Cars are by now a hard to reverse environmental and urban planning disaster across the world. We are stuck with them. As a mode of transport it has grown uncontrollably at the expense of all others (except the airplane) and practically everything has been shaped to accomodate it.
Reversing that development, limiting car traffic to where its really needed is like trying to perform a complete heart and arteries transplant on a living person. Even if there was a will (which there is not) it is not clear if there is a way.
In the best scenario it will be an excruciatingly long transformation (~50 yr) as car oriented cities (or city sections) get slowly deprecated and the car-free or car-lite segments become more desirable, more livable.
I've lived most of my life in former streetcar suburbs -- neighborhoods of single-family homes, duplexes, and small apartment buildings that were served by a streetcar line every few blocks. Today, some of those places require cars to get anywhere interesting and back, while some of them have a few well-used bus lines and a ton of local restaurants, groceries, and hardware stores in easy walking distance.
The density tipping point is really low; a few four-plexes on each block, which didn't diminish any of the "neighborhood character" or lead to epic struggles to find parking. (I did still have a car, I just used it a lot less, and was much happier not having to bother.) And it felt a lot nicer than the all-or-nothing neighborhoods that are either single-family homes or large corporate apartment complexes.
In Boston there's both a will and a way. I haven't owned a car for as long as I've lived here, and the bike lanes are so, so much better now than when I first arrived. Neighboring Cambridge now has laws on the books requiring bike lanes to be added any time that a road is rebuilt. The new light-rail extension through Somerville added a bike path alongside most of its length, connecting the paths along the downtown riverside to the Minuteman bikeway that runs 15 miles out to Bedford.
It can be done. But people have to organize and give a fuck.
The little success I keep thinking of is downtown Mountain View during/after covid19 lockdowns. They shut down the roads, so people walk around and interact. Some still drive to there and park on the perimeter of that big walking area. If they keep this kind of thing up, making these areas desirable to live in and growing them, things will become more consolidated. Eventually with those fewer "point masses," public transit can go between them. Doesn't make sense currently because there are just too many destinations.
Meanwhile those who really want to live in suburbs and drive around can still do it. They could even drive to the dense areas and park. They'd just be missing out.
You still need vans and trucks delivering stuff to people and businesses. Bus is far more flexible form of transport than tram. Just... if you need to wait ages for one and there is no stop nearby nobody will want to wait.
What’s the percentage of cars on the road you see moving big stuff that could not be moved by other means? (Aka not people).
Point is, you're right, it doesn't take that much density to make getting around without a car viable for many trips.
Nonsense.
Ljubljana went from full of cars downtown to a 1 square mile pedestrian area with zero cars. It’s fantastic. And all the major arteries into the city went from 2 lanes to 1 lane + bus.
Amsterdam famously reversed its car centric design in the 1980’s.
Even San Francisco was able to close its main city artery to car traffic and transform many of the big roads with dedicated bus and bike lanes.
And those are just the cities I know about. There’s bound to be more. The feat is completely possible, but takes a while as any large refactoring does.
[1] https://www.boston.gov/news/new-steps-reduce-vehicle-emissio...
Are you affluent and lucky enough to live near their school?
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2019/07/20190730-school.htm...
That's mostly a chicken-egg problem, if more people rode the bus there would be way more frequent stops and more nearby ones.
For one, large arterials were placed where the most marginalized in society lived so that they couldn't protest. Historically black neighborhoods and poor white neighborhoods were flattened to accommodate large arterials.
The other is sprawl. Newer arterials, built after the problematic era, started out as state highways designed for transport. Once interstates were built, due to height and FAR limits in residential and commercial zones, new development sprawled out, sometimes onto these state highways which now had interstate alternatives. Naturally it was mostly low cost housing or commercial real estate as those are the most likely uses that would work adjacent to a large arterial.
That’s bonkers to me. That’s a completely walkable distance if road/sidewalk design allows it. That it frequently doesn’t is a failure on the part of our governments and urban planners.
What utility do cars provide?
Do zealots even consider these basic questions?
I live in Amsterdam which is arguably a few decades ahead in this process. It is both true that something can be done but also that we are nowhere close to actually closing this issue.
