brenden2 4 years ago

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 within major cities IMO.

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.

  • vonmoltke 4 years ago

    > 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.

    I think that's a very hyperbolic prediction. I think elevating the automobile to the detriment of other forms of transportation will be viewed as a mistake, but the automobile itself is no more a mistake than the horse and carriage were.

    > 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.

    When was this ever true in Manhattan, and why do you think it would become true just by getting rid of cars? Crowded city streets predate cars by centuries.

    • adjkant 4 years ago

      > When was this ever true in Manhattan

      It never was, but the car problem always existed because roads needing to be clear for horses caused the same prohibitive issues of using streets for pedestrians.

      > why do you think it would become true just by getting rid of cars?

      It wouldn't be just getting rid of cars, its what you do with the space once you get rid of them. Added greenery, protected bike lanes, a lane or two for trains/buses, and you get a ton more pedestrian room. Suddenly people could want to be on the streets of midtown manhattan maybe, save tourist spots.

      • isostatic 4 years ago

        And deliveries, not just your amazon prime 2 hour service, but for shops to restock, and building sites to handle tons of equipment, cement, rubble, etc?

        • ygra 4 years ago

          Pedestrian areas in the city center here usually get delivery trucks in the early morning and after ~8:00 or so no cars are allowed in that zone. Seems to work well. Construction sites are an exception and while inconvenient I doubt people insist on bringing construction equipment by wheelbarrow from a km away.

        • jdnenej 4 years ago

          They can go through the bus lane. Usually when you design people centric streets you still leave a clearing big enough for vehicles to pass through, it's just they have to go very slow or have siren to alert everyone to move out of the way for an emergency.

        • srg0 4 years ago

          As it works in Europe, businesses and residents can get a (usually paid) permit to enter such areas, or there're hours when traffic is permitted. The same for building sites, they get an approval for a temporary modification of the traffic regulations. Most minor deliveries (food, post) are done using lightweight transport (small trucks, scooters, bicycles, kick scooters, on foot). Usually there are parkings on the borders of the area, so it's not a problem for who arrives from afar. It's actually very nice experience.

          • isostatic 4 years ago

            Sure, for a small area that's fine, but if you're talking about the entire island of Manhattan that's a problem.

            I suppose if you made say every 20th street open to one way single street traffic (so 20th goes west, 40th east, 60th west etc), and every even avenue open (2nd south, 4th north, 6th south), that could work

    • 0x14c1de72 4 years ago

      There is a difference though, centuries before cars they didn't have trains/metros/drones/airplanes so the streets were the ONLY venue for transportation/logistics, thus necessary.

      That said I don't believe a city without cars will work unless it's planned for that before building. Basically all everyday logistics would have to be underground. Obviously it would only work for very densely populated areas.

      I'd like to see something like that though. Small densely populated areas connected by trains/metros and surrounded by forests.

    • mc32 4 years ago

      Agreed. It was a necessary step to the next stage.

      We could say the industrial revolution was a great disaster as if disrupted how people worked, their relationship to labor, capital, etc., but it also enabled us to get where we are today.

    • asveikau 4 years ago

      > When was this ever true in Manhattan,

      Probably not what they are going for, but uptown was relatively undeveloped until surprisingly recently in historical terms.

      Also there are lots of famous photos of kids playing on Manhattan streets from circa the '30s and earlier.

    • Robotbeat 4 years ago

      Put all the vehicles (of whatever type) underground.

      • isostatic 4 years ago

        Underground isn't an infinite space. Power, Sewers, basements, vaults, foundations, and existing tunnels.

        In London, building a new tunnel for crossrail involved threading a TBM through a gap with 80cm clearance (that's less than 2 cubits).

        The deeper you go, the wider the problems above, the more existing infrastrucutre is effected, not to mention the issues of how to return to the surface.

        Build decking over all the existing surface streets, only allow electric vehicles on the (current) underground streets, don't allow anything larger than a pushbike on the top.

  • jandrese 4 years ago

    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.

    • username90 4 years ago

      You can ban cars but still allow cargo trucks to drive through pedestrian streets, that is what Zurich in Switzerland does. People and cars can share space just fine if the cars are few and slow enough.

    • hutzlibu 4 years ago

      "You don't get to convert all of that space into a park even if you ban cars. "

      Not all the car space maybe, but lots if it.

      You don't need parking spaces anymore. No more than 2 lanes for most roads ... that sums up very big.

    • dan_quixote 4 years ago

      Meh, just watch how construction happens in the central district of any European city. It's not as simple as just backing a flatbed up to the door, but they get by just fine.

      • jcranberry 4 years ago

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

        • johnday 4 years ago

          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.

          • jdc 4 years ago

            And you could probably do with only one lane.

          • jcranberry 4 years ago

            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.

          • Al-Khwarizmi 4 years ago

            Another alternative is allowing driving only at certain times, for example in Spain (and I guess in other places too) it's common to have pedestrianized areas with a few hours (say, from 8 to 10) where vans are permitted to enter for loading and unloading.

    • zpallin 4 years ago

      That's not at all necessary. Redesigning roadways into pedestrian areas does not have to exclude utility and construction equipment, just traffic.

    • opportune 4 years ago

      I agree we will still need roads in the foreseeable future, probably the rest of our lifetimes, but it’s not out of the question for materials to dropped into a construction site using drones. Maybe even entire prefabbed buildings or segments of buildings

      There are significant benefits to this approach other than not having to use roads, but of course the tech isn’t there yet

      • journalctl 4 years ago

        I mean this really nicely: it is 100% out of the question for entire buildings or even just materials to be dropped into a construction site with drones. Also, how are you going to get large digging equipment in? Or things like wrecking balls?

        • opportune 4 years ago

          Something like an Ibeam could, it would just require something closer in size/larger than a helicopter. A 50 foot Ibeam is a bit over 2 tons; a small modern military helicopter would be able to carry that easily. When I say drone I just mean a remotely controlled copter-thing, not specifically a small one.

          An entire building is less feasible unless it is small, but it could be done using modular components

          • ericd 4 years ago

            If building costs go way up, so do rents for normal people (and less gets built). Just something to consider.

          • abduhl 4 years ago

            For building construction that is substantial, a 50 foot wide flange section is probably going to be 1.5 to 4 times heavier than your 4000 lbs, in my experience.

          • benj111 4 years ago

            Are we discussing this as a hypothetical, or as a practical building method?

            Plus I don't really want my town to sound like the set of Apocalypse Now.

          • bluescrn 4 years ago

            Fleets of large and noisy helicopters hauling cargo over a city all day sounds way worse than regular road traffic...

        • Dylan16807 4 years ago

          It's a waste of money but it is not at all "100%" out of the question. If you're willing to pay for the extravagance of air travel, you can make it happen. There are many many people and organizations capable of paying it.

      • arpa 4 years ago

        The main drawback i see straight away is the vastly different failure modes: trucks' engine gives out, the truck stops. Not much potential for damage in most scenarios. Drones' engine gives, and you have tonnes falling out of the sky. Very dangerous in most scenarios.

    • greglindahl 4 years ago

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

      Ditto for your garbage hysteria.

      • jcranberry 4 years ago

        >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.

      • Symbiote 4 years ago

        Actually, where it can work, London may restrict a new development to having a certain proportion of its materials delivered by rail or water.

        This might require restoring or even constructing a jetty or small siding. Any cost is balanced against the disruption and danger of taking many large vehicles through residential areas.

  • foobar1962 4 years ago

    > 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.

    No need to wait that long, the regret is felt already. Sydney ripped up its extensive tram network in the 1950s and 1960s to improve the roads for cars. Remnants of the infrastructure remain: cuttings through rocky, hilly areas in particular. My mother (in her 90s now) talks about taking the tram to Bondi.

    Melbourne was smart enough to keep their tram network.

    • megaremote 4 years ago

      They tried in Melbourne too. A few people stood up and fought to save them, like Robert Risson.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Risson

      • jdnenej 4 years ago

        The people I know from Melbourne absolutely love the trams as well and talk shit about how awful it is to get around Sydney

    • thelittleone 4 years ago

      Isn’t it ironic that trams are about to start running again in Sydney.

  • Merrill 4 years ago

    This is quite possible for Manhattan and probably for other cities. Manhattan once had transportation needs for streets since it was ringed with wharves for seaborne and river commerce, had huge warehouses, railroad yards, factories, and all the facilities of a dynamic manufacturing city.

    That has all disappeared and the Manhattan economy is essentially services for residences, entertainment, media, finance, government, hospitals, etc. Production of goods is minor, and distribution and warehousing have mainly moved out, e.g. Fulton fish market.

    So Manhattan becomes a forest of towers mainly for residents and offices, with some more specialized buildings for hospitals, conference centers, sports venues, etc. But there is even little need for retailing space, since the distribution centers for online retailers serving Manhattan can be in the outer boroughs or NJ.

    In this scenario the transportation system boils down to distribution of food and other goods to the towers and the collection and removal of garbage, plus mass transit intra island and to/from the hinterlands for commuters to the office towers, as well as mass transit to/from airports for the tourism and business travelers.

