The tech industry is floating all these complex technological ideas so solve traffic congestion, from apps that track traffic, to ride hailing to autonomous cars, but the reality is that traffic congestion is not a tech problem but rather a simple physics problem (and political problem).
The core issue is simply that cars physically take up too much space on the road, and move too few passengers.
This simple physics problem can be solved solved with 19th century solutions as NYC has here. Make exclusive room for buses, which are dramatically more space efficient than cars. Problem solved.
The work of Robert Moses is slowly getting undone. He left a major imprint on NYC, building infrastructure to support the automobile. For Moses, the car was the great middle class equalizer.
The result is NYC has 2 highways going up and down it's waterfront when it could have focused on integrating it's city on the rivers as opposed to using them to funnel cars into Manhattan.
I sometimes visit a Brisbane development forum which cannot fathom my suggestions to adopt "the big dig" with our city riverfront freeway. They all see this as a waste of time, and I still see this as returning 100+ year value to something precious: waterfront is too valuable to waste on cars.
The ground is amenable to tunnels. We should be getting rid of the flyovers.
Have you seen the posts on Facebook or the Courier Mail about the soon to be dedicated busway that's going on Gympie Road? Or around how the road is specifically going to be widened to open a 24/7 bus lane?
The public are vehemently against more busways while also complaining about how congestion on Gympie Road, Lytton Road and Wynnum Road are constantly getting worse. It all really beggers belief.
We continue to throw money on making roads bigger but it doesn't help, all it means is more and more people move to the other end before the status quo reaches equilibrium again, and the cycle of road works starts again. This of courst assumes the road works ever finish. I'm looking at you, Kingsmith Drive, Mudeergaba Exit on the Gold Coast. All the while we're saying there's less commuters using public transport year on year than ever before.
This is a surprise to no one if you notice busses take an hour to travel 8km when you're contending with gridlocked cars for the entire distance.
Less you purchase a moped or a motorcycle and join me and the 2 Wheel Nomads that Brisbane's starting to enjoy.
The article is behind a pay wall, I'm not sure how to get around it.
This is exactly right. Most of the problems in cities aren't due to technology, they're due to bad governance. Our solutions need to be political, not just technological.
Autonomous cars and ride-hailing weren't/aren't meant to solve traffic congestion. Traffic tracking actually does help by allowing people to make use of underused capacity.
Otherwise, I agree -- cars take up too much room, especially when there's just one or two people in them. And I like bus lanes, but I think per-vehicle traffic pricing is a better idea, because it achieves the "densification incentive" in a way that also works for carpooling and private bus-like modes.
And before someone says it's regressive, a toll is less onerous than a ban, which is what bus-only lanes are. And (way off topic) I think if income taxes are progressive enough then other types of taxation don't need to be -- and probably shouldn't be, if their purpose is to price externalities.
If the bus is to be dependable, it needs to arrive on time, and that means that the lane in front of it needs to be free. Consistently free — the bus past my house stops 20 times, so that's 20 points at which the bus needs to be on time on order to be seen as dependable. The bus needs to drive at the same speed every day, and even be able to drive a little faster.
You can either regard the free asphalt as "spare capacity" or regard it as being used by the bus that's not visible right now, but will pass by in a minute or two.
Perhaps it's more correct to say that the free asphalt is being used by the route schedule than the vehicle itself.
Singapore nearly solved this problem by making car ownership nearly prohibitively expensive. Especially driving during rush hours costs a lot. Even taxis pay up.
Unfortunately the side effect is, the drivers feels entitled and drive like they own the roads (well, since they paid for it!)
Essentially what you are saying is have really really good public transportation and the traffics problem can be solved.
Can any HNers from Japan or Singapore chime in here. Is traffic congestion common in your country’big cities given you have some of the worlds best public transportation infrastructure?
Congestion is roughly constant in all cities because people's willingness to tolerate it is roughly constant. Build more roads and people drive more, but more public transport and more people can get to where they want to be with less resource use.
This is one of the more exciting things that has happened to traffic in NYC. Getting rid of cars in a city isn't possible, but being able to make this change to one street at a time seems feasible.
