Wouldn't it be nice if policy changes were accompanied by an A/B testing plan to evaluate their impact? I have always thought so. I have also seen a major pitfall of A/B testing that real humans can hand-pick and slice data to make it sound as positive or negative as wanted. Nonetheless, the more data the better.
unfortunately, building a second NYC for the purposes of A/B testing isn't feasible.
but we have before and after data to compare - that's what this article is about. and the congestion pricing plan included requirements to publish data specifically for the purposes of comparison between last year and this year.
You can live in an urban neighborhood and only use your car a few times a week (mostly on weekends and for yearly kid doctor visits). Its not just Manhattan, Seattle supports this as well (well, you still "need" a car, but you can get away with not driving it very often). You need to be strategic about where you live (e.g. buying the house 7 minutes away from your kid's K-8 and 10 minutes away from his future 9-12, w…
Self-driving cars are going to turn America's car-centric "hellscape" into a superpower with untold second order benefits. Everything will be connected and commutable, especially the suburbs. Automated, on-demand delivery will become a part of everyday life. Instead of busses and semis, we'll have small pods for smaller cargo and small parties. Highways will turn into logistics corridors, and we'll route people and g…
just one more lane bro I swear that's it it's just one more lane then the traffic will go away
The increased speeds are excellent for those who can afford the toll. This is a universal benefit of toll roads for those people.
The best decision would be to completely forbid individual transport. Now the common space dedicated to streets is for who can pay extra. Forbid individual transport and create some parks and pedestrian streets.
These threads tend to devolve into, "Americans are so unsophisticated everyone else in the world is banning cars and turning downtown into walkable utopia" but what they really mean by rest of the world is a few crowded European cities. If you look at all the new rich mega cities built in the Middle East and East Asia cars continue to exist alongside good public transit as aspirational status icons and the preferred means of transit for people who can afford them. Cars are never going away.
Seems to be working fine, I know the large city about 60 miles from me looked at this, and I am all for it. But its mass transit is a awful mess, at times walking is faster that taking a subway. I wish they would start this, but its politics is such a mess nothing really gets done there. New Ideas there gets implemented far slower than then ideas in Roman Catholic Church.
Transit always seems to be kind of a chicken and egg problem. You can’t have good transit unless you have good ridership, and you can’t have good ridership if you don’t have good transit. Everywhere I know of in the US with decent transit already had it before the culture of car dominance really took hold, so it was already good enough to maintain sufficient ridership to stay good. Does anyone know of anywhere that m…
The other good reason to choose congestion pricing as the start to breaking the chicken/egg problem is that, outside of NYC and maybe Chicago, public transit in the US is primarily buses on streets shared with car traffic. It's hard to attract ridership and improve buses when they're always stuck in car traffic, so starting by reducing traffic via congestion pricing is particularly pragmatic.
Congestion isn't limited to cars. My pregnant wife was hit yesterday in SoHo in broad daylight by a delivery driver on an e-bike. He ran a redlight. He hit her in a crosswalk. She was wearing a bright orange dress. She was not on a phone or listening to music. She went flying ass over teakettle. We spent 6 hours in the ER yesterday evening to make sure our unborn baby was okay. Fortunately, everyone is OK despite her…
Were that delivery driver using a car instead of a bike, then your wife would likely be dead instead of in the ER. (At least in the US, having a driver's license is in no way, shape, or form an indication that the driver is capable of driving correctly, much less their willingness to do so.)
Car drivers are very routinely punished for running red lights. That is far less common than cyclists doing it.
You can live in an urban neighborhood and only use your car a few times a week (mostly on weekends and for yearly kid doctor visits). Its not just Manhattan, Seattle supports this as well (well, you still "need" a car, but you can get away with not driving it very often). You need to be strategic about where you live (e.g. buying the house 7 minutes away from your kid's K-8 and 10 minutes away from his future 9-12, w…
Self-driving cars are going to turn America's car-centric "hellscape" into a superpower with untold second order benefits. Everything will be connected and commutable, especially the suburbs. Automated, on-demand delivery will become a part of everyday life. Instead of busses and semis, we'll have small pods for smaller cargo and small parties. Highways will turn into logistics corridors, and we'll route people and g…
As someone with children, I can not imagine the bliss of living in Manhattan and being able to do things without needing a car. Car-centric urban planning is hell with kids. You have to load them up into the car for any small trip. You can't walk or bike anywhere because cars make it so dangerous. My only regret about living in the US is this car hellscape that is so hard to avoid. It's mandated by law, not chosen by…
Impressive how cars are harmful to society. This is just a small example. We should be more radical in preventing the use of individual automobiles. If it works in a country where the auto is so ingrained in the culture and lifestyle, it can work anywhere.
The converse is how helpful cars are. It allows people to have the ability commute from areas they live at to where they work. It brings down the cost of living by expanding the commute availability circle, instead of driving up land values for the desirable areas.
I live in Brooklyn with kids and do not have a car. Equally possible in Manhattan - have car-less friends with kids there too. Just saying it is possible, and certainly not everyone’s choice.
Same. We live in Manhattan with two kids and owning a car is just an added expense without much benefit. To be fair, if you lived further out in Brooklyn (Bayridge, Sussex Beach and Coney Island) you probably need a car for the day to day.
Overall, would you recommend Manhattan (or nearby) with kids? What's your experience been like and do you see staying long term?
Hope you don't mind me asking, I'm just super curious about this topic!
Climate Town has an entertaining and informative video on this topic from last month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEFBn0r53uQ
Great comment from that video: "When cars were banned from Central Park drivers whined and now we can't imagine it any other way." Everything is impossible until it is done.
The opposite is also true. We can descend slowly into dystopia and we forget how good it can actually be.