    Manhattan is probably ahead of other cities in becoming a pure center of goods consumption.

  • deepGem 4 years ago

    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, be it a bus, train or god forbid a plane, provides this level of comfort. We covet our automobiles so dearly that we have decided to ignore the perils of air pollution and traffic stress on our own health. If this is not a testament of our love for the automobile then I don't know what is.

    That being said, it's quite clear that the automobile in it's current form is highly space inefficient. The 4 wheeled structure has not undergone any change since the dawn of chariots. I think a change is coming, not sure when, perhaps with the advent of flying cars from Sebastian Thrun.

    • simongray 4 years ago

      > 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, be it a bus, train or god forbid a plane, provides this level of comfort.

      I think this is a cultural artefact of a car-centric society.

      Cars are not really viewed in this way in my culture (Denmark). They're just another mode of transportation, nothing special about them compared to bicycles, busses, trains, etc. People go with what is most convenient. If you need to get some office work done remotely, then being a passenger in a train saves more time than driving a car. If you want exercise built in to your commute, bicycles are better. In an urban setting, cars are in fact seen as a hassle. They're mostly loved by people in rural areas.

      I don't deny that cars have their place, but the kind of exploration potential that a car offers (relatively infrequent, longer distances) can easily be served by rented cars. There is no reason to own a car just to go on infrequent car trips.

      • bb123 4 years ago

        But your comment glosses over the part about rural people though. The reason these people love them is because there is no alternative and I don't really see how we can change that. Mass transit doesn't make sense in rural areas.

        • simongray 4 years ago

          > But your comment glosses over the part about rural people though. The reason these people love them is because there is no alternative and I don't really see how we can change that. Mass transit doesn't make sense in rural areas.

          I didn't gloss over it, it just wasn't relevant to the point I was making. The topic is banning cars in cities, not banning them in general.

          Anyway, I don't see a reason to force rural people to not use a car. There's plenty of space out in the country, so let them have their cars. Obviously, we need to transition all cars away from combustion engines in the near future, but that is a separate issue.

        • 317070 4 years ago

          But (electric) bikes do? Yeah, you will probably own a car living in a rural area, but where I was from, when you went to the city you either switched modes (car+walk/scoot) or cycled to the city. The group of people who really has no alternative is actually quite small. And over here, there is a small but growing opinion that those people maybe should live in the city in the first place? Right now they are making city life more noisy, smelly, toxic, ugly and unsafe for the city person on his cycle, and that basically for free. Is it really a right to exchange other peoples environment for your comfort?

          • bb123 4 years ago

            Totally agree cars are not the right mode of transport for cities. I'm a big fan of park and ride solutions for this - drive to the outskirts, dump the car and ride the train/bus in. I don't think it is really fair however to ask people who live in rural areas to move to cities. In general rural areas are more deprived so I would hazard a guess that many of them couldn't afford to live in the city even if they wanted to. Plus we do need people in rural areas - agriculture and tourism are both important industries.

          • garretraziel 4 years ago

            > And over here, there is a small but growing opinion that those people maybe should live in the city in the first place?

            I live in central Europe and there is actually quite opposite debate: people are moving to cities in large quantities, so rural areas are becoming emptier and poorer every day. Not everyone can and should live in a big city.

    • avar 4 years ago

      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.

      • glogla 4 years ago

        > 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.

        • avar 4 years ago

          That's obviously not the point being made, but it's funny how you've still managed to name things that in the West are at least built around the needs of cars in most cases.

          How many dams have helipads? Not many, how many can be driven over? That railway bridge? Sized to allow car traffic underneath.

          Many airports have about as much car parking (or more) as runways measured by footprint, same for many power plants.

          Houses either have a garage or can't be legally built without parking in many jurisdictions, how many of those require helipads?

    • kiliantics 4 years ago

      > 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.

  • criddell 4 years ago

    Self-driving cars are going trigger a new wave of automobile growth, at least in the US. They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate. They are going to throw gasoline on the sprawl fire.

    There will certainly be some city centers and other areas closed to car traffic (although probably not most of Manhattan - delivery vehicles are a significant part of the traffic).

    I'm one of the people looking forward to the day when I can move further out of the city. I don't care if my commute is an hour or more if I can work or sleep or do other things while the car drives me.

    • beefield 4 years ago

      > Self-driving cars are going trigger a new wave of automobile growth, at least in the US. They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate.

      My guess is that you are wrong. At least what comes to driving in cities. As the (current) main problem of cars in cities is not accidents, emissions, lack of convenience or even cost. It is the massive amount of space one car takes[1]. And self driving tech is not going to do anything to solve that. If not the opposite, when empty cars are driving around looking for a parking spot.

      [1] https://permaculturenews.org/images/bus_car_bike_compare.jpg

      • darksaints 4 years ago

        I think it's going to be far worse than that. The economics of self driving cars are so biased toward taxi-like usage that the city streets won't just be filled with cars taking up a lot of space. They'll be filled with cars moving at a glacial pace because the streets are all gridlocked by pickups and dropoffs. Every street will look like an airport or elementary school pickup/dropoff zone.

        And even where there aren't commuting clusters, the fact is that cars will actually obey the laws, meaning pedestrians will finally be free to cross at unmarked intersections, and cyclists will be able to share the lanes with cars.

        • onlyrealcuzzo 4 years ago

          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?

          • thelittleone 4 years ago

            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.

            • criddell 4 years ago

              London has congestion pricing for certain zones as well.

      • onlyrealcuzzo 4 years ago

        I'd also like to point out skepticism to "unbelievably inexpensive to own". To operate, sure. But to own? The tech in these cars alone could easily be $100k. And there's no reason to think society will allow you to operate a car that's 99.999% safe when you could be operating a car that's proven to be 99.99999%. As time goes by, more 9s will keep accruing. And the extra 9s will keep the tech costing the same or more per car as time goes by.

        • criddell 4 years ago

          Eventually they will be cheap. How much would you spend for a computer with the processing power of an iPhone in 1990? Thirty years from now that $100k tech package will be $500 and it will be orders of magnitude better.

          When cars stop colliding with each other, safety standards can be relaxed. Get rid of heavy bumpers and structures added to withstand 50 mph offset crashes. The cars become very light weight which lets you decrease the size of the drivetrain and batteries. You end up with something closer to a fancy golf cart than a Camry and they will cost less than $10k.

          Your 99.9999% argument doesn't sound right to me. In the US at least, we have a very high tolerance for danger when it comes to cars. We could eliminate thousands of deaths per year by simply limiting the top speed of all cars to 25 mph. But we don't because we are willing to accept the risk that comes along with 85 mph speeds (in Texas) for the convenience.

          • bcrosby95 4 years ago

            Would you also say we have a very high tolerance for danger when it comes to poisons and heights? Because your statement appears pretty hyperbolic to me when comparing some of the ways people die in the US.

            https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/accidental-injury.htm

            https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/suicide.htm

            • Dylan16807 4 years ago

              > Would you also say we have a very high tolerance for danger when it comes to poisons and heights?

              For poisons, absolutely. "Nearly all poisoning deaths in the United States are attributed to drugs" And we handle drug dangers very badly.

              For heights, I don't know. Your link says falls which is not the same thing, especially when the elderly are involved. I couldn't find what fraction of those involved heights.

          • xyzzyz 4 years ago

            > When cars stop colliding with each other, safety standards can be relaxed. Get rid of heavy bumpers and structures added to withstand 50 mph offset crashes. The cars become very light weight which lets you decrease the size of the drivetrain and batteries. You end up with something closer to a fancy golf cart than a Camry and they will cost less than $10k.

            A new Camry already most likely costs less than $10k to manufacture. Bumpers and frame aren’t expensive to manufacture, precision components are. The material and manufacturing savings you suggest would reduce the sticker price by $1-2k at best.

        • magduf 4 years ago

          I totally agree with beefield, and like the idea of banning cars, however you're wrong about the tech cost. The only tech needed is a computer and some sensors, and computers aren't exactly expensive these days. The Tesla model S already has a fair amount of self-driving tech, and it costs well under $100k. Cameras aren't exactly expensive either; the big question mark is LIDAR, but some self-driving companies seem to be eschewing that in favor of pure-camera driving (though I really question if that's a good idea because LIDAR isn't affected by weather as much).

          The bottom line is that the extra tech needed to make a car self-driving isn't very expensive, and the hardware costs are continually falling. The big problem is just software, which as we've seen with mobile phones, becomes very cheap when deployed en masse.

          You have a point about the 9s, but given that our current (American) society places almost no emphasis on safety, and will happily let you drive around any piece-of-shit car you want in most places regardless of how unsafe it is, I have a very hard time believing society is suddenly going to demand 9-9s reliability from AutoCarOS.

      • Silhouette 4 years ago

        It is the massive amount of space one car takes[1].

        That is a legitimate concern, but the kind of photo you linked to that is often used in advocacy is horribly misleading.