I live a block away from this area, and it's completely transformed the neighborhood. It's much safer to walk across 14th st. There are many shops in the area that seem to be getting more foot traffic (no data behind this). There are more people congregating around the bench/sitting areas around 14th street.
Not sure if your comment is sarcastic. But free is a major mispricing by the city. All you need to do is go to the garage next door to see that they charge $40 for the day.
The streets are a public good and they should be for cyclists and pedestrians.
This is a better strategy than trying to put bike lanes on every street. Drivers don't pay attention enough. Risk of getting doored or having some car turn right without checking their blindspot/mirrors is too high.
Vancouver took their 2-lane each way (4 total) roads and dedicated the outer lane to bikes. They protected that lane from car with planters. So, it can definitely be done.
That said, IDK if it’s a resounding success. There may be measures by which it is, I’m just not aware.
For example, I found it difficult as a pedestrian and saw a few collisions and lots of near misses between bikes and pedestrians. The planters create a nice protected area which feels like it’s safe for walking and crossing. But the bikes were moving quickly and quite unyielding in their perceived right-of-way.
When we were there, there was definitely other challenges. There were terrible traffic jams - especially going into the city. It seems like a lot of traffic needs to go through the city to get somewhere else. It didn’t seem like they had adequate public transportation.
> Vancouver took their 2-lane each way (4 total) roads and dedicated the outer lane to bikes. They protected that lane from car with planters. So, it can definitely be done.
Makes snowplowing a mess. NYC can’t just shutdown like Vancouver does every time it snows :)
It is street parking that ruins winter for bikes. The snow plows can't get to the edge of the road, so the bike lane which marks the parking/plowable road area suffers.
I don't think it's a big deal because we don't really get a lot of snow in NYC. A plan to improve the 50 weeks a year without snow on the ground is better than not doing the plan because a couple weeks in February will be miserable.
As far as I'm concerned, cars have no place in Manhattan, and should be banned from all but a handful of designated roads. Maybe give out special licenses to the disabled, or anyone else who physically requires a car—that way, they'll actually be able to get around at reasonable speeds, too.
Instead of an outright ban, I'd love to see price-prohibitive congestion pricing and street-parking pricing (prohibitive in the sense that it wouldn't make financial sense to drive a car as the primary mode of transport, not that if someone needed to occasionally use a car they couldn't) within Manhattan, with the aforementioned provisions carved out for those who demonstrate a need for a car.
That way, for any of those stubborn and wealthy enough who refuse to use public transit, we can direct all funds generated to improving public transit -- not just reliability and frequency, but also line expansions and remodeling the deteriorating stations and upgrading train/bus interiors to create a first-class transit experience for the rest of us and to finally prioritize public transit correctly in the US.
> price-prohibitive congestion pricing and street-parking pricing [...] That way, for any of those stubborn and wealthy enough who refuse to use public transit, we can direct all funds generated to improving public transit*
That seems to hand the shared public resource to the wealthy. (Regardless of whether you envision the revenue being used to someday provide a comparably attractive option for the non-wealthy.)
My response to that would be in a lot of ways car ownership is already cost-prohibitive after insurance, gas, maintenance and parking to a not-insignificant part of the population, and indeed these people do already primarily use public transit — not so much out of convenience but necessity. Should our regulations accept this as a necessary evil that those who today can’t already afford a car must rely on subpar second-class transit? If the vast majority of people used public transit as their primarily form of transit, and we dedicated as much resources to it as we do to our roads, it would only get better for everyone.
If we could entice people to get out of their cars and politicians to drastically increase public investment in transit, then yes, congestion pricing wouldn’t be necessary at all — but in general that hasn’t been the case, and nothing in recent history points to this paradigm shift happening on its own.
I believe this issue is in many ways one of prioritization and balance, and right now the status quo is already cutting off some of the most vulnerable demographics from this “shared public resource.”
Regardless of whether wealthy folks' cars are allowed on the road, streets need to exist in order to deliver goods, run buses, and carry disabled passengers to their destinations.
Congestion exemptions for disabled transporters and other social goods can be enacted to eliminate the regressive risk of congestion pricing.
