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What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

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Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#211

Post by glogla »

avar wrote: post #169
deepGem wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought long and hard about the automobile and it's allure. As much as I hate the inefficiencies, I still believe that for a vast majority of humans, the automobile is their private abode, that takes them to places. We are explorers by heart and ever since the invention of the wheel, we have coveted vehicles. They are our private sanctuaries that propel us from one location to another. No other mode of transport…

Helicopters, hovercrafts and yachts also have this appeal. Nobody's saying cars will go away, just that the entirety of human infrastructure might not be constructed around them.

> Helicopters, hovercrafts and yachts also have this appeal. Nobody's saying cars will go away, just that the entirety of human infrastructure might not be constructed around them.

That's crazy overstatement. Railways are not built for cars. Water pipes are not built for cars. Airports are not built for cars. Power plants and transformers and power lines are not built for cars. Dams are not built for cars. Ports are not built for cars. Houses are not built for cars.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#212

Post by bluGill »

Alupis wrote: post #124
bluGill wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cars are banned everybody will seek the alternates: that means the walk to the train is much less than 15 minutes (unless you are a farmer - but farmers already have a 30 minute drive to the nearest hospital, and over an hour to a good one), and the train will come more often than every 15 minutes even at 3am. The train will also stop in the hospital, so that walk is less.

The big question with all these ideas is how to pay for it? Economically it doesn't work in majority of the US. Some big cities might be able to pull it off - but even those often run at a loss and are subsidized by the city. How does a small suburban area afford trains going all over?

How does a small suburban area afford roads going all over? Building rail is about the same cost as roads, and can be cheaper if we put as much effort into making tools for building it as we do roads today. Trains are more expensive than cars, but given they carry more people and last longer the cost per person is less than our current costs for cars per person. There are also mass production efficiencies that have the potential to bring the cost of a train down significantly if only we had demand for more.

Note that subsidies for transit also apply to local roads. Each area is different, but in many cases gas tax doesn't reach the city and the roads are all paid for from other taxes.

The problem is getting there. It is to predict how it would work out if we there today (see my assumptions above, I think they are reasonable but you might disagree and that will of course change what you come up with). However getting there is hard. Big cities are already making efforts to get there, but they are hampered because there is a complete lack of cost control and so trains cost way more than they should for no obvious reason. https://pedestrianobservations.com/2016/01/31/why-costs-matt... has some good information (read his other blog posts for even more data)

Of course in the end all trains don't make sense in the first place. Cars and trucks are flexible and so there will always be need for them. Farmers and construction workers need to get their supplies to places without infrastructure, while dirt and gravel roads are enough. Even baring that, the flexibility of a personal car means that the end of the personal car implies the complete end of modern civilization (your new job is manual labor: running a hoe)

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#213

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

bkor wrote: post #204
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #5

Not all cities can ban cars at this point for multiple reasons. I live for several years in a medium sized wealthy Western European city that's clogged with traffic. Why? Well, rich Europeans don't like living in cities with tall ugly blocks a so they grow outwards by developing cozy low density suburbs. 1) This suburban expansion was possible due to the cheap automobiles that permitted pretty much everyone to move o…

Some of the most highly paid people at my office take public transport. This despite having their "VIP" parking place, living in suburbs, etc. Your example seems to be pretty unique in that it's really close to car industry. Some of your assumptions are completely off though. In Netherlands our Prime minister takes a bicycle to work. He has way more influence than the top paid people in my office. If you look at the…

I understand your point but countries like The Netherlands and Denmark are totally different animals. They build their bike infrastructure for decades and never adopted a car culture.

The rest of mainland Europe is totally different. Getting people now to bike everywhere isn't easy when all the jobs and homes have been built around driving distances for decades.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#214

Post by acdha »

jdnenej wrote: post #178
acdha wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like more vehicle miles in downtown areas which are already severely congested. A large part of the problem is that cars are the least spatially-efficient form of transportation: having them drive more miles at peak times isn’t going to work unless we see huge improvements elsewhere, which seems unlikely.

What could be a more realistic option is electric velomobiles (a recumbent bike with an outer shell) which have a capacity of one person and a few bags. You get the benefit of weather protection and convenient speed while being extremely safe and space efficient.

I think there’s a lot of room in the e-bike space but don’t forget transit even if it’s not cool enough to get VCs interested. If the city planners do their jobs competently few things beat a bus in a priority lane for getting a large number of people around a city quickly with low to no CO2 emissions.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#215

Post by criddell »

thelittleone wrote: post #120
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's to say cities won't regulate how many of these cars can be on the road at any time? They already do this for taxis... And I believe some of them put limits on Uber and Lyft, too. Right?

