Taking the subway is a pain in the butt. If you try to come home when it's after 11pm, you get to wait 30+ min for a train.
When you want to get the groceries, you have to somehow shuffle all that stuff home, either with a cart or just have your hands suffer in the cold, and then have a four-story walk-up.
Sure, it's charming, but living there takes some real grit. By the way, those places are all expensive comparatively.
Many folks like to read these pieces from an extreme viewpoint, that they want to eliminate all cars everywhere.
A few moments thinking and you realize it would only be practical in downtowns, and alleys would still exist. Visit Wash.DC or London if still unsure. Street maps a cheap substitute.
- remove 90% of street parking
- make the remaining 10% incredibly expensive and time limited to short durations which makes it so that spots are always available for someone that actually needs it for something like moving
- cut down every other road to be impassable by cars or extremely limited
- add wide, safe, protected biking/scooter lanes + bike parking in all the freed up space
- lower speed limits everywhere to cut down on noise and increase safety
The closest thing to 'eliminating streets' you see people advocating for is streets in urban cores that are pedestrian / bicycle first and car second.
Deliveries can be still go down those streets at off hours and slowly. If necessary emergency vehicles can still access those streets and turn on their sirens to clear people out.
London and Europe have tons of streets like that and most US cities have none.
That's an implementation detail of a very old and underinvested system.
In contrast with Vancouver's automated skytrain, waits for trains are typically 2-4 minutes.
Better things are possible
I see you studied the work of Donald Shoup, the author of "The High Cost of Free Parking".
Old world streets are narrow and sometimes cobblestone. Usually enough.
Compare that with the 50 foot wide boulevards of suburbia, USA. One job I had you couldn’t even cross the street for half a mile because it was built like a freeway.
I don't believe all these posts against cars are from humans, especially on this website. Surely, technologically savvy folks like us would have learned to appreciate why decentralized systems (like cars) are better than centralized systems (like mass transit) for their flexibility.
Manhattan, famous for its congestion-free streets :-)
Calling cars "decentralized" is funny, and more than a little ridiculous: American car culture is a result of centralized planning, both of highways and cities. It'd be more accurate to call them "individualized," with the misaligned incentives and commons failures that that implies.
I certainly believe they are from humans.
Surely, technologically savvy folks like us would have learned to appreciate why decentralized systems (like cars) are better than centralized systems (like mass transit) for their flexibility.
But many humans are easily persuaded by FUD ("climate crisis" and all that other hogwash.)
Your argument is anti-scientific in a way. We see in nature that decentralized systems are more robust yet you are arguing the opposite.
Decentralization is not a virtue (or end) in itself when it comes to public infrastructure. Robustness is also not intrinsically tied to it, and there are a variety of senses in which the American road network is not particularly robust: congestion and unsustainable funding schemes are just the first two that come to mind.
Who cares about being interesting, I can go around outages in the network with a car where trains can't.
You should be arguing for smaller cars not less of them.
You, ostensibly[1]!
> You should be arguing for smaller cars not less of them.
I'd be more than happy to take both :-)
The alternative is to build denser, sure. But as someone living in Germany and seeing all the Neubau here… is it really so appealing living on 500m2 surrounded by 50 houses like that where neighbours look into your house? Where in the summer you hear everything what other people do? One has 4 children, another one has a dog barking all day, another one likes playing music loud, the odd one does parties every second night, the couple two houses down fights every evening, every weekend there are a couple of bbqs into a late evening, every day some dude mows his lawn so there’s only the Sunday when nobody mows the lawn… there’s nothing appealing in that kind of neighbourhood. You buy a house, you gonna live in it for years, why getting pissed off with your neighbours every second day?
I don’t know, I guess it’s a matter of perspective. The point of view depends on where you sit. I’d choose the suburbs if given an opportunity. Every time I visit the US, I’m jealous of all that space. I don’t even want a big house, no need for 300m2, 160m2 is good enough. I just wish for space around so I don’t have to listen to others all day every day.