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Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

citylab.com

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Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#151

Post by maxander »

curioussavage wrote: post #141

Not in the suburbs... cheap automated taxis are a way more realistic idea for reducing traffic. Not just for last mile either. Switching transportation in the middle of a trip even once wastes a ton of time and adds hassle.

> Switching transportation in the middle of a trip even once wastes a ton of time and adds hassle.

Does it? When driving into Boston, I’ve found it almost always better to park in a big garage on the edge of town and ride a bus/subway in, rather than spend ~20 minutes looking for parking near my destination (or paying for one of the massively more expensive in-town garages.)

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#152

Post by damnyou »

tomtheelder wrote: post #100
ghaff wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Absolutely no one is advocating removing cars from those areas. You'll find plenty of people here who will be happy to argue that living outside of dense cities is unsustainable and has to end. They're wrong. But it's their opinion.

I engage pretty heavily with civic & transit planning, and I've never heard someone argue that in my entire life. If that is an opinion held by some, they are certainly a minuscule minority.

https://mobile.twitter.com/graue/status/1202843516256145408

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#153

Post by rootusrootus »

maxsilver wrote: post #142
curioussavage wrote: post #141

Not in the suburbs... cheap automated taxis are a way more realistic idea for reducing traffic. Not just for last mile either. Switching transportation in the middle of a trip even once wastes a ton of time and adds hassle.

> Not in the suburbs... Which, as a reminder for urbanists, really translates to "Not in the only place 90% of the nation's population is allowed to live"

Basically any city that isn't one of the biggest four or five, and even then just the core. Lots of mid-size cities, like Portland, are nearly 100% suburb.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#154

Post by vorpalhex »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #46
benrbray wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in/around Tokyo, I had the exact opposite experience. Cars, trains, pedestrians, and bicyclists are in near-perfect balance. For the most part, people live within walking or biking distance of a train station that takes them to work. Around each station is a cluster of shops and restaurants. Commercial traffic is well-separated from places where people live, meaning that on neighborhood streets there are virtu…

Agreed. Additionally: All of my co-workers had a car, but they only used them a few times a month except for the couple of coworkers who had hobbies that took them out into rural areas. And there were buses everywhere. You could take transit from the middle of Tokyo to that onsen in the middle of nowhere. It wouldn't be convenient or fast, but it could be done and we did it all the time. You just had to be careful wi…

I absolutely miss the 7-11s (and other convenience stores) from Japan. I was shocked at how well stocked they were and how high the food quality was.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#155

Post by AnimalMuppet »

greenonions wrote: post #117
dahfizz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is over 3x as population dense as the USA. Any plan to make the USA transportation system to look like the EU's is doomed to failure from the beginning. You need to be realistic. You are never going to win hearts and minds by railing against cars - Americans love their cars, and for good reason. A bus is not going to pick you up at your front door the second you walk out, and it's not going to drop you directl…

Cars kill ~40000 Americans annually. Is that cheap? Criticizing cars is the only way to wake people up to the damage they have caused in our society. Sure, cars are wonderful for people with mobility issues. For the vast majority of us to design our cities around two ton death machines is a tragedy. Our cities would be dramatically cheaper to live in with fewer cars. Less parking and road space allows higher density.…

> Criticizing cars is the only way to wake people up to the damage they have caused in our society.

It's a way to make you look like an out-of-touch loony, who therefore gets ignored. If you want to reduce car use in the US, dial down the rhetoric, and work on increasing the convenience of not using a car. You're going to win more hearts and minds by making available something better than you are by constantly carping about the existing situation.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#156

Post by AnimalMuppet »

tharne wrote: post #129
davidw wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about we just stop subsidizing the shit out of cars? Let them pay their own way. Also, we do not need 'one size fits all' solutions for the entire US. What's appropriate for Wyoming might not be appropriate for the California Bay Area, which is plenty dense.