I don't mean to discourage people from switching where and when they can (or give anybody an excuse not to). There are tangible quality of life benefits that can be obtained each step along the way. So if car usage drops, say, from 90% to 60% thats hugely important.
But structural changes in the layout of urban environments are a wicked problem that will keep people busy (and procrastinating) for a long time.
They are free on only 3 lines (plus SL1 leaving the airport) https://www.boston.gov/news/mayor-wu-takes-steps-expand-fare...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHTzqHIngk
(In response to now flagged comment below about grocery shopping 'requiring' moving big stuff)
The problem is that these are crippled by regulations that only apply to the new transportation modes.
In Los Angeles we put GPS speed limiters and parking enforcement on scooters while letting cars park practically anywhere. You can drive 80mph through a school zone and nobody will do anything unless a cop happens to be there when you do it.
It feels like an antitrust lawsuit waiting to happen.
https://transfersmagazine.org/2018/08/15/monopolizing-scoote...
Horses
> What utility do cars provide?
They don't shit on the street.
We try to minimize our car usage - we have one car for our family of 6; I ride an electric scooter to work etc. Not having a car at all though would be basically impossible unless we decided to cut out the kids sport and traveling to visit family.
Many major and minor cities all across North America were not designed for the car, as much as they may seem so today. They were designed for the streetcar, with commercial blocks strung out along those streetcar corridors.
In older bigger cities these streetcar corridors densified and became commercial districts, while in younger ones they were on the precipice before the car and rigid zoning stopped the transition.
These corridors remain as valuable arteries awaiting a return to their original designs. Simple and affordable upgrades like bus rapid transit, small apartment buildings and bike lanes could once again transition them into being powerful parts of a transportation network that does not rely on car ownership.
Or closer to NA have a look at Vancouver. From a high level looking at the whole region, it's about as devoted to cars as everywhere else in North America, though if you peek down to the neighbourhood level you can see some incredible successes in moving people away from car use. In the near downtown West End area for example, some 45% of the population walks to work.
https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/07/23/the-leakage-pr...
We aren't going to eliminate cars in my lifetime (hopefully I've got a good 40 years or so left) but if we can get more households going car-light that's still significant progress.
So it's not as simple as take the bus. (Which doesn't exist.) But that's fine. I mostly just don't go in.
It's a gradual process, and part of the problem is actually embedded on your analogy, it's not like perform a heart and artery transplant, because there's no single action that can solve the problem, but years, and years of multiple, small and large initiatives, to make car dependency goes down.
Then when that happens, it’s easy to refactor architecture to be more in line with what people are doing already.
I also like how most of Paris has sidewalks lined with bollards so you can’t park there even if you wanted to. Although I always end up running into them as a pedestrian … they hit right at crotch level lol
Without at least bollards the road isn't actually thinner, so people don't actually drive slower. And without at least bollards, I wouldn't let my kids ride in a bike lane— which means many other people won't feel safe either. It's unfortunate that politicians get away with this willful disregard.
The bike lanes mentioned above all, by physical necessity, come at the expense of cars, either by reducing parking lanes or reducing driving lanes. Even if there were the same amount of traffic, fewer cars would be on the road because there is less road to be on.
This is what the car lobby wants you to think. The transformation to a better and more livable city free from overwhelming car traffic is closer and faster than you imagine. The primary challenge is the power of the car-industrial complex both inside and outside government and the continued work to destroy and hobble other forms of transit.
Also, wonder what 'other' is in that chart.
The real problem is both cities that are not growing at all, and cities that are still digging into the car hole.
You might be able to rezone 50 year old suburbs, if just because the houses themselves keep losing value (as the real price increases are just land). But when the house was just built 10 years ago, it's a very tough sell. And if you expect a couple of million people, who are living in very low density suburb, to come downtown for any reason, you either make their transit story hell, or you are stuck wasting a lot of space just to manage their cars: Bad either way.
The cities that aren't growing just are going to have a lot of trouble becoming denser, and the political problem will be even bigger, as every effort to make the area near the city center denser in a city that doesn't grow is just making the outer suburbs less valuable. I am really worried about those cities. As having the infrastructure to support four times the number of people that you have is just a road to fiscal ruin.
