mentioned NYC because the evidence there (and in other cities that have implemented congestion pricing) is that as ridership goes up the economic, environment, and social health of a city also goes up. Point being, the bus transition had a very negative value impact. I will also add a final argument, as your ridership drops things like busses may appear less costly per ride simply because you are loosing volume and low volume routes are likely easier to service by bus so, again, cheaper but not an apples to apples comparison.
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.
I hate cars. Not using my car wouldn't change any of the things I hate about cars or car infrastructure. It's not lying.
Worth noting that 50-60% of passenger cars in France are diesel, but Paris have been gradually banning older higher emission diesels (Crit’air 3, 4, 5) from Paris. Banning cars outright also works, of course, but I suspect a lot of the reduction can be attributed to getting particularly bad diesel cars out vs. the limited areas where cars are entirely restricted.
Also worth noting that with modern emissions standards (and transition to EVs), over 50% of handful particulates come from tires, brakes, road surface wear, and resuspended dust: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/non-exhaust-particulate... I don't think there's any healthy level of private cars coexisting with humans in a city, without even considering the more immediate harms from crashes, etc.
What if the cars were made really light?
Four bicycle wheels, as many batteries as you can safely put on something supported by four bicycle wheels, an aerodynamic CFRP bubble for the driver etc?
I think such a vehicle can be better than one thinks, with acceptable range, acceptable particle emissions, acceptable noise levels; and I think they could easily get to 80 km/h safely.
Buses are perfectly accessible in Paris. They are crowded but acceptably so for a city of 10 millions. It’s not fair to expect the collectivity to accept the externalities of cars so rich people can avoid some slight discomfort.
Paris is not a city of 10 millions, it has only two million habitants. And cars are not reserved to rich people, why would they be? I grew up in Paris, my parents weren't rich, we were living in public housing and we had a car. Families are not second-tier citizens, and currently the public transports are not suited for them. On top of the other problems, such as the pleasure of having to deal with crackheads and var…
Also worth noting that with modern emissions standards (and transition to EVs), over 50% of handful particulates come from tires, brakes, road surface wear, and resuspended dust: https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/non-exhaust-particulate... I don't think there's any healthy level of private cars coexisting with humans in a city, without even considering the more immediate harms from crashes, etc.
It seems that there has been fundamental mistakes and overstatements in the amount of particles from brakes in much of the secondary research in the last decades. Details: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00792
Then from what the pollution in the subway come from ?