        In reality, if cyclists rode anything like that close together, there would be accidents all the time because no-one would be able to make turns or travel at different speeds. The general advice to drivers here in the UK is that you should allow as much space around a bike as you do when passing a car, and authorities have conducted public education campaigns on this and even prosecuted drivers for passing too close. From a safety point of view, that advice is clearly sensible, as passing too close to a cycle is quite dangerous, particularly at higher speeds. But you can't have it both ways by claiming cycling is safer and healthier with that sort of space allowance but also that cycling is as space-efficient as it appears stacking bikes up close together like that. In reality, a bike is much smaller than a car, but in terms of proportions, a bike plus adequate space around it is only a bit smaller than a car with adequate space around it.

        Buses are similarly very misleading in that sort of photo. That is partly because unlike typical car journeys they follow circuitous routes that may be 2-3x as far and as slow to get a single passenger from (somewhere near) A to (somewhere near) B. It's also because unless you're looking at an area with very high population density or very high usage routes/times, most buses don't travel anything like fully loaded but still take up the extra space whether they have 50 passengers, 20 passengers or none at all. If you're going to show a full-size car for each individual travelling, as these photos invariably do, why do they always show a single bus at exactly its maximum capacity? If you showed both at average occupancy levels, the photo would look very different.

        This is without getting into the traffic modelling where you find uniform traffic speeds are much more efficient, but while cars can achieve something close to that on clear roads, it is heavily disrupted by both relatively slow-moving cycles that you might not be able to overtake and stop-start buses that might block a traffic lane while allowing passengers on and off.

        There are very practical questions to be asked about why we still drive around in vehicles with space for 4-5 people and luggage capacity for going on a two week holiday even if we're travelling alone and lightly loaded, but a lot of the anti-car arguments made by pro-cycle and particularly pro-bus advocates using the kind of photo linked above are rather disingenuous.

        • enoch_r 4 years ago

          1. It seems to me that all the photos are of roughly "maximum congestion" of each vehicle type. So the cars are pictured as if they're stopped at a light or in heavy traffic, while if they we traveling at 50mph I'd hope for much, much more following distance. So yes, the bikes would have somewhat more distance between them if they were moving, but that seems fair to me, as the cars would too.

          2. I don't want cars to pass me within a few feet. That doesn't mean I feel unsafe when riding within that same distance of other cyclists. The relative speed is much lower, the mass is much lower, etc. Similarly, I will happily ride much closer to an immobile object (e.g. a curb) than I would like someone to pass me at 40mph. So I think the space taken up by a moving bicycle is larger than the bike itself, sure, but absolutely no way is it anywhere close to the size of a car plus following distance plus safety buffer.

          • Silhouette 4 years ago

            So yes, the bikes would have somewhat more distance between them if they were moving, but that seems fair to me, as the cars would too.

            Right. But proportionately, that distance becomes much greater than the size of the vehicles themselves very quickly as speed increases, which makes the comparison based on vehicle size that we see in the photo almost entirely irrelevant in practice.

            • enoch_r 4 years ago

              Your claim:

              > a bike plus adequate space around it is only a bit smaller than a car with adequate space around it.

              Here is an example photo from a recent organized bike ride in my city:

              https://images.app.goo.gl/S1Nh8d7zqfSEzqmH7

              Here is another:

              https://images.app.goo.gl/6hh7NAMtEFPZZyKA9

              It's quite hard for me to square these images (not to mention my own experiences riding bikes) with your assertion.

              • Silhouette 4 years ago

                But everyday cycling around a city doesn't look anything like an organised mass bike ride. Not everyone is an experienced cyclist. There isn't a predetermined route and there are no marshals to direct the riders around it. Different riders will be going in all sorts of different directions. The roads probably won't be cleared of other traffic. Junctions and other traffic controls will be operating normally.

        • adrianN 4 years ago

          Cyclists car ride very closely together quite safely, as all kinds of mass rides show. Relative speeds are close to zero, and cyclists generally have much better spatial awareness than cars.

          • Silhouette 4 years ago

            Cyclists car ride very closely together quite safely, as all kinds of mass rides show.

            That is true to some extent with experienced cyclists following much the same route (which is the situation for most mass rides).

            It is not true at all with a diverse variety of cyclist skill and experience while everyone is trying to get to different places.

            cyclists generally have much better spatial awareness than cars.

            Citation very much needed. As someone who has lived in and around a heavily cycling-friendly city for a very long time, I see little evidence to support this. Indeed, I can't remember the last time a motor vehicle randomly pulled out into the road right in front of me or swerved across my normal driving line without warning causing me to take avoiding action, while I'd measure instances of cyclists doing this sort of thing in units of infractions-per-week even infractions-per-day.

        • tomtheelder 4 years ago

          The photos of the cyclists and cars seem fairly analogous. Both are basically the vehicles sitting in gridlock, so very tightly packed. It's impossible for cars to move at any reasonable speed in that configuration. That said, the bikes photo might not be as crazy as it seems [1].

          The advice about giving cyclists space only applies if you yourself are in a car. Cyclists can ride extremely close to other cyclists and remain totally safe. That photo of Copenhagen illustrates the point very clearly. This works if roads are cycle-first, which is a major rarity.

          The bus complaint is valid, but not really relevant. Cars are only a problem in high traffic routes with a large need for passenger throughput. Buses on those routes tend to be well utilized. If you are living in a place that doesn't have that quantity of people passing through (more rural areas) then cars are totally fine. They likely shouldn't have used a full bus, and I acknowledge that this sort of photo isn't perfect, but the point they are trying to make is entirely valid.

          The argument about uniform traffic speeds is mostly irrelevant for exactly the same reasons I listed above. With clear roads, there is no problem. The issue is that, in busy cities, clear roads are an impossibility, even in cities that were built with automobile traffic as the clear first priority for transportation.

          In situations where car traffic is not a problem, it's not a problem! We can leave it alone. Automobiles are, and will remain for the foreseeable future, the only valid option for transit outside of urban areas.

          The car free movement is fundamentally about cities (particularly city centers), where cars are inefficient, are expensive, are dangerous, use up in inordinate amount of space, and are a major contributor to pollution (which is a particularly large problem in such areas). In those sort of situations, there is simply a better way.

          [1] https://media.treehugger.com/assets/images/2015/10/copenhage...

          • Silhouette 4 years ago

            Cyclists can ride extremely close to other cyclists and remain totally safe.

            No, they can't. The risk of a careless cyclist swerving across the path of another cyclist is little different to the risk of a careless cyclist swerving across the path of a motor vehicle, except that in the first case the innocent party is much more likely to be seriously hurt. The point of the official guidance to allow as much space when passing a cycle as when passing a car is because the cycle is more likely to be unstable, not because the overtaking car is.

            Cars are only a problem in high traffic routes with a large need for passenger throughput. Buses on those routes tend to be well utilized.

            Several decades of experience living in my current area suggest otherwise. For example, one significant problem is asymmetry: if you go one way on a journey by one mode of transport, you may well need to make a return trip later using the same mode of transport, but just because it's busy and there's a frequent and well-utilised bus service in one case, that is no guarantee of the same (or indeed any bus service at all) for the return trip. This can simultaneously result in both hugely wasteful journeys by almost-empty buses in some cases and impossible journeys due to inadequate bus service provision in others.

            If you are living in a place that doesn't have that quantity of people passing through (more rural areas) then cars are totally fine.

            But people living in rural areas often travel into or via nearby towns and cities. Indeed, it's entirely possible for the majority of congestion on the roads of a town or city to come from this source. Unless you provide adequate public transport alternatives for not just those travelling relatively short distances within that town or city but also those travelling into and/or out of the central area, you don't really offer a practical alternative to car journeys.

            Likewise, people living in big cities need to travel outside the city sometimes. Unless there's reasonable public transport for their entire journey, including reaching any long-distance transport in their home city and getting around wherever they are visiting, again you're back to needing an alternative that can do the whole job, and if that means a car then you're driving it within your home city as well.

            The issue is that, in busy cities, clear roads are an impossibility, even in cities that were built with automobile traffic as the clear first priority for transportation.

            Again, that is not necessarily true. When you reach critical mass, it becomes true, but there is often a wide band with some degree of congestion but not approaching gridlock. Within that band, it is entirely possible for journeys to be significantly disrupted and therefore lengthened by the effects I mentioned. We see it almost every day in the city closest to me, for as much as an hour or two either side of peak periods, or during lesser peaks like weekend shopping or before and after some local event with a lot of visitors.

            The car free movement is fundamentally about cities (particularly city centers), where cars are inefficient, are expensive, are dangerous, use up in inordinate amount of space, and are a major contributor to pollution (which is a particularly large problem in such areas). In those sort of situations, there is simply a better way.

            Yes, mass transport is effective in scenarios where there is sufficient demand to make it worthwhile, and for local journeys within dense populations at peak times that may well be the case. I don't think anyone seriously disputes this.