The city I live in is modest in size, 250k-300k depending on who you ask. It will never be a walkable city. Throughout much of the year, that's asking to die of heatstroke or something. It will never have a subway. Hell, there's only one or two buildings that are more than 5 stories tall. It is hundreds of miles away from any city of comparable size. My in-laws live in a township of about 6000 an hour away.
Are we supposed to give up cars? I have a 6 minute ride to work in the morning if I hit the stop lights wrong. Why would I ride the piss-stinking bus, when it'd add 20 minutes of irritation to my day?
It's not a car-industrial complex that is an obstacle to your imagined utopia. It's that there are people like myself who don't want to make our lives more difficult so that yours gets better. I'd be shocked if there's a non-coastal city or town anywhere in North America that supports your vision.
Last year we moved to the US, and we couldn't last 6 months without a car. I mean, technically we could, but it made life so extremely inconvenient as to not be worth it. Also, the alternative was to use tons of Ubers, which I'm not entirely convinced counts as ditching the car.
It's enough that they don't make things worse for me specifically and spitefully. I do wonder why that wouldn't be good enough for you.
Not even the best transit cities have transit every 5 minutes all over the city. There is a lot of room to improve in them all
One could say the same about Singapore yet they find ways to make it work.
> It will never have a subway.
250k-300k is about the right size for a small tram network - compare e.g. Ghent.
> Hell, there's only one or two buildings that are more than 5 stories tall.
That's fine if there's no need for them.
> It is hundreds of miles away from any city of comparable size.
Sounds like banning cars from the centres of bigger cities won't really inconvenience you then.
> Are we supposed to give up cars? I have a 6 minute ride to work in the morning if I hit the stop lights wrong.
If traffic isn't a problem then there's no reason to give up cars. But generally as cities grow they reach a point where space is at a premium and cars take up too much of it. Again if we look at Ghent as a good example for a city that size, they have a car-free zone but it's only a few blocks around the very centre (there's a larger zone around it where cars are permitted but subject to emission requirements). It works well, makes for a really nice city centre that you can actually live in.
> Why would I ride the piss-stinking bus
What if I told you it was possible to have busses that don't stink of piss?
> It's not a car-industrial complex that is an obstacle to your imagined utopia. It's that there are people like myself who don't want to make our lives more difficult so that yours gets better.
Why do you think any change must be about making your life more difficult? Your whole post seems to be about looking for every possible problem and not making the slightest effort to look for solutions to them.
You don't live in isolation as is, your car and roads and the rest of your context didn't come to be through others leaving you alone.
Uber is not the answer really as is, but some form of fewer cars used more often with much less parking needed — that would be an improvement.
If we can then get rid of half the parking lots and fill them in with a mix of medium-density mixed-use development and green space, that could set us up for enough walking/biking/transit contexts that we can take the next step away from car dependency.
My city can't time-travel back 100 years and get a do-over. This point of yours is purely asinine.
>> Hell, there's only one or two buildings that are more than 5 stories tall.
>That's fine if there's no need for them.
So you're just incapable of comprehending simple things, or is it a refusal to understand them when doing so would be inconvenient for your argument?
This is a rough description of density. For any half-assed New Yorker scheme to be even marginally viable, I would have had to have described a far different density. Something like Some Sim City 2000 arcology.
> Sounds like banning cars from the centres of bigger cities won't really inconvenience you then.
So go for it. Literally none of the rest of us care. Build a gigantic wall around those big cities too. 500ft tall, topped with razor wire. Tell all the inhabitants that it's to keep us rednecks out.
We'll thank you for it.
> If traffic isn't a problem then there's no reason to give up cars.
Every third comment here is about how they want to get rid of cars far beyond whatever traffic problems it might cause you. I doubt the intention of your movement, such as it is, to only ban them in city centers. Just a year ago, we saw this movement pop up out of nowhere, and I have my doubts that it arose organically.
> What if I told you it was possible to have busses that don't stink of piss?
How do you propose that? Any anti-piss-stink policy would subvert your other social policies.
> Why do you think any change must be about making your life more difficult?
