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It's a lot easier for Europe to go carless than the USA. They have better intra-city public transit for one. Also, most (all?) of their major cities laid out their grids before the invention of the car. In the USA, even older cities had all but their city centers designed around cars, and if you look at the top 10 cities, 7 of the 10 saw >90% of their road construction after the invention of the car. That being said,…
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Yes. This is done either for public use (tearing out a lane of public travel, and replacing it with a lane for buses only) or privatizing the street altogether (tearing out a lane, and replacing it with front yards, or restaurant seating, or whatever).
I believe you but have never heard of cities anywhere removing roads or lanes, only adding more. Can you give any examples of cities that have actually done this?
Though the examples do show what I consider progress, the tiny amount of changes reinforces your point, like deafening silence.
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> it's more crowded and looks desolate now. "desolate" means the opposite of "crowded". > The shops aren't deserted, but it's a different crowd. So the shops are missing the kind of people you would like to see shopping, but full of a "different" kind of people. What kind of people are those?
> "desolate" means the opposite of "crowded". No, it also means: : showing the effects of abandonment and neglect : DILAPIDATED > What kind of people are those? Bums, poor people, slob tourists.
That's a curiously selective reading of that definition.
> Bums, poor people, slob tourists.
And who are these desired, non "Bum", non-tourist wealthy people you wish were shopping there still?
Its amazing to me how cheap these changes are, and how much people love them after they are implemented. You go to a neighborhood meeting in the US and all you hear about is "loss of parking", "traffic", but when you remove the cars, everyone loves it.
I never knew loss of parking was even a thing in the US. I can't imagine it being as bad as within European cities where most of the streets (and adjacent buildings) have been built before cars were a thing. Probably one of the main reasons why alternatives to cars are well-received is that cars have never been an option anyways, especially in historic districts. Big cars are another dimension of this problem. Americ…
There was a big hooplah in my neighborhood when a nearby government building converted to being leased from a developer, who immediately started charging for parking. Most of the employees found places to park on the nearby residential streets, annoying the residents due to the added congestion and traffic, including on a street that was already a designated bike thoroughfare.
I certainly support better urban planning, and I get around town by bike whenever possible, but I'm also sympathetic to the short term disruptions that people have adapted to parking arrangements that can change overnight.
Its amazing to me how cheap these changes are, and how much people love them after they are implemented. You go to a neighborhood meeting in the US and all you hear about is "loss of parking", "traffic", but when you remove the cars, everyone loves it.
The pattern will repeat with flying, decreasing population growth, and moving the economy from producing so much disposable stuff.
But we're still in the stage where everyone thinks of what they'll miss, not what they'll gain.
If you want to experience a car-free place in the US, you should check out Mackinac Island in between the Upper and Lower peninsulas of Michigan. Horses, bikes, and feet are the forms of transportation—motorized vehicles have been banned since 1898. There’s great history, Victorian architecture, and Great Lakes beauty. It’s a pure slice of Americana.
How does that work out during the winter up there?
True story: Kirk Cousins used to one of the intrepid winter-bikers on MSU’s campus. Good thing he didn’t break his $84 million arm.
I have lived in both Europe and US for years. It is not fair to compare both places as the population density is totally different. You still do need a car if you are living in suburb area in Europe (in my case the Netherlands). And in US there is much less people living in the city.
I'd argue that even the suburbs of Netherlands are super bike-friendly. It's always a reasonable bike ride to the nearest train station, buses fill in the rest, and the roads are setup to be safe for bikers. That's not really the case in most of the US.
I agree, the biking experience in the US doesn't compare at all to the Dutch experience. Dedicated bike paths are a game-changer. A fully-connected path network takes it to a whole other level.
Not just Europe! Tokyo, for example, is a remarkably pedestrian and bicycle-friendly city, despite also supporting quite heavy traffic in some areas. And of course, the extensive train network completely eliminates the need for a car in daily life. If you pick a random place on the map (like [1]), you'll see that the high-speed traffic is very well-separated from residential areas, with infrequent intersections. Ther…
The Superblock. This is what makes the these cities so comfortable to live in. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_block#Superblock
Almost all[1] roads in Tokyo are single lane! Not "one lane each direction" but "one lane". The massive avenues are sparse because it turns out you don't need that sort of capacity in most places.
Walking around Tokyo, even European cities feel super wasteful and car-centric with how wide roads are.
[1]: maybe 80%+? Less true in the most popular parts of the city though, where you have the biggest ap't complexes
Its amazing to me how cheap these changes are, and how much people love them after they are implemented. You go to a neighborhood meeting in the US and all you hear about is "loss of parking", "traffic", but when you remove the cars, everyone loves it.
There is pushback against car-impacting measures in Europe too, make no mistake. The yellow jackets in France started as a protest against increase in tax on petrol. The previous president in France, Hollande, had to roll back a toll system. It took Paris 2 years of legal battles to close the roads along the Seine. The major difference, compared witg the US, is that at least in an urban setting, in Europe you can ima…