FYI, the author of that post address self-driving cars in his next post: http://progressivetransit.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/self-driv...
Cars Kill Cities
21–30 of 223 posts
Re: Cars Kill Cities
#22At this point for a lot of cities, it would require a large amount of infrastructure change. Mass transit in most cities sucks today, so people use cars. To do this right, the city needs to do a massive up-front investment in public transit. And there is no guarantee that this investment will ever pay off.
Yes, it would require a change in infrastructure. No, it is not necessary for the investment to be done upfront. You quickly ramp up cheap mass transit options (bus service segregated from regular vehicular traffic with dedicated lanes, MUCH cheaper than light rail construction) while using permitting/zoning to phase out car-friendly policies. It won't happen overnight, but its a start.
Bus service does not work. People hate buses, no matter how well designed and efficient their routes are. Buses have an extreme social stigma attached to them.
Re: Cars Kill Cities
#23If self-driving cars become a reality, it is interesting to think of what happens to all this space & infrastructure. If the model is that we don't own cars, but rather share them like taxis, then there is no need for parking: the car will just drop you and go to its next trip. If the model is that we own our self-driving cars, it may be that they can be parked at much greater distances (10+ miles) from where we spend time (in much denser structures than today). We can likely eliminate parking from inner cities, both garages and roadside parking.
If we can design roads and grids for computers and not humans, perhaps we can make them much efficient by trading off simplicity. Could we have a complex system of mostly one-way streets?
What interests me is that not just parking garages go away, but what today is a four-lane-width road (with two lanes dedicated to parking) may become a single-lane one-way street. The sidewalk - which used to be 20% of the space - is now 80% of the space. Looking around busy cities, and trying to imagine what it will look like post-self-driving car, is IMHO mind-blowing.
Re: Cars Kill Cities
#24I think what we need are exponential tolls based on distance to city center or density of pedestrian traffic around. I couldn't care less about cars on streets dedicated for them, but everywhere else they need to piss off and quickly. They are death machines.
Re: Cars Kill Cities
#25At this point for a lot of cities, it would require a large amount of infrastructure change. Mass transit in most cities sucks today, so people use cars. To do this right, the city needs to do a massive up-front investment in public transit. And there is no guarantee that this investment will ever pay off.
that's why we should make new cities with the infrastructure to support a population with zero cars allowed. And make that city an awesome place to live.
As a small business owner who sells a physical good, statements like this scare the hell out of me. You have no idea the kind of monopolization and losses of freedom implementing ideas like this would entail. Cars are democratic. They are a cheap, scaleable way of solving the problem of transportation. Kill cars, and you will destroy a lot of entrepreneurship in things that really matter. You will also be hurting those that start with the least most of all.
Re: Cars Kill Cities
#26Self driving cars my pick for best solution. You can have fewer cars services more people with higher efficiency. It's all wins across the board. I hope the bloggers solution ideas aren't "better public transportation". Public transportation sucks, even in Europe. A pre-requisite to good public transportation is poor infrastructure for private transportation. I view asking for better public transportation as asking f…
Self driving cars doesn't change much. Supposing that there would exist car sharing systems such that a single car may be used throughout the day by several people, then we could cut back on parking spots, but I'm sure there will be many that own their own self driving car and share it with no one. During morning rush hour the only difference from now would be that commuters could do the crossword puzzle instead of f…
Incorrect. If you have self-driving cars, the entire flow of traffic could be much more efficient, virtually eliminating traffic jams.
You could drive at the speed limit with a lot smaller distance between cars, etc, packing in a greater density of people without sacrificing speed.
Re: Cars Kill Cities
#27The post is right, and even more so for developing world cities that emerged before cars were around. However the post is also naive. Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather, and are much less tiring than trying to lug bags from one place to another on buses or other public transport. They also place far fewer constraints on when you can travel. Of course it's possible to structure…
I lived car-dependent in Atlanta, without a car in Chicago and New York, and am car-dependent again in Wilmington, DE. The burden of carrying things never matched the hassle of circling around somewhere looking for a parking spot.