Because this is all so transparent.
> Your whole post seems to be about looking for every possible problem a
I wish I lived in a reality where purposely ignoring every possible problem was not only expected but celebrated.
> and not making the slightest effort to look for solutions to them.
I have zero interest in trying to solve the intractable problems your wishful thinking has dreamed up. I have even less interest than that in doing so for free. Offer me salary of $250,000/year with well-defined bonuses, and I can grind through at least a few of them.
> These corridors remain as valuable arteries awaiting a return to their original designs. Simple and affordable upgrades like bus rapid transit, small apartment buildings and bike lanes could once again transition them into being powerful parts of a transportation network that does not rely on car ownership.
Throwing money at public transport doesn't have a good track record in modern North American (US + Canada).
Instead (or in addition) you can try things that are free or even earn money:
- charge for street parking (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Cost_of_Free_Parking)
- improve zoning to legalise building (see eg http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html) and legalise density
- remove mandatory minimum parking requirements
- remove other subsidies for car ownership, both explicit and implicit
- consider congestion charges and tolls
Once you enact things like the above, bus rapid transit might even become profitable to run privately. After all streetcars were famously profitable back in the day.
What is your point even? Population? Sprawl?
It id curious you seem entirely convinced that a car free "them" is necessarily taking from you. When your home town grows to be double the size and experiences gridlock, following the example of other cities, there are other ways to do it (and perhaps those ways aren't negative for you at all)
The examples from those other towns and general strategies employed could easily translate to a smaller town. Alternatively, that smaller town could use towns in the Netherlands as a template for growth rather than say LA
Throwing the kid in the car 2 minutes before the bell works.
The sidewalks are often there to be used, but the car is faster and easier.
I normally walk to school but it was raining today so I drove for pickup.
Nonsense. Like every healthy city, it's been continuously rebuilt.
> This is a rough description of density.
Right. Bigger cities need more tall buildings (or rather, find more tall buildings worthwhile). Smaller cities don't. I don't know what it is you think I don't get.
> So go for it. Literally none of the rest of us care.
Then why are you posting about how much you don't care, and how all these schemes must be stopped?
> Every third comment here is about how they want to get rid of cars far beyond whatever traffic problems it might cause you. I doubt the intention of your movement, such as it is, to only ban them in city centers.
There are lots of people with their own intentions, but as far as I'm concerned as long as you're remediating your pollution (properly remediating it, not just buying some certificates that say you promise to not cut down some trees or something) and not killing/injuring people I don't care about you driving where there's space for it. Car drivers demanding a bunch of space in the city is what I take issue with.
> Just a year ago, we saw this movement pop up out of nowhere, and I have my doubts that it arose organically.
Now you're getting into conspiracy theory - maybe try making some friends under 45. The younger generation aren't into cars just as they aren't into guitar rock. It's been going on far longer than a year (I've been saying this stuff at least 6 years), the pandemic just made it a bit more visible.
> How do you propose that? Any anti-piss-stink policy would subvert your other social policies.
I don't know, my city doesn't have the problem, because voters wouldn't stand for it if they did. Maybe start holding your government to higher standards.
> I have zero interest in trying to solve the intractable problems your wishful thinking has dreamed up.
The only intractable problem here is in your head, and it's only intractable because you want it to be. We know these policies work. We have cities where they're working already.
Paint doesn't make people drive slower--it's at best encouragement, and a lot of people don't. And that's when the bike lane is even clear: often it just gets used as a temporary parking area for Ubers and delivery vehicles, making it fairly useless for bikes during busy times.
It would be some bit of legal/liability wrangling and maybe some accounting to do it, but imagine if you had 50 families in a building, and ten vehicles available ranging from a small car to a pickup truck to a van to a moving truck. Tune it a bit and there you go!
The easiest way to do that is reduce commuting trips, as those are very common, but you can reduce trips in other ways, such as allowing more gas stations/convenience stores. If it's a five minute drive to the grocery store but a two minute walk to a 7-11, some of those trips to the grocery store will be replaced with walks to the 7-11.
Rotterdam is the polar opposite to Amsterdam in terms of mobility and freedom from car dependency.