1. The ability to transit from one place to another is a right of the people of a city, that should not be modulated by one's socioeconomic class (or medical condition or sex etc).
2. If rich people can zoom around the city much faster than poor people, then rich people have more of this right than poor people. Not good.
3. Crucial to this argument is that the price is prohibitive in nature, and that transit by car is a rivalrous good. So other rights, such as easy access to food, don't fall so easily to this argument because poor people can still buy nutritious food from their wages, even if rich people can buy more expensive and better food.
I love this idea — it really just needs to be expensive enough to make commuting by public transit a better option than by car. There are too many one-off cases where you’d need a car (for one anecdotal example, having to drive a family member home after surgery was an uncommon case where I drove into Manhattan, instead of taking public transit) to make a total ban workable without seriously disrupting people’s lives in other ways.
i'm a big fan of mixed-use streets. for example, on a 6-lane street, you'd have sidewalks for foot traffic, 1 grade-separated lane each way for bikes/scooters, 1 protected lane each way for buses, and 1 lane each way for cars, with the car lane being progressively congestion-priced (by income/wealth so that you don't completely shut out the poor from driving into the city when necessary).
for efficiency and traffic calming, narrow the car lane to 9-10 ft wide (rather than the typical 11-12 ft in the US), but leave 11-12 ft wide lanes for buses (and emergency vehicles). 6-8 ft bike lanes allows 2-abreast biking/scootering. widen sidewalks and plant trees along all of them. there should be no free street parking, except for the disabled (and maybe temporary commercial use), limited to side streets rather than major thoroughfares.
i'm cheering for LA to do this, with it's awesome weather, endlessly-wide streets, and bad and worsening traffic.
I think Manhattan is way to big to ban cars from the entire island.
They could do it gradually and add public streetcars to main thoroughfares, but the way things are now, it would not work to straight up ban cars today.
The entire island is well covered by the subway except for going crosstown past the 100's which is served solidly by buses for that use case.
Not to mention the many buses that most wealthy people ignore. No need for public streetcars when you already have buses that will be running quite ahead of schedule, as seen with 14th street :)
I'm for gradually removing for other reasons, but the size is not the prohibitive factor.
Very fair for longterm, I'm thinking for immediate turnaround. I think with an aggressive enough plan (which isn't going to happen in reality) you could do this without any notable spending increases in 2-3 years by just stopping cars and maybe buying a few more busses as the main cost.
After that if it continues to work out, streetcars absolutely make sense. Basically just doubling the subway lines at that point. Probably ideal to cover crosstown first across places like 14th, through Central Park, 34th, 116th, 125th, Canal, and Houston, and then you can sure up the avenues with streetcars, probably starting with Harlem through the upper east side. What a fun project to imagine honestly wow.
Long term, I would rather we build more subway lines than powered rails (or similar) for streetcars, even though subways are more expensive. Even without cars, we want that above ground space for pedestrians and cyclists.
I'd be in agreement generally but the subway coverage is pretty dense with maybe exception to the far east/west ends. More trains per line is probably money and effort better spent at that point. You still need roads for emergency vehicles and those that need to drive, so I don't think lack of streetcars will actually save a ton of pedestrian space. In an ideal world for sure though.
People go in and out of Manhattan a lot. I'm saying you can't isolate the problem like that except for the people privileged enough to afford Manhattan rent.
What demo exactly are you targeting? Rent isn't as expensive on the outskirts but parking always is if you're talking a commute route, so it doesn't seem like we're talking low income working class people generally. So are we talking people driving in from Jersey/Long Island? What's stopping them from leaving a car just off the island and using public transit on it?
There's also the option of keeping things like FDR and Henry Hudson open and having a few concentrated parking hubs for those commuters as well. You're right, those cases need to be accounted for. And no matter what this won't solve the lack of coverage in the outer boroughs, but a solution there will take a ton of money politicians won't spend on non-wealthy donors.
All that might be possible. Maybe, but it will take more time.
> What's stopping them from leaving a car just off the island and using public transit on it?
You end up with the expenses of a car commute with the reliability, cost, and flexibility of a train commute. It probably has the costs of both commutes put together.