            The problem I have with a lot of the anti-car advocacy is that it treats transport networks as some sort of boolean system, either "congested" or "not congested", but in reality the degree of congestion tends to follow a much smoother curve with peaks at various times throughout the day. If you draw a straight horizontal line, across a chart of congestion against time of day, at the level where critical mass is reached and gridlock is inevitable, in many places there will be a lot of the time when the curve is below that line. At those times, alternative modes of transport may be less attractive in terms of potentially relevant criteria like efficiency, reliability/availability and environmental friendliness.

      • nightsd01 4 years ago

        beefield: a self driving car doesn’t NEED to take up space in a crowded city. It can drive you to work, then you get out, then it can go drive itself to a less crowded area. Then when you’re ready to leave the office it can be there when you’re ready to go.

        • acdha 4 years ago

          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.

          • jdnenej 4 years ago

            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.

            • acdha 4 years ago

              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.

              • magduf 4 years ago

                >If the city planners do their jobs competently

                That's expecting way, way too much in America.

        • journalctl 4 years ago

          Where... where does the car live? It has to take up space somewhere. And if you say “outside the city”, then you’ve just reinvented suburbs.

      • criddell 4 years ago

        Couldn't part of that be "fixed" by sprawl? Get the density low enough then all you have to worry about are high capacity corridors across the city.

        Right now I live in a suburb of Austin. I rarely go to downtown as all the places I go during the week (work, my kids' school, movie theater, grocery stores, restaurants, doctors) are out here as well and parking is plentiful.

        • ItsDeathball 4 years ago

          This is what's been tried from about 1960 to now. It turns out to not be anything near sustainable financially, because the low density development doesn't provide enough tax revenue to pay for maintenance on the infrastructure. Once an inner-ring suburb needs to raise taxes to replace its water pipes, it starts emptying out to newer suburbs farther out that don't have to support legacy infrastructure and things like pensions. If you look at closer-in suburbs built 30 years ago, you'll see abandoned former Walmarts and Pizza Huts that followed the growth outwards once their buildings were fully depreciated. Austin might be slightly different because it's changing to fit the mold of an expensive coastal city from the inside out, but the pattern holds in other areas that aren't as trendy right now.

    • megaremote 4 years ago

      > They won't be dangerous, will run clean, be super convenient and unbelievably inexpensive to own and operate.

      Oh, they will not use tires? Which leave smalls bits of plastic everywhere they go that get washed into our waterway as micro-plastic.

      • garretraziel 4 years ago

        I would say that yes, in some distant future, they will not use tires.

      • jdnenej 4 years ago

        It's not just small bits of rubber you see on the side of the road, it's billions of rubber dust particles that come off the tires and blow in to the air giving you cancer.

    • brenden2 4 years ago

      Small deliveries are done by bicycle these days in Manhattan. Large items, like furniture, could be delivered using small electric trucks with special permits for this purpose.

      • criddell 4 years ago

        I was thinking more about the fleet of Sysco, UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc... trucks.

        • greglindahl 4 years ago

          ... all of which are looking at electric vehicles. And are a small % of the current overall traffic.

    • makerofspoons 4 years ago

      They will run clean, but if carbon is taxed appropriately I'm doubtful they will be cheap enough for the average person to own one since the manufacturing will be far from clean. Most likely people will summon a shared vehicle with an app.

  • raldi 4 years ago

    Automobiles kill thousands of people every day.

  • Ericson2314 4 years ago

    Yes to this. To all the people saying cars were some necessarily step, I disagree. I think the damage cars and sprawl have done to our land use and social structures will take every bit as long to clean up as as the carbon emissions.

  • Razengan 4 years ago

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

    While I share that dream, and rarely ever need a car myself, I cannot currently imagine a better alternative to having a personal car in your home for the following situations:

    • The most obvious: People who need to be chaperoned: children, the elderly and people with disabilities.

    • The next most obvious: Medical emergencies where you don't have to (or don't want to) wait for an ambulance.

    • Privacy for groups of people, with group activities (e.g. playing music, making out) confined to the automobile's enclosure.

    • Following on the previous point: Going out with the whole family as a single unit, with provisions for taking care of infants etc. right there.

    These can be solved if/when fully automatic on-demand cars become widely available, that anyone can request anywhere anytime with a tap on their phone and don't require passengers to learn how to drive. (But I'm afraid they'll be a huge privacy leak, with companies scrambling to record everything that happens in their cars.)

    Almost everything else, like shopping, can already be taken care of with current technology and services just fine (e.g. home delivery.)

    Until we get Star Trek teleportation.

    • benj111 4 years ago

      "The most obvious: the elderly and people with disabilities"

      Interesting you pick that as your first point, as this is an argument for the opposite.

      The 3 groups of people that can't drive, are these 2 and kids.

      • Kaiyou 4 years ago

        How do you move your eldery father to your home for christmas? You drive to him, get him in your car and drive him to your home.

      • Razengan 4 years ago

        > The 3 groups of people that can't drive, are these 2 and kids.

        Ah sorry, I should have explicitly stated that they need others to drive them around. Taxis and public transport are usually not convenient for them.

        • benj111 4 years ago

          Id argue against public transport not being convenient older people, certainly compared to other groups. I can see how public transport is more of a challenge for certain disabled groups. I can't see why taxis couldn't fill that role here though???

      • mamon 4 years ago

        They can't drive by themselves, but can be driven in a car by friend or family, who will take them exactly to their final destination. Public transportation requires them to walk significant distance, climb stairs, etc, which is not nearly as convenient. Of course taxis are the alternative, but they are quite expensive, and taxi driver might not be as helpful and forgiving for their disabilities as a family member would.

        • Razengan 4 years ago

          Yep, taxi drivers are strangers, which is not desirable for people who need to be chaperoned, and in worse cases it puts those passengers at a risk of being taken advantage of (like being charged an unnecessarily higher fare, or not getting their forgotten belongings back.)

          • benj111 4 years ago

            In a future where we get rid of private cars, we could have community taxis/buses that are trained to deal with these things.

            Theres a woman near me with some kind of mental impairment that gets picked up and dropped off by a mini bus with a lift on the back, so the model obviously exists in some form.

            Plus it doesn't rely on a support network that may not be there.

    • jakecopp 4 years ago

      - Children love to ride bikes when it is safe to do so, from personal experience.

      - If you keep some (inverse of most) streets open to a small amount of traffic (Like Barcelona's superblocks [1]), the elderly and those with disabilities are still mobile.

      - Why is privacy needed when travelling? Do you require a private enclosure around you when you are walking? I've met many interesting people from all walks of life while cycling and on public transport that I wouldn't have had the chance to meet otherwise, just like I meet people when on foot. Car free streets provide many more interesting street restaurants/businesses for such activities you describe.

      - Travelling with the whole family on a train or cycling is pretty good. For example, in Sydney the seats of most of our trains flip so you can have up to 6 people facing each other.

      Though I am excited for self driving cars because we won't need so much parking!

      [1]: https://theconversation.com/superblocks-are-transforming-bar...

      • Razengan 4 years ago

        You are assuming all cultures/societies to be the same.

        • jakecopp 4 years ago

          Could you elaborate which points would differ between cultures?

          If one is choosing to live in a city, they are willing to be surrounded by other people in their daily life.

          I don't think anyone is advocating banning/reducing cars in suburbia.

    • magduf 4 years ago

      >• The most obvious: People who need to be chaperoned: children, the elderly and people with disabilities.

      Children don't need to be chaperoned. In Japan, children as young as 4 go on errands to the local store to buy things for their parents, and children as young as 6/7 walk themselves to school.

      >• Following on the previous point: Going out with the whole family as a single unit, with provisions for taking care of infants etc. right there.

      A family can easily walk together in a city, take a subway together, etc. People in other countries seem to have no trouble carrying "provisions for infants" in a bag with them.

      >• Privacy for groups of people, with group activities (e.g. playing music, making out) confined to the automobile's enclosure.

      I don't see how privacy when making out is some kind of urgent need in society. Get a room. Or go to a public park. Seriously?

      • Razengan 4 years ago

        > In Japan

        This is what I meant by my reply to the other comment: Not all cultures/societies are the same.

        It also happens to be the explanation for the other points.

        • magduf 4 years ago

          Well if your culture is so utterly broken that you feel the need to "chaperone" your children everywhere, then maybe you need to fix your broken culture. Japan and Western Europe both show that you don't need cars the way you do in America, and trying to handwave it away with a lame excuse like "well, cultures are different" isn't helping anything.

  • mymythisisthis 4 years ago

    People travel for about 3hrs before wanting a break. Cars killed all small cities a 3hr drive away from a major city. It's like a nuclear bomb went off in most small cities.

    • Gibbon1 4 years ago

      My GF's dad said where he he lived in the Midwest there used to be a small store at each major cross roads. About every 5 miles.

      Cars came and every other one died and there was a store every ten miles.

      Then they paved the road and it was every 30 miles.

      And then the interstate when in and only the major towns every 60 miles apart survived.