Growing up in Toronto, I always assumed that public transit just provides transportation and nothing more. Their income comes from tickets and from government subsidies.
In areas of the world where profitable private mass transit exists, the transit company also deals in real estate. They own land near stations before construction and either rent it out or sell it. They build and own malls on popular stations. This is a large reason why financially sustainable private transit companies exist. This is also known as value capture.
The upside to private transit companies is that it is not a political debate about how much to subsidize them - they are self-funding.
likewise for industrialized humanity
Ok a lot less biking in winter, but always lots of walking.
Literally so hot the elderly and otherwise vulnerable are frequently told not to go outside at all in summer. Heat emergencies are a thing.
Odense has a total area of 30 square miles.
Carson City Nevada has a total area of 150 square miles and has a population of 50k.
Demark has an area of 16k square miles. Nevada has an area of 110k square miles.
So yes. The United States and other large countries do in fact operate off of different rules than small European countries.
Yeah, there are big areas of country Australia and the US where you need a car to get to anything. This is a good reason to have access to a car for some of the population. It's not a reason for the towns themselves to be built with carparks everywhere, no footpaths, massive outlets distributed far apart, bad public transport that doubles as crisis housing for the local homeless population, no pedestrian safety and comfort features like roadside trees, lawns instead of gardens, and everything else that makes up sterile urban sprawl.
We are not talking about perfection being the enemy of the good. The congestion of the daily car commute is as real as anywhere.
Ultimately its a question of finding accelerating solutions (the way). The article I commended on focuses too much on a certain value set (the will).
There are good things being invented. Tiny electric cars for example, that in principle could halve the car density. But remember the paradox that more space will simply lead to more traffic.
Ultimately the entire distribution of work, residential and utility/shopping areas must change. This is not shapped so much by individual preferrences around mobility as it is about real eastate and transport economics, incentives for developers, manufacturers and financiers, interplay with local government tax strategies etc.
Its a wicked problem. Being clear about the challenges can only be good. Blind faith doesnt always carry the day.
In that case, what's your take on the cost of infrastructure required per capita in relation to property taxes as it pertains to suburban development?
As it stands today, property taxes in suburban areas generally do not cover the cost of infrastructure required for the areas, and hence they get subsidized by high-density areas which have a more sustainable amount of infrastructure per capita.
Until 1976 the law was still extant that they had to keep a bale of hay in the vehicle.
The prices were even regulated
http://www.londonancestor.com/stow/stow-hack.htm
Indeed the Romans even had regulations about road width to ensure drawn carts could pass each other
Best of both worlds. No need to own a car but the convenience is there when you need it.
Ever heard of umbrellas? :)
> Throwing the kid in the car 2 minutes before the bell works.
It the school is a mile away, unless you live right next to a large road with 60 mph limit and no stops or traffic lights, I doubt you can make it 1 mile in 2 minutes without driving recklessly fast (and in proximity of a school).
The kids are bussed. So, they walk the length of the neighborhood and wait 10-15 minutes for the bus. They could quite literally walk to the school in the same amount of time.
Even worse, many of the parents drive the kids to the end of the neighborhood (all of 2 city blocks, though we're in the 'burbs). And then wait in their cars, engines often idling, watching the kids stand around.
The parents could walk the kids to school and most of the way home again in that time. Assuing they leave from work the second the kids get on the bus, they might save 5 minutes.
It's ridiculous.
Meanwhile, I walk a mile the other direction to the office. I have to cross a 6 lane highway (signaled intersection, but still a mess). One side is housing and golf course, the other side is offices and retail. There is no sane way to get from one to the other without a car. It's some of the laziest urban planning I've seen. And this area (Reston VA) is better than average by orders of magnitude.
2 minutes, 5 minutes, the concept is the same. People are bad at planning and fall back on crutches.
(Part of it is stupid media-fueled disaster porn about how if a kid walks to school without an entire armed battalion of bodyguards they're going to get raped and murdered because something that happened once back in 1989.)
But if you're the one poor schmuck whose quality of life goes down. Then it sucks to be you.
I can already see that I am in that group. No thanks.