They already do pay their own way. Gas taxes, tolls, vehicle registration, emissions fees, license fees, premium taxes on car insurance, traffic tickets, parking tickets, parking meters, sales tax on the purchase of a car. Very few things in the United States are taxed as exhaustively as private vehicles. I'm not sure when "subsidizing" came to mean "giving people something back for the money you took form them in th…

I am under the impression that gas taxes (which is the majority of the money you stated) considerably fails to cover the cost of building and maintaining the roads.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#157

Post by dahfizz »

ogre_codes wrote: post #136
dahfizz wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forcing people to pay thousands of dollars per year to participate in society is highly repressive. You're right. We should charge them thousands of dollars per month so they can live downtown and walk everywhere instead. Problem solved!

A bike costs less than $500 once and reliably gets you several miles fairly quickly. eBikes get you further faster and are also a fraction of the cost to own/ operate than a car.

And in the winter you're cold, in the summer you're sweaty, and in the rain you're wet.

It's not like people buy cars because they want to waste money. A car is an absolutely massive increase in QOL, especially for the majority of Americans who dont live in city centers and who don't want to live in city centers.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#158

Post by burfog »

benrbray wrote: post #113
ctdonath wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except ... cars do solve every use case. Suboptimal, yes, but I can get whoever & whatever I need to practically every square kilometer of this country (4200 x 2500) within 50 hours (5400km). Public transport simply can't, because it can't have stations within anywhere close to each of 10,500,000 square kilometers - and even where it does, I'm waiting (maybe hours) for service, and am severely limited in cargo option…

The thing is, right now our cars-first city planning means that things like groceries, schools, shopping centers, etc. are built far away from where people live so that you NEED a car to get there. Places like CityLab are advocating for future development that places these daily necessities within walking distance of where people live. Cars are great for long-distance travel, but it would be great to spend less time…

That is mainly a density issue. Most people don't like density.

At an ordinary population density, supermarkets are about 2 to 5 miles from each other, which is probably 3 to 7 miles by road.

Large stores require many customers in order to remain in business. If supermarkets are closer, then they lose efficiency. Prices must be higher. Variety drops; you'll get just 2 types of cheese and 1 type of apple if the stores have to be smaller.

Without a car, large shopping trips become impossible. A young healthy adult can carry 1 or 2 shopping bags about 0.7 mile without major difficulty, but that just isn't enough. Stores would have to shrink by a factor of 20 to 100 in order to get them close enough, but the efficiency still plunges. Think of the portion of each sale that must support the manager's salary, or the number of stores at which each delivery truck must stop.

Without a car, frozen food can only be purchased in winter. Hot food, such as the fried chicken my supermarket offers, would never be able to get home in good condition.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#159

Post by rocgf »

greenonions wrote: post #117
dahfizz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU is over 3x as population dense as the USA. Any plan to make the USA transportation system to look like the EU's is doomed to failure from the beginning. You need to be realistic. You are never going to win hearts and minds by railing against cars - Americans love their cars, and for good reason. A bus is not going to pick you up at your front door the second you walk out, and it's not going to drop you directl…

Cars kill ~40000 Americans annually. Is that cheap? Criticizing cars is the only way to wake people up to the damage they have caused in our society. Sure, cars are wonderful for people with mobility issues. For the vast majority of us to design our cities around two ton death machines is a tragedy. Our cities would be dramatically cheaper to live in with fewer cars. Less parking and road space allows higher density.…

I am very against cars and very pro-biking, and yet I find your comment immensely simplistic.

You seem to be forgetting that buildings can't be moved and big infrastructure projects go into the billions. The USA was build with cars in mind, you can't simply undo all that and now ask people to simply get rid of their cars when everything was built specifically for cars.

Re: Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm

#160

Post by bryanlarsen »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #148
bryanlarsen wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly disagree. My wife & I cycled from Copenhagen to Skagen to Amsterdam to Paris. We loved both the cities and the countryside.

If I may ask, how did you do so? How did you handle luggage? (Or did you have none?) Were you part of a tour, or just on your own?

We carried our luggage along in panniers. Lots of people do Europe with just a backpack; a bike can carry more weight & volume easily.

We did it on our own, mostly staying in campgrounds, although we also used hostels and crashed at friends & relations a couple of times.

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