Indeed, living in the New York City suburbs with a baby and no car (but on a train line) was way more convenient than living in Wilmington with a car. Running down the block to the store and shoving some items in the stroller basket is infinitely easier than putting the baby in a car seat, folding the stroller into the trunk, driving 12 miles to the strip mall, taking the baby out of the car seat, unfolding the stroller out of the trunk, putting the baby back in the car seat, folding the stroller into the trunk, driving 12 miles back from the strip mall, then finally taking the baby back out of the car seat and unfolding the stroller out of the trunk.
It's as inconvenient and frustrating as it sounds.
People have preferences, sure, but I'm sick of subsidizing suburbanization with my tax dollars. The public sector spends about $150 billion per year building and maintaining highways: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/ftpdocs/120x.... That's not counting local roads and streets. Nobody blinks an eye at that. But they freak out that Amtrak has been given $13 billion in federal subsidies in the 40 years since 1972.
And don't get me started on the tax breaks for mortgages that disproportionately benefits suburbanites, etc. My wife and I have no problem with how much taxes we pay, but it drives us crazy that my parents pay a substantially lower rate despite making more money because they can deduct fully deduct the interest on their $1 million mortgage for their suburban McMansion. Meanwhile, my wife and I are phased out of student loan and childcare deductions despite making less money.
Re: Cars Kill Cities
#28The post is right, and even more so for developing world cities that emerged before cars were around. However the post is also naive. Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather, and are much less tiring than trying to lug bags from one place to another on buses or other public transport. They also place far fewer constraints on when you can travel. Of course it's possible to structure…
> Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather...
If only there was such a thing as a car that you could call on-demand, make use of when you wanted it, and then got rid of it when you were done.
Even better, what about one that comes with a driver?
A crazy idea, I know.
If you live in the right neighborhood, a car is a nuisance. I can go somewhere and just walk right in. I don't have to spend time finding a parking spot, paying for parking, dealing with parking tickets, and all that related nuisance. Having owned a car, I found it shapes your decisions a lot. Things are only convenient if they're convenient to get to in a car.
Considering how much money I'm not spending on a car, a cab is a bargain. If I need more than that, rent a van by the hour.
Re: Cars Kill Cities
#29I have lived in both car-dependent and transit-based places, and can see advantages to both. Given that the advantages of transit are commonly discussed these days, I thought I'd give some of the advantages of cars.
(1) Cars don't have schedules. You can just jump in your car and go any time of day or night. Cars also don't stop running at 2am, while most transit systems do.
(2) Cars permit sprawl. Sprawl has been bashed to hell and back for some justifiable reasons, but it has one big advantage: it breaks the backs of real estate markets. Sprawling car-dependent regions are much safer from the real estate hyperinflation that plagues cities that are either transit-based or geographically constrained. Bubbles of local real estate inflation surround transit hot spots, creating a two-tier society in which ease of transportation is exponentially (not linearly, as with cars) correlated to income. The poor get loooooong bus->train commutes while the wealthy get fast train->train commutes.
(3) Cars can haul stuff, which gets increasingly important when you have children. Pretty much everything about the suburbs seems idiotic until you have kids, then it seems reasonable.
I can't stress #2 enough. Compare the Los Angeles metro area to the San Francisco bay. The former is a largely car-based sprawling metropolis, while the latter is partly transit-based and also geographically constrained (which for the market does the same thing as transit-dependence). In the LA metro area there are many neighborhoods where poor and working class people can afford to live. In the Bay Area you're spending $3000/month for a crack den. Everyone but professionals and the rich are completely priced out of all but the absolute worst neighborhoods, or are pushed out to the fringes with the longest commutes.
It's funny that transit is often cited as good from an equality point of view as it gives everyone access to mobility without requiring car ownership, but the real estate inflation that it engenders negates this IMHO.
Re: Cars Kill Cities
#30I fond our cities profoundly ugly, but cars serve an essential service. I need a flexible, quick means of secure transport. I need to move a variable number of people from 1-4. I often need to bring tens of kilograms of stuff with me. What else can fill the bill around a large metro area (~3 million people)? I would love an alternative, to live in beautiful cities, to walk around the way I can overseas.
Walking + a cart.