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Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

citylab.com

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Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#211

Post by ProZsolt »

hnarn wrote: post #149
lnsru wrote: post #146

It’s completely wrong discussion. Remote work should be prioritized, so the people don’t need to move to overcrowded cities. Less people in the cities, less problems with their cars and crappy public transport.

Urbanization has been going strong as a trend for more than 100 years and I think it's reasonable to assume it won't stop anytime soon. If that's correct, density in cities will only increase, and most remote workers will not be outside of the city anyway. People enjoy having an entertainment-dense area to be in during the weekends and evenings, and they enjoy being able to go there without taking their car for an ho…

I could have worked fully remotely in the past 3 years, but I choose to live in a big city and only work from half the time. There are way more things to do in the city than just work. Cinemas, restaurants, museums, stores. Everything in cycling distance. It's easier to network, find people with mutual interests. All these things won't work without the economy of scale.

What it can bring is lower average house prices cities and gentrification of neighborhoods farther away from the city center. People could move farther from the city center because they don't have to commute to work every day. (This is EU specific)

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#213

Post by vinay_ys »

dfcowell wrote: post #137
vinay_ys wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why they don't do 'assigned seating' in a metro train. It is feasible to know everyone's destination station at the time of boarding. And it is feasible to know current occupancy of each car in the train. So potentially, people can be assigned to a specific car (need not be a specific seat), such that crowding in each car can be capped and more cars per train can be added without having to increa…

> It is feasible to know everyone's destination station at the time of boarding. I challenge you to find a mechanism that works for this and is quick enough to keep up at rush hour in the average Tokyo train station. Additionally, people move at different speeds through the station due to factors like age, familiarity with the network, disability, bladder capacity etc. It’s a non-trivial problem to solve, and likely…

You can indicate your destination at the entry turnstile to the platform and it will tell you two things: (a) the car you should board, and (b) the car you should exit from at the destination station. Most times, (a) and (b) are same. Some times, (a) and (b) can be different – say when you have more cars than then length of the platform supports, then some cars will hang off the platform length and hence their doors won't open. If you were assigned to board such a car, you have to make way to another nearby assigned car whose door can open, which is assigned to you so that everyone won't crowd the same last car aligned to the platform.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#214

Post by ProZsolt »

jariel wrote: post #8
briefcomment wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, the article says "Accordingly, says Milan Mayor Beppe Sala, the city plans to maintain its metro system’s capacity at less than two-thirds of its pre-pandemic activity. Instead of the 1.4 million average trips it saw daily before the pandemic, it will accommodate a maximum daily ridership of 400,000." Instead, they're focusing on supporting walking and cycling. "As a result, Milan is going big on cycling and wa…

This is misleading - the city controls supply, not demand. By cutting service in specific routes, they're probably just going to increase density on them. The issue is less about 'net capacity / ridership' as much as literally density on each ride. Paradoxically, reducing density comes with increasing capacity. Cities/central planners do this kind of thing all the time, they change some thing over here and think that…

12km is 30-35 mins on a bike. If you're elderly or less fit you can buy an electrical bike.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#215

Post by vinay_ys »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #197
vinay_ys wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered why they don't do 'assigned seating' in a metro train. It is feasible to know everyone's destination station at the time of boarding. And it is feasible to know current occupancy of each car in the train. So potentially, people can be assigned to a specific car (need not be a specific seat), such that crowding in each car can be capped and more cars per train can be added without having to increa…

Have you never been in a metro train before? There's not actually that much seating, if you only had people sitting down that'd be like a tenth of the train's capacity. Not to mention the trains stop every minute or two, and people don't, like, book that stuff ahead of time.

I guess you took my "assigned seating" literally. I obviously didn't mean _seating_ but more of an assigned spot in a train car. The point of an assigned spot is that there can be different designated areas for different people – elderly, women, kids, disabled, those with cycles, those with luggage, general etc. and now with Covid19, these assigned spot density could be appropriately adjusted.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#216

Post by new2628 »

petre wrote: post #185
new2628 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

East Europeans need to stop this self-colonizing attitude. The trains are reasonably OK, with great variations from place to place. Is there room for improvement? Sure.