  • loco5niner 4 years ago

    > replaced with green space full of trees, flowers, children playing, and usable public space.

    Perhaps a few frolicking unicorns as well

  • nightsd01 4 years ago

    Cars kill thousands of people a year....in a country of 330 MILLION people? Sorry but the sheer convenience of automobiles greatly outweighs the cost.

    This trend to “ban cars” is one of the silliest and dumbest ideas I’ve ever seen. Just because you don’t like cars doesn’t mean they aren’t often the best option for many people. Banning them and pretending they don’t exist doesn’t change that fact.

    • megaremote 4 years ago

      They kill 40,000 people every single year in the USA, and injure or disable over 2 million more. And that is not including death from the pollution the cause. And this is just one reason they are the worst invention created by man.

aeharding 4 years ago

I've dreamt about this. I would immediately move to the first US city that bans SOV commuters from a significant portion of the city (let's say, a couple square miles), and establishes superblocks where no vehicles are allowed whatsoever, with the old streets converted to green space.

Of course, I doubt this will happen in my lifetime.

  • fragmede 4 years ago

    Attitudes are changing, so it could still happen in your lifetime. San Francisco just approved the Better Market Street Project, which isn't a ban on SOV commuters, but will heavily restrict them, prohibiting them from driving on Market Street itself, allowing them only to cross. (Taxi's will still be allowed, though not Uber/Lyft.)

    This project would never have gotten off the drawing board 30 years ago. That it managed to pass is a testament to how much things are changing.

  • thehappypm 4 years ago

    New York City has this, it's called Central Park, and it is ringed by some of the most expensive real estate in the world because it is so wonderful.

  • bb123 4 years ago

    The problem is that most of those SOV commuters are commuters because they cant afford to live in the city. I count myself among them. I would rather not drive, but public transport is too expensive and so is housing. If I have to choose between owning a home and driving, or renting for the rest of my life but having the luxury of a bike I'm going to choose the former.

  • jacquesm 4 years ago

    Isn't the USA empty enough that you could still start such a city today?

    • pchristensen 4 years ago

      Availability of land is the limiting factor inside existing cities, but not for the development of new cities. To build a new city, your limiting factor would be a self-sustaining cluster of economic activity that can attract participants. And that's difficult to bootstrap for a lot of reasons.

      • throwing838383 4 years ago

        To get people to move somewhere, you mainly just need jobs. Everybody wants jobs. There's no choice, people have to go where jobs are because employers have much more bargaining power.

        So, create some large enough tax incentives for companies to move there, and people will follow.

        • pchristensen 4 years ago

          Jobs alone aren’t enough - look at oil and gas fields in North Dakota and West Texas. You need stable employment, schools, police and fire - you know, Sim City stuff. Also, you need economic opportunity beyond just “jobs” - you need bold entrepreneurial types that tend to get stifled in a pure company town. Kind of like how a company can lose its edge if investors own too much of the company and founders too little. It’s hard to create from scratch.

          The closest example to what you’re saying are the artificial capital cities like Brasilia and Canberra, but then you’re talking about the backing and resources of an entire country’s federal budget.

        • hn_throwaway_99 4 years ago

          > So, create some large enough tax incentives for companies to move there, and people will follow.

          Except companies don't just go to places because of tax incentives. Indeed, many companies (and people) stick around CA despite the super high tax burden because it has so many other things going for it. Conversely, places with very generous tax incentives can sometimes still have trouble attracting companies because the reason their tax incentives are so high is because they are lacking in other respects.

          • throwing838383 4 years ago

            well, it depends on whether your in a high margin or low margin business or and whether or not your a monopoly business. Amazon, entertained many offers from many cities to find the best tax incentives.

            I would imagine businesses that compete with low margins would be looking for such incentives.

    • ArlenBales 4 years ago

      When was the last time a city was incorporated in the U.S. that grew to a large, thriving population?

      I'm guessing it's been some decades. I grew up playing a lot of Sim City and imaging building cities, but I don't think we build cities anymore - we just expand existing ones.

      • hn_throwaway_99 4 years ago

        On the flip side, though, there are some rust belt cities that have been hollowed out that could easily support 2 or 3x their current population.

    • Rapzid 4 years ago

      Yeah but public transpo doesn't run out that far so you end up with a chicken-egg proble; the people who demonize cars can't get there to start the city..

    • scarejunba 4 years ago

      Are there good city locations still available? (By water, large enough area available, not actively attempting to kill you)

      • bluGill 4 years ago

        A good city location is right next to an existing city. Existing cities have everything someone moving to your city might want, so just locate next to them.

        There are plenty of locations with the characteristics you name all over the world. You can start a city half way between Omaha and Kansas City if you want - nobody will home even though it meets all your requirements.

        Major cities develop near shipping when there is a good port location (either river or sea), and there is a rural population to support the city. Those locations are not only already taken, but with better inland shipping many of them are not nearly as important for shipping as they used to be and exist because they are too large to die from other industry that moved in since.

        Major cities can also develop when there is a natural resource nearby. It is possible someone will discover a large mineral deposit and open a mine in the middle on nowhere thus requiring a city to develop to serve it. If the city becomes large enough it could outlast the mine. Though more likely the city is already a small town, and will not grow to be large enough (from 2000 to 20000 isn't enough to sustain a city despite 10x growth)

        In short, the next large stand alone city will not be on earth. Mars maybe?

        • scarejunba 4 years ago

          Oh that's a good observation: near a city location is the best city location.

      • bregma 4 years ago

        There's a large, ideally-sited flat area just north of Windsor, Ontario that would be a great location for a large American city. Riverfront access with a navigable waterway, railroad and highway infrastructure, moderate climate. As far as I can tell there is no one actually living there right now.

      • AnimalMuppet 4 years ago

        Why "by water"?

        I mean, yes, the city needs a water supply. It doesn't need ocean shipping, though, or even barge shipping.

      • jah 4 years ago

        Sure, but they're probably only available by car.

        • scarejunba 4 years ago

          Haha, I'm kinda curious. And no problem, I own an SUV in San Francisco.

  • alexandernst 4 years ago

    > where no vehicles are allowed whatsoever

    Food (just to put an example) will pop up in the stores out of thin air.

rb808 4 years ago

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.

  • tonyedgecombe 4 years ago

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

    • sfink 4 years ago

      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.)

      • tonyedgecombe 4 years ago

        If only poor people use X because wealthier people have Y, then X will suck.

        That is what happens now, it's the better off buying new cars, poor people get the hand me downs. This is fine because eight year old cars do the job.

        If there are no eight year old cars to buy because the better off stopped buying new or because they bought electric which only have a practical life of eight years then they are stuffed.

    • jakecopp 4 years ago

      Cars are expensive. Cars are extremely expensive to park in the city.

      I don't think anyone is arguing to ban cars in outer suburbs without sufficient buses to the local station.

      I imagine most inner city drivers are quite wealthy if they can afford parking there.

ChuckNorris89 4 years ago

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 outside of the cities and away from their jobs, where they could find properties they could afford, outside of the coverage of the rail network. It's almost impossible now, when everyone outside of the city is dependent on their cars to get to work/supermarket/city, to get them to leave their cars without first implementing a massive public transport network that would be too expensive to run profitably so it's much cheaper for the cities to just let people have their cars as they're the ones bearing the cost instead of the city.

2) It's also heavily political. The party that so much as dares to touch drivers and their cars will commit political suicide. Especially since my city is wealthy due to the extensive automotive industry nearby (R&D and manufacturing). Whenever politicians here propose less cars on the road, the auto industry threatens with lost jobs and jobs are way more important for a politician's career than people in the city dying prematurely of air pollution. And not to mention all the dealerships and service centers that contribute to political campaigns and public events especially in smaller cities.

I'd love to see cars banned from this beautiful city, but seeing how culturally attached the locals are to their cars and suburban lifestyle, I'm afraid it's just a pipe dream at this point.

  • jacquesm 4 years ago

    If Bogota can do it then rich European cities can do it.

    Think of it this way: whatever the cost to society of cheap and plentiful public transport it will be a small fraction of the cost of car based transportation.

    Parking, the cost of producing and maintaining the vehicles themselves, the pollution , the accidents, it all really adds up.

    • ChuckNorris89 4 years ago

      Sorry, but there's no way you can convince Herr Schmidt who lives in the suburbs and just bought a 80.000 Euro Mercedes to take the bus to the city.

      At least the inner city center is car free on some shopping streets so we got that.

      • pwinnski 4 years ago

        Generally it start with charging a high daily congestion fee to drive into the city center. From there you expand the area. An 80k car that costs another 2-3k per year to drive into the city center, and maybe another 2-3k per year to park, at some point most people find it worthwhile to save the car for driving outside the city center.

        • ChuckNorris89 4 years ago

          Can't do that. The low and middle class here are also dependent on their banged up hatckbacks to get to work as they live very far from their jobs. If you make parking super expensive it's gonna hurt the Volkswagen man first and way harder than the Mercedes man.