In the US, public transit will always be an awful, reeking experience unless the cost of that transit rules out those who vandalize, defecate, and litter. It may be different in Japan or Belgium or some place like that... but engineering solutions don't fix sociological problems.
"We're not coming for your X!" is the lead-in. They need to be entrenched first, before they let anyone know the real play (if indeed they ever do). Plenty of useful idiots who truly believe in the PR spin too... so when they repeat it to you, in their own heads they're not lying. Just telling you a beautiful truth. And if you ever do catch one of the cynical ones who will tell you like it is...
They can be denounced. Or even dismissed as an obvious false flag. "We're the good guys, we'd never say that!"
I did speak for myself. I explained why this doesn't work for me, why I have no interest in it, and how there are millions of other people who will agree with me unless you find a way to deceive them.
Your condescending comment though doesn't make me feel bad for what I've said, it's expected. I'm actually a little amazed about how a group of semi-unorganized humans can do these things without coordination and succeed so often. You're all like some slime mold... no gigantic brain yanking on the marionette strings. And yet the puppet still dances.
> It id curious you seem entirely convinced that a car free "them" is necessarily taking from you.
It's pretty transparent. This won't be pursued in NYC council, this won't be pursued in the NY state legislature. It's a car free "everyone" masquerading as a car free "just them".
And with the onslaught underway, the only possibly opposition strategy with a snowball's chance in hell of succeeding is to throw up every roadblock, aggravate every irritation, stall every effort. Chances are we're not going to be friends, I think.
Concrete jungles where there is a giant parking lot and you drive to get from one end to the other is what is at discussion. Perhaps those could be built differently. Towns that are built along a highway and become a giant strip mall, and the good parts are the "old town" where you don't have to walk a mile to simply cross the street. I mean, car culture has won, and it's not at all - all good. The fact you see "conspiracy" and that this is a "grift" I feel says more about your entrenched views than much else.
I did not mean to be condescending. Though, your comments DO violate this communities code of conduct for discussions.
I'm a bit curious what actual "X" people have actually come for and taken from you. Clean water, the right to not breathe in toxic fumes, seafood free of contaminant, your guns?
Last mention, you say onslaught. From many perspectives that onslaught has been the guarantee of 1/3 of city land dedicated to freeparking, road subsidies payed by federal money and property taxes. Building codes that require space for cars, etc. Perhaps this mode of living does not scale, is unsustainable and does not entirely work for everyone. That is not to say the desire is to change things for everyone, but perhaps allow a grocery store to be built on the bottom floor of an apartment building for those that do want it (currently illegal in many places due to zoning laws). Your arguments at some point seem selfish, that car culture that you have no problem with must be imposed on others in every context.
> "We're not coming for your X!" is the lead-in
What exactly are you afraid would be that X? We are talking about restricting a quarter mile, a single downtown square block from vehicle traffic and letting people walk in the streets. Is that X possible "your car", and do you plausibly think that allowing a few sections of downtown road become pedestrian zones would then lead to your car being seized from you somehow? Serious question. Can you walk through how that would happen step by step?
> I did speak for myself. I explained why this doesn't work for me, why I have no interest in it, and how there are millions of other people who will agree with me unless you find a way to deceive them.
(A) this is a contradictory statement as you are already assuming there are millions that agree with you. (B) You stated that "literally the rest of us", which also is speaking for a lot people other than yourself.
Where my issue is really with this statement is the complete 'othering' aspect. Are you sure that everyone that disagrees with you is either stupid or has been deceived? Every single one of them? And in no case does that describe any of your points of view? (As an aside, I do often wonder what things I think about others actually do also apply to myself. I think it's a healthy exercise). As far as the hacker new commentary guidelines, we are to explore the reasons for disagreement. So far you've called anyone that has disagreed with you as simply stupid. This strikes me as both arrogant and narrow minded. Perhaps you are simply unaware of things that make other people think otherwise.
I'll end with mentioning that admins have banned this thread. I'm not the only one that thinks you're not in the spirit of hacker news. I regret a bit that I don't actually understand how you've explained the way you feel, and it is a perspective I would like to learn more about.
> he could have ridden the Tube.
But he took a carriage more often than not.