This is done in Singapore. You can buy a car no problem but you need a certificate of entitlement to register and drive it. COE price fluctuates based on demand but has been over $50k USD (no mistake). A small island nation. Traffic still gets pretty bad but it would probably be a lot worse without this policy.

London has congestion pricing for certain zones as well.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#216

Post by sfink »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #177
rb808 wrote: post #40

It used to be only wealthy people could afford cars and to live in the suburbs. Now cities are so expensive its poor people who live in the suburbs a long way from train stations and drive in. Makes sense to ban cars now and complete the cycle.

Despite the fact I despise cars I can't help feeling poor people are going to get shafted in this transition.

I don't think so. If only poor people use X because wealthier people have Y, then X will suck. If Y is prevented by law/ordinance, then X will get the attention and investment it requires to keep the wealthy people happy, and most but not all of those improvements will be relevant to the poorer people. (As opposed to the split situation, where X will get the bare minimum necessary for housekeepers and store clerks from disappearing entirely.)

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#217

Post by jcranberry »

greglindahl wrote: post #149
jandrese wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idyllic dream of vendors lugging their wares through the subway and city streets every day... When construction companies hire armies of people to walk individual I-beams through the city for every project... Where I get to haul my garbage a dozen blocks to the nearest accessible trash pickup location... In the end you still need roads. You don't get to convert all of that space into a park even if you ban cars.

Literally no city ever banned I-beam delivery with a truck, but sure, I guess we can discuss hypotheticals. Ditto for your garbage hysteria.

>My dream is that one day most streets in Manhattan will be closed to car traffic and replaced with green space full of trees, flowers, children playing, and usable public space.

This is the hypothetical that GP responded to by saying it's not realistic...so you're acting like he was the one who constructed a straw man argument when he was making a reasonable point directly relevant to what another poster said.

If there's any hysteria in this conversation it's from your unreasonable response.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#218

Post by jcranberry »

johnday wrote: post #102
jcranberry wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do, with roads. The point GP was making that it's not feasible to convert roads into bowers.

On the other hand, it would be feasible to convert roads into normally-pedestrianised areas, which you need a permit or a one-day pass to drive through. There are numerous city centres in the UK which use this method. The central portion of Canterbury, Kent, is a great example.

Yeah, that sounds great. The amount and size of roads (and parking space) definitely can be reduced dramatically. Although I imagine this would be a massive endeavor for cities whose urban planning has been based entirely around driving/people owning cars.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#219

Post by pwinnski »

Alupis wrote: post #121
pwinnski wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many human-oriented cities around the world in which mass-transit reigns, and they manage to make life work. I've been in Hong Kong a lot, and I'm not sure I can pick two points in Hong Kong that are 80 minutes apart from each other. I mean, maybe getting to the New Territories from Sai Wan Ho or something, but they have their own closer hospitals, so... It's hard to explain dry land to a fish, but life wit…

> There are many human-oriented cities around the world in which mass-transit reigns All of which are densely populated cities. This concept simply doesn't work in majority of America, where the average city is sparsely populated and quite spread out. People living in Seattle, San Francisco, New York, Portland, Austin, Los Angeles, etc... quickly forget what life is like in say... Fiddletown, California.

Yes, a city that bans cars would necessarily need to become a densely-populated city, for sure.

Re: What happens when a city bans cars from its streets?

#220

Post by kiliantics »

deepGem wrote: post #162
brenden2 wrote: post #3

I'm so happy to see this idea starting to get mainstream attention. I predict that in 50-100 years we'll look back on the age of the automobile as one of the biggest mistakes in urban planning. Automobiles are dangerous, kill thousands of people every year, contribute significantly to pollution, and cause health problems by discouraging physical activity. They're expensive, inefficient, and cause more harm than good…

I've thought long and hard about the automobile and it's allure. As much as I hate the inefficiencies, I still believe that for a vast majority of humans, the automobile is their private abode, that takes them to places. We are explorers by heart and ever since the invention of the wheel, we have coveted vehicles. They are our private sanctuaries that propel us from one location to another. No other mode of transport…

> We covet our automobiles so dearly that we have decided to ignore the perils of air pollution and traffic stress on our own health.

This is not how we got here. The reason most cities are built around cars is because of a long and successful campaign by special interest groups to remake cities (human living in general, even) around the automobile. I never chose for things to be this way because of how much I like cars (I don't). Almost no one was ever given a real choice for things to be this way. It just happened because it was profitable and because corrupt governments did not force external costs to be paid for by those making the profits.

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