          • pwinnski 4 years ago

            Can't do what other cities have already done? How did those other cities do it, then?

            If parking starts to carry its cost, rather than being subsidized by government regulation, then it quite likely becomes more economical to rely on mass transit than banged-up hatchbacks. But yes, changing from horribly-designed cities spread out over vast areas that depend on cars to navigate to human-oriented cities with effective mass transit is a huge project, and would require thinking about solutions that take into account the currently-hidden costs of the current designs.

          • adrianN 4 years ago

            Cities change on decades long timelines. That's enough time for people to adjust.

      • bluGill 4 years ago

        But Herr Schmidt lives next to a more frugal neighbor who doesn't car about the nice car and will take transit, currently the neighbor is driving a Toyota or some such practical car and wouldn't care in the least if he didn't have to drive again.

      • bjourne 4 years ago

        Don't we as a society have more pressing concerns than worrying about Mercedes owners ?

    • vinceguidry 4 years ago

      What exactly did Bogota do? Was pretty car-heavy last two times I was there.

      • jacquesm 4 years ago

        This:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransMilenio

        Every two to five minutes a bus.

        • vinceguidry 4 years ago

          TransMilenio is definitely a nice system, but they built it because they felt it would be cheaper than a traditional metro system, like Medellin's. I definitely preferred Medellin's system over TM. But TM is definitely novel.

          • jacquesm 4 years ago

            TM cost a very small fraction of what a metro system would have cost, it is not that they 'felt' that way, it simply is like that. They also did it pretty quickly and are expanding all over the city.

            What drawbacks there are are mostly due to its success, overcrowding and so on. It's also not the safest place, but it being Colombia that not exactly news. Still, something like the TM would work just fine in many West European and American cities.

  • bkor 4 years ago

    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 history in The Netherlands it wasn't always a bicycle friendly country. Even in the last 10 years there's been many changes to make things different. For e.g. Utrecht a lot of work only happened in the last 2 years, see e.g. https://vimeo.com/344373585.

    Other changes are to reduce the speed for cars. Basically: road near a lot of other houses? 30km/h, then 50km/h for inner city roads. Outside of the city 80km/h. Safer for pedestrians, nicer for the people living there (the road is way less dangerous), plus immediately makes some alternative forms of transport a better alternative.

    • ChuckNorris89 4 years ago

      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.

      • magduf 4 years ago

        > The Netherlands and Denmark are totally different animals. They build their bike infrastructure for decades and never adopted a car culture.

        That's not true at all; Netherlands was more of a car culture several decades ago, and had to work at bringing cycling back.

choeger 4 years ago

Does anyone really think children will play on the streets when buses, trams, bicycles, emergency services, garbage trucks, and delivery vans still need that space? Does anyone really believe the "empty" parking lots will become public space?

Consider two things: First, every apartment block in a city needs access by road for the emergency services. Second, a more livable city will attract more citizens. This in turn increases the residual traffic.

A city is, by definition, a place where space is at a premium. Banning cars does not change that. And traffic can be solved by offering better alternatives to commuters and managing through-traffic.

  • Symbiote 4 years ago

    > Does anyone really think children will play on the streets

    Yes, absolutely -- unless something like fearful parents prevent it. I work close to some of the central pedestrian streets in Copenhagen. If the weather is reasonable, children will play in three places around the building:

    - (Mostly) boys around 10-14 years old play with skateboards where the road leads up to the start of the pedestrian street. Naturally, very few vehicles want to go this way during daytime.

    - Children (4-8-ish?) with their parents or nursery staff play in the actual play area (swings etc). This area is fenced off.

    - Some slightly older children (8-12?), especially with rollerskates or kick scooters, play around the play area, including in the street. This is a through route for cars on one side, and access to the pedestrian streets on the other sides.

    The buses are 100m away, people riding bicycles will be particularly careful if children are playing, and people driving will wait until the children move out of the way, then proceed slowly. I can't remember the last time an emergency vehicle needed to go through, I assume all the children would quickly move out of the way. (Far, far more quickly and effectively than a line of cars in traffic would be able to!)

    Most other streets in and around the pedestrian area have fewer children playing, but more adults using the street. There are many cafes, bars and restaurants with tables on the street.

  • adrianN 4 years ago

    Children already play on the street in residential areas where traffic is basically nonexistent most of the day. Why do you think that this behavior won't extend to more streets if we ban 90% of the cars?

  • bkor 4 years ago

    Normally buses don't go on every road. Delivery vans are usually restricted which hours of the day they're allowed to deliver.

    I highly suggest to read up on what actually is allowed and what's not in a "car free" city. It isn't as black and white as you might think.

  • close04 4 years ago

    The smaller streets can still be mostly empty, short of the occasional emergency vehicle. I still call that a win.

  • cscurmudgeon 4 years ago

    Look at SF. They are looking to ban cars from the city center but not drug dealers who deal right in front of govt buildings and mere feet from police offers.

    But banning cars gets a lot more airspace for some reason. Totally dysfunctional clown city.

WiseWeasel 4 years ago

The article's most prominent example of an idyllic, walkable, “car-free” city is Venice, Italy, whose residents do have motor vehicles with full access to the city; they just happen to run on separate waterways.

This would imply that the optimal land-based city could have cars, but they'd have to have their infrastructure more sequestered from pedestrians.

  • megaremote 4 years ago

    > whose residents do have motor vehicles with full access to the city; they just happen to run on separate waterways.

    You think everyone in Venice has a boat? No.

Scapeghost 4 years ago

What's with all the anti-car articles lately? It's pointless to try having any discussion about it because any comment that even remotely suggests the situational necessity of cars is downvoted out of visibility.

Might as well disable comments and just tell everyone what to think in the title. Drop the pretense of not being an echo chamber by this point.

damnyou 4 years ago

So I totally support improving public transit, reducing the space allotted for cars, etc etc.

But after 15 years living a car-free in city apartments, I live in a suburb with roommates now and love it. Our home is bigger, we have a lovely backyard where we can sunbathe at whatever nudity level we're comfortable with, we have a nursery for herbs in it, and we can go outside at night and walk the dog without being catcalled. I'm still less than a 20 minute drive away from most of the things I care about. Car dependence is a minor loss compared to the major gains to my quality of life.

Whenever you look at countries that have great public transportation, they usually end up sacrificing space to achieve that. Homes in Japan are much smaller than in the US for example.

How does this square up?

  • yohannparis 4 years ago

    The article mention cities, you are talking about suburbs. Nobody wants to remove cars from the suburbs because it is the backbone of it. Remove the cars => no more suburbs.

    • damnyou 4 years ago

      Yes, but less auto dependence means less suburbs right? "Sprawl" is criticized a lot. A transit oriented suburb would be like Japan. The houses would be less big, there would be less space to suspend the normal rules of society around things like nudity, and so on.

      I get why cities are great, but suburb living leads to a very different — and for me vastly better — quality of life.

      • ItsDeathball 4 years ago

        We have a model for transit-oriented suburbs in America. Pre-WW2 streetcar suburbs are still spacious and have nice private backyards, but also have transit within easy walking distance. Transit-supporting density was generally achieved through smaller front yards, narrower streets, and less parking.

      • zaphod4prez 4 years ago

        I'm not sure why "less auto dependence [would mean] less suburbs."

        Here's one alternative: If we get rid of cars in cities, have commuter rail from the city to each surrounding suburb, and allow cars in the suburb? Then... there you go. This is called a "hub and spoke" pattern iirc

        There are plenty of suburbs in the US that operate like this— where most people who work in the city commute via rail, but most families also have cars, and there is a spread-out spacious feel (some towns in NJ come to mind).

        • damnyou 4 years ago

          You're describing the BART model, and parking is slowly being removed from it in favor of apartments.

      • tomtheelder 4 years ago

        Older cities in the northeast US have a lot of transit friendly areas where residents still own a car. You just need to get to your town center to access the public transit system. That can be accomplished by driving if needed. It can also still be less sprawling that way, since the town centers function as transit hubs.

        It's not even done particularly well in the NE US, and it still works fairly well compared to the situation in most places.

        I don't think improving transit options in cities and maintaining a car-oriented existence in the suburbs are at odds with one another.

        • damnyou 4 years ago

          But the space next to a transit center is more valuable, so why would there be parking there and not apartments?

          In practice the answer seems to be either (a) be subsidized and fill up early, as with BART today, or (b) be priced at market rate, so with BART people would have to pay $18/day for parking.

8bitsrule 4 years ago

Then narrow corridors can open up for tiny, induction-powered, two-person electric 'trams' that move at a walking pace, and follow sensor-detected 'tracks' to the requested destination.

If I need to get somewhere 'downtown' that's 12-40 blocks away, that buses don't go, that's a long walk. I predict that the space and demand for sane transport options will remain.

  • adrianN 4 years ago

    There shouldn't be locations more than a few blocks away that busses don't go to. In Berlin's, London's, or Tokyo's center for example you'd be hard pressed to find a place more than a few minutes walk from public transport.