An average of 35 km/h is okay? I could probably do that with my bike.

I very much doubt that the average train speed in EE is 35 km/h, and I traveled extensively by train from the baltics through the balkans over several decades.

If you take the average EE train, it is worse than Western Europe or Japan, comparable or better than US, with more extensive coverage.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#217

Post by ProZsolt »

luckylion wrote: post #126
ollo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And we still occasionally get bad weather. I predict that scooter and bike usage will drop extremely fast once it rains for a week or two, or, god forbid, we get a real winter once again, with snow and sub-zero temperatures Live in the Netherlands for a week and you'd be amazed at the resilience of Dutch bikers in bad weather.

Maybe living with the knowledge that the sea lurks to drown you gives them fortitude ;) I live in northern Germany, we've got plenty of bad weather and always have, and you can see lots of cycling when spring blesses us with a sunny and warm day, but it drops when it rains. Maybe it's intention ("I want to ride my bike to work because reasons") vs opportunity ("I can take the bike, it's so nice outside") that helps c…

It's also an infrastructure thing. Is it faster if I cycle? Do I have a place with a roof where I can store my bike? Can I change and store my wet clothes at work? Expect from a few, people will choose the most convenient way of transportation.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#218

Post by yrro »

throwawaysea wrote: post #81
anigbrowl wrote: post #48

San Francisco and Oakland have implemented a 'slow streets' initiative, gradually closing off some streets to through traffic (residential/emergency vehicles only) to allow more room for exercise. Predictably people have begun to deploy street furniture of their own (flower planters and so on) to make it more permanent. Nobody wants all the traffic and associated pollution back. Hard to predict how this will pan out…

That’s obnoxious. Cars and vehicles are necessary for many people and many purposes and cities should not use this crisis as a Trojan horse to force changes hastily. Deploying furniture to make it permanent sounds like the doing of a renegade cycle club and not everyday people, however.

In my opinion those who thoughtlessly leave their unused motor vehicles blocking up the side of the road (or worse, the pavenemnts!) are the renegades.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#219

Post by TulliusCicero »

vinay_ys wrote: post #215
TulliusCicero wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you never been in a metro train before? There's not actually that much seating, if you only had people sitting down that'd be like a tenth of the train's capacity. Not to mention the trains stop every minute or two, and people don't, like, book that stuff ahead of time.

I guess you took my "assigned seating" literally. I obviously didn't mean _seating_ but more of an assigned spot in a train car. The point of an assigned spot is that there can be different designated areas for different people – elderly, women, kids, disabled, those with cycles, those with luggage, general etc. and now with Covid19, these assigned spot density could be appropriately adjusted.

I still don't see how that would help. What does adjusted mean? The problem is there isn't enough capacity, yeah they could just reduce how many people can take the train, that means people being late to work or otherwise with an impacted schedule.

And they already know which train routes at which times are crowded, if they could just add more capacity they'd have already done it.

Re: Europe’s cities are making less room for cars after coronavirus

#220

Post by vladvasiliu »

thesz wrote: post #182
choeger wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to trash your hopes, but the particles are pretty much independent from traffic nowadays (see how Stuttgart is doing these days). The drought around Berlin will probably kick way more fine particles into the city than all Diesel cars together. The only thing that could help would be more trees and less dense cities.

More trees [1], less particle pollution, you say? [1] https://www.businessinsider.co.za/georgia-helicopter-causes-...

I think that the trouble with pollen (from the trees) is mostly allergies.

However, it seems to me that allergies are much more frequent nowadays than they were in the past, and mostly concentrated in the cities. There's a study [1] linking allergies and asthma with pollution.

> Strong epidemiological evidence supports a relationship between air pollution and the exacerbation of asthma and other respiratory diseases. Recent studies have suggested that air pollutants play a role in the development of asthma and allergies.

So maybe more trees IS the solution, even though it would seem they're the problem?

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192198/

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