  • cesnja 4 years ago

    Electric scooters might be the solution here.

eloycoto 4 years ago

Sad to see this article does not mention Pontevedra(Spain), years living without cars in the city center.

  • kitx 4 years ago

    Pontevedra is mentioned in the fifth paragraph, but unfortunately not much detail is given.

mac_was 4 years ago

Answer: people are late to work because the communication system cannot possibly handle that amount of people unless we are talking about a small village... Maybe one day it will happen

dpflan 4 years ago

"Today's housing crisis stems from a lack of land – get rid of cars and the problem is solved immediately – JH Crawford"

When the situation is simplified, yes.

bananabiscuit 4 years ago

I’m guessing so many people on HN are anti-car because they live their lives through their computer and never feel the need to travel outside their immediate area?

What are you supposed to do if you like to take trips to places hundreds of miles away? What if your job involves visiting many different locations in your city throughout the day?

I have family that lives in the same city as me and the difference between visiting them via public transport and using a car is 3 hours vs 40 minutes. This is also NYC which is considered a model city for public transport.

  • timerol 4 years ago

    The model for banning cars from cities is either establishing a car-free core of less than a square mile, or establishing "superblocks" where car travel is only allowed on the perimeter of the block. Exceptions are made for deliveries and emergency vehicles, sometimes public transit, and sometimes resident street parking.

    So, the answer to all of your hypothetical scenarios is that they drive. And then possibily walk the last bit, less than a quarter-mile.

    I don't own a car, even though I take long trips regularly. I go hiking about 100 miles away once a month or so. (Rental car split with friends, generally.) I travel 300 miles about every two months to see family. (Overnight bus for a long weekend, generally.) Buying a car would be an awful financial decision for me. Not having to use a car for day-to-day trips saves me money and peace of mind.

  • drstewart 4 years ago

    No, you're guessing that because you live in a world that's been designed for cars for 50 years, so you naturally see it as the most convenient option -- because it's been designed that way. Even in NYC.

    Design cities for people first and not automobiles and you'll be asking why anyone would take a car over a train/bus/bike because it's more expensive, takes longer, and is more of a hassle.

    • derg 4 years ago

      Hell, even walking if it's close enough! I moved to a place slightly under a mile from work and walking to and from everyday is blissful and life changing, even accounting for the weather.

      Being able to safely walk to places (work, shops, points of interests) is so often overlooked, and its super good for you! *

      *Now if we could curtail cars inside cities it would be even better due to lack of emissions.

      • jborichevskiy 4 years ago

        The next best commute after a telecommute is a 15-minute walk.

        Agreed on emissions, and noise too!

    • yohannparis 4 years ago

      Exactly! Go to Switzerland, where it is common to take the Train + Postal bus to leave the city and hiking in the mountain.

    • jimmaswell 4 years ago

      Why would I want to walk to a train/bus station, wait around, cram into a space full of people (some crazy or smelly or muggers), then walk even more afterwards and probably have to take even more connections, or be forced to use a bike all the time (I use one recreationally but I'd hate to rely on it)? We're not all such smug masochists that we're willing to turn every day into an inconvenient exercise routine and carry the cross of carlessness for ideological reasons.

      • graup 4 years ago

        The things you mentioned are all implementation problems not inherent to the mode of transport. Visit any Asian megapolis (HK, Seoul, Singapore...) and you can see how public transportation can be effective and convenient.

    • dudul 4 years ago

      If at 3AM my kid starts feeling very sick, how do I get him to the doctor/hospital in a city where cars are banned?

      And I'm not trying to be facetious, I think the theory of car-less cities is really appealing, but I honestly don't see how this is a good solution.

      • Symbiote 4 years ago

        Obviously in a taxi or ambulance, depending on the severity.

        We are allowed to make reasonable exceptions.

      • paxys 4 years ago

        Car-free does not mean inaccessible. All cities that have taken these steps have also made exceptions for emergency vehicles, commercial vehicles (with permits) etc. In fact with fewer cars on the road you are going to be able to get to the hospital quicker.

      • smileysteve 4 years ago

        To be nostalgic, in a non driving world, perhaps there is a neighborhood doctor's office.

        To relate to the other comments talking about health policy change; you should already be looking for a local urgent care for most issues.

        And to put the question further in U.S. medical politics perspective; if you're a rural American in a state that hasn't expanded medicaid, your local Level 1 Trauma hospital is likely too far away anyway...

      • judge2020 4 years ago

        Assuming the city is made for people as the parent comment said, you would go to your (very close) train station and get a ride to the nearest hospital or the nearest urgent care.

        • derg 4 years ago

          Also assuming vital things like ambulances are cheap and or free instead of hundreds (or thousands) of dollars means it is a lot more viable to call for one and a mostly car-free city means quicker transport in said vehicle.

          • dudul 4 years ago

            Sure, why stop at completely remodeling hundreds of years of urbanism, let's just also fix up the complete mess that is the US health care system while we're at it :)

            That being said, yes I agree. And I would not have made the same comment if I was still living in Europe where calling an ambulance is virtually free (I did it a couple of times).

        • wincy 4 years ago

          As someone who suffers from motion sickness, and whose children are the same, with trains being the worst offender (since we can't look forward which mitigates the issue somewhat), I do not look forward to this future.

          • bkor 4 years ago

            In trains it's better to look towards the back of the train. So do it next to a window, but with your face towards the back of the train.

            This at least according to one person I was on a train with. I had a reserved seat looking towards the back of the train. I (and most people) don't like those. The other person really wanted my seat because of motion sickness. So we were both really happy to switch seats :-D

        • dudul 4 years ago

          So I would have to walk like what? 15 minutes with my kid who is crying, then wait another 10 to 15 minutes for a train to show up, then wait on the train for 15 to 20 minutes, then walk from the station to the hospital for maybe 5 to 10 minutes.

          So this is roughly 60 to 80 minutes, with my crying child, and all assuming a fairly efficient public transportation system. I think that's always the problem when we get pitchforks out to ban cars altogether. I'm all for "greener" cities, for bicycle lanes and all. All policies that try to make it less required to use your car are great, but a blanket ban is idiotic because sometimes, having a car can literally save your life.

          • bluGill 4 years ago

            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.

            • Alupis 4 years ago

              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?

              • bluGill 4 years ago

                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)

          • pwinnski 4 years ago

            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 without cars is possible.

            • Alupis 4 years ago

              > 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.

              • magduf 4 years ago

                If Fiddletown, California were forced to pay for its own road construction and upkeep, instead of getting free money from the state or federal government, they'd have to massively raise their taxes, and the town would become a ghost town as people moved to the large cities that have lower per-capita infrastructure costs.

              • pwinnski 4 years ago

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

            • damnyou 4 years ago

              I loved Hong Kong when I visited it but I would never want to live there. My quality of life in the US is much higher.

          • magduf 4 years ago

            >then wait another 10 to 15 minutes for a train to show up

            You seem to be assuming that every country has train systems as horrible as America's.

            >and all assuming a fairly efficient public transportation system

            No, you're not.

            >having a car can literally save your life.

            You don't need a car to save your life. This is why ambulances were invented: if you have a real life-threatening emergency, you call one of those. If you're having a true emergency, you have no business driving yourself anyway: you're a danger to everyone around you.

    • Rapzid 4 years ago

      Cities are designed for people. People like cars.

  • paulgb 4 years ago

    > I’m guessing so many people on HN are anti-car because they live their lives through their computer and never feel the need to travel outside their immediate area?

    Not at all! I just rent when I want to go camping. Although, the commuter trains open up a lot of nice options for weekend trips that don't require a car. And that way I can read a book or enjoy the scenery instead of driving.

    > What if your job involves visiting many different locations in your city throughout the day?

    Unless you are counting Uber drivers, I don't think this describes many of the cars on the streets.

    > This is also NYC which is considered a model city for public transport.

    Only in comparison to other US cities, which is an incredibly low bar.

    • judge2020 4 years ago

      > I don't think this describes many of the cars on the streets.

      That's part of the reason people favor(ed) cars over train - they effectively accommodate everyone and work for every use case.

      • paulgb 4 years ago

        Past a certain population density, cars absolutely do not accomedate everyone. There's simply a finite amount of street space in the city, if everyone chose to drive in Manhattan the streets would cease to function.

        Case in point, if you walk around Broome St. between 4:30 and 6:00 PM on a weekday, there are regularly cars (and pedestrians) that miss an entire light cycle because there are too many cars stopped across the intersection in the perpendicular direction. This is a ticketable offence, but police have effectively given up on enforcing basic traffic laws because there are too many cars to reasonably expect them to follow those laws.

        • bobbylarrybobby 4 years ago

          No, police don't enforce traffic laws because they all drive in from Long Island and spend their whole day in a car, so they view cars and their drivers as belonging to the same tribe as police, which puts them above the law. Pedestrians and cyclists are "the other" that is capable of actually breaking laws.

          Put cops on bikes and see how enforcement changes.

          • paulgb 4 years ago

            As a general concept, I agree, more police would benefit from the perspective of riding a bike.

            But the problem I'm describing is not that cops don't care to ticket, it's that enforcing the rule incentivizes the wrong behavior. Traffic is so choked and sporadic that it's hard to know whether you will end up in an intersection, so people would be afraid to enter the intersection entirely, further slowing down traffic.

            If you actually enforced the law and ticketed it would just effectively be a stochastic congestion tax. Far better and fairer, in my opinion, to just do the real thing.

  • tryitnow 4 years ago

    Not at all. I think it's because HN attracts systems thinkers and

    You're looking at it from the perspective of someone who has an immediate problem to solve: how to get from point a to point b. Sure, use a car for that.

    A lot of HN readers are looking at transportation not from an individual user with an immediate problem to solve, but rather from the perspective of how do we systematically move people and things efficiently.

    From that perspective automobile centric transportation networks make little sense.

    Clever mathematics can demonstrate this, but so does common sense.

    > What are you supposed to do if you like to take trips to places hundreds of miles away? Ummm, planes, trains, buses work. And sure individual use cars make sense. But this isn't the typical use case for a cars, the typical use case is commuting and other short to mid-range distances.

    > What if your job involves visiting many different locations in your city throughout the day? Not a lot of jobs requires this. But for professions that do, they could get a permit that would allow them to use a car.

    >I have family that lives in the same city as me and the difference between visiting them via public transport and using a car is 3 hours vs 40 minutes.

    Public transportation is horrible in part because there are so many cars on the road. Just think of when you see buses trying to navigate rush hour traffic. Additionally, if more people are forced to take public transportation then that means public transport can support more routes and more frequent stops. Furthermore, if you're driving a car that means you mental bandwidth is pretty much 100% wasted. If you're on public transport, you could conceivably do something like reading or watching a show while traveling, so the times aren't comparable in terms of productive use.

    >This is also NYC which is considered a model city for public transport.

    Maybe by US standards, definitely not by global standards.

    • bluGill 4 years ago

      > If you're on public transport, you could conceivably do something like reading or watching a show while traveling

      Maybe you can, but I can't. I tried it for 5 minutes this morning and remembered again why I just stare out the window when on transit instead of trying to read.

      It is still better than driving myself, if only because I'm not the bad driving doing something stupid.

  • brenden2 4 years ago

    FWIW, I spend a lot of time outside, off the computer, not playing on my phone. I rode a bicycle from San Francisco to New York unassisted in 24 days, and I believe anyone can do it.

    Cars aren't the only way to go places. Buses, trains, bicycles, etc, can all go long distances with a much smaller footprint (per person).

    I grew up in the suburbs in Canada and hated it. You _had_ to drive everywhere. As soon as I was able to, I moved to a city where I didn't need a car to get from A to B (Calgary -> San Francisco).

  • TulliusCicero 4 years ago

    > This is also NYC which is considered a model city for public transport.

    It is? By who?

    NYC has probably the best public transportation in the US, it's true. But the US is known for generally having awful public transportation.

    > What are you supposed to do if you like to take trips to places hundreds of miles away? What if your job involves visiting many different locations in your city throughout the day?

    It depends. For longer trips, trains or planes, combined with bike/walk/transit at the end will work. For visiting many locations, well it depends on how far apart they are, what you're doing, how good the bike/transit setup is, etc. Here in Germany, you see people from companies (I think including DHL?) delivering things via electric cargo bike.

    Of course, in some cases, a car is the right answer. Few people actually want to ban cars entirely from cities, as there are some uses, like business deliveries, emergency vehicles, and vehicles for the handicapped, where they're difficult to replace. And cars are less of a problem for long distance trips than they are in space-starved urban areas.

    But the truth is that US cities near universally push cars as the dominant mode of transport, to the detriment of other means. This is less true in NYC than elsewhere, but even there, there are very few protected bike lanes, and walkability can be hampered still by wide roads full of fast moving cars.

    Cars have some upsides and necessary uses, but they also have downsides: expensive for the government to support, expensive for the user, space-inefficient, very loud, polluting, and dangerous to others. It's long past time their allocated space was slimmed down in favor of supporting public transit, walking, and biking more.

    • swebs 4 years ago

      >NYC has probably the best public transportation in the US

      I think that title goes to Boston. NYC has always been unreliable and grimy to me.

    • StreamBright 4 years ago

      People who never been to Europe or Asia think that NYC has amazing public transportation.

  • jcranmer 4 years ago

    > I’m guessing so many people on HN are anti-car because they live their lives through their computer and never feel the need to travel outside their immediate area?

    I travel lots of places, by car, and I still bemoan the fact that several of those trips ought to be easily transited by rail but our rail system doesn't make it feasible to make those trips. If I'm anti-car, it's because I know that cars are used in many scenarios where transit alternatives are totally feasible; it's not because I don't know there are scenarios were cars are the only viable transportation option.

  • thatfrenchguy 4 years ago

    Coming from Paris, NYC has pretty terrible transport (and Paris’s isn’t that great either)

    • rayiner 4 years ago

      Yes, and almost everywhere else in the US has even worse transport, and it costs us five times as much to build it as Europe. Which is why the idea of banning cars in the US pretty much anywhere outside of Manhattan and maybe a few downtown roads is fanciful.

      • pcwalton 4 years ago

        > Which is why the idea of banning cars in the US pretty much anywhere outside of Manhattan and maybe a few downtown roads is fanciful.

        Perhaps the most compelling reason to do so is safety. For example, it's universally agreed that banning cars from Market St., which was approved yesterday here in San Francisco, is going to save many lives over the years. It is a very dangerous street and was never designed for the traffic configuration it has today. (Search for "sf market st deaths" on Google.) Even if you were to suppose that prohibiting private vehicle traffic on Market is just going to shuttle it onto nearby roads (which is not typically what happens, empirically, but anyway), that itself would be a large safety improvement, because it would help to separate pedestrian/bicycle/streetcar traffic from private autos.

        • octorian 4 years ago

          Good 'ole San Francisco... A city that's such a pain in the arse to get in and out of by car that I basically avoid going there at all. I just wish that getting in and out of SF by public transit wasn't a 2+ hour adventure (1.5hr if you're lucky to match an express schedule), when its less than an hour of drive time.

      • magduf 4 years ago

        Maybe we could try not making things cost 5 times as much as over in Europe?

        Seriously; (western) Europe isn't exactly known as a cheap-labor place, and is generally regarded as having a lot of bureaucracy and high taxes, according to conservative Americans. So if it still costs us 5x as much to build things, then there's something obviously f-ed up here.

    • vonmoltke 4 years ago

      What, in your view, makes it terrible?

  • maaaats 4 years ago

    Hit and a miss, but you still managed to be offensive and elitist.

    People always tout these things as if it invalidates the whole idea. You like to go to the mountains in the weekend? Cool, do so, doesn't mean you need to drive to work everyday. Want to visit your family in a city having banned cars? Sounds awful the way you put it, but don't you think things change with time? People adapt. Maybe the closeness to family becomes a factor next time you move. Or banning cars improves public transport infrastructure.

  • sorokod 4 years ago

    Sounds like the bar for model city is set too low.

  • StreamBright 4 years ago

    It would be the same 40 minutes with a car sharing service? We could reduce the amount of cars by such service quite a bit. Just look into the cars any morning when you are commuting to work to see how many cars has a single driver. Think about that.

  • mikestew 4 years ago

    What are you supposed to do if you like to take trips to places hundreds of miles away?

    Here we are, a crowd of folks that solve hard software and hardware problems everyday, and this is all it takes to stump you?

    • bananabiscuit 4 years ago

      Yeah it does stump me. mass transit doesn’t cover this case 99% of the time. Sometimes there is a greyhound bus line or Amtrak that will get you where you need to go, but even in the best case driving will usually get you there faster and cheaper.

      • mikestew 4 years ago

        but even in the best case driving will usually get you there faster and cheaper.

        Ah, I see the disconnect. Then just drive. Whether one you own, rented, Zipcar. I don't see where it is proposed that you can't drive the kids to Yosemite. You just can't drive them to downtown, where there's a ton of buses, trains, or what have you, and a car isn't needed and there's too damned many cars already. I own a car. Several, in fact. And an RV. But I don't drive any of them to downtown Seattle. I rarely drive any of them the 7 miles to work.

      • ceejayoz 4 years ago

        In the US, that's true.

        In Switzerland, you won't find many places further than 10-15 minutes walk from a transit stop, and all the transit options are integrated so the bus is timed to connect with the train which is timed to connect with the boat which is timed to connect with the cable car, and they're all covered by your monthly/annual transit pass.

      • paulgb 4 years ago

        What does going places hundreds of miles away have to do with car-free streets in cities?

        • zten 4 years ago

          In-built assumption that you need to use your own car stored near where you live to start and end the journey.

      • swebs 4 years ago

        If you're going from city to city, Megabus has been great for me.

larrywright 4 years ago

Sure this works in a major city, but what about the smaller cities, and the suburbs?