Actually having dependable bus routes in outer burroughs would help. My vote would be for chartering private bus routes, but I'm not sure how politically viable that would be.
If you're disabled, wouldn't it be better to use a motorized wheelchair? Then you can go anywhere that's wheelchair accessible, without creating any risks for pedestrians.
That doesn’t work for the visually impaired, for those with epilepsy, for the extremely short of stature, for persons without hands, for those who are aged or living with progressive impairments who shouldn’t drive but for whom a $10k-$50k power chair is not an appropriate solution.
Not to mention those who could not afford them even if they wanted them. I won’t even touch social issues related to hierarchies of disability.
You know what works for everyone though? Dropping the pretender that everyone “needs” personal transport and embracing accessible transit and the infrastructure that requires and offers.
When I said disabled people, I meant disabled with respect to walking, not driving. Most of the groups of people you mentioned are capable of walking on their own and so would be just fine in a car-free, walkable neighbourhood.
For those who cannot walk but also somehow cannot use a motorized wheelchair but can use a car? I am not sure who would fall into this group of people, but it has to be extremely small. We should be able to find some form of accommodation for them.
As for people who cannot afford a wheelchair or other accessibility device? I think we should fund these for people, using public funds. It's the most humane thing to do, as it provides for the greatest potential autonomy, which I think everyone has a right to.
> For those who cannot walk but also somehow cannot use a motorized wheelchair but can use a car? I am not sure who would fall into this group of people, but it has to be extremely small. We should be able to find some form of accommodation for them.
Something to keep in mind, the New York City subway is by and large not wheelchair accessible! They're trying to improve it, but there's just a lot of old, small stations. I've also seen wheelchairs physically unable to fit into train cars when it's crowded.
NYC right now is just a really bad place to live if you're not able bodied. I actually think giving partially-exclusive access to the roads might be the best solution.
The problem isn't so much people who require a car to get around as people who can't get around and therefore rely on deliveries. It isn't really feasible to supply them with any reasonable amount of groceries and other stuff by bike or bus.
And I'm assuming, possibly over-optimistically, that "no cars" doesn't include ambulances and police cars and fire trucks and so on.
And I'm also assuming, almost definitely over-optimistically, that people who have jobs where they may get called in for emergencies at all hours of the day or night will get ultra-special Manhattan driving licenses. After all, medical people don't live at the hospital when they're on call, and they're not going to.
Imagine if, in high density areas like Manhattan, cars were simply not allowed. Wow. The thought of how pleasant Manhattan would become if only cabs + busses + delivery trucks + ambulances were allowed makes me almost too happy.
I don't understand why "cabs" is an allowed exception here.
Cabs are like cars, except more expensive, and they drive around without anyone using them for transport looking for business. Why are they superior?
I'm picking on this example not because I think that list is meant to be complete or perfectly thought out, but because cabs often seem to get exceptions like this (e.g. in HOV lanes) and I really don't understand why. It basically seems like a "I'm rich enough to pay someone to do my driving for me" exception.
NYC cabs are cars only because that's the environment they operate in. Think of what a cab would look like in a busy carfree city. Disneyland makes an okay example for North Americans. There's no need to go to the considerable expense of an entire passenger car that's built for worst case freeway scenarios in a carfree city core. Imagine a cab where crumple zones and a three-digit top speed are useless.
Cabs could be highly useful for various emergencies or more generally for people in need of urgent singular transport.
Ambulances cover the medically injured. Buses cover normal strictly time regimented use.
A simple scenario: my son has been injured at home and I need to immediately get home or to the hospital. The bus may take far too long depending. That's an example of an urgent need for singular transport.
That's really false. They are professional drivers, it's much safer to bike around them as opposed to regular people who don't understand how NYC streets work.
Cabs are an alternate form of public transit where you pay a lot more per km, especially in cities where the city sets the prices and the number of cabs. There are lots of valid reasons for using cabs over city buses/trains, such as minor medical problems, bad weather, unsafe conditions at night, etc.
Of course, once cabs are available, people will use them for convenience rather than the valid reasons. I don't have a solution for this, but I think the valid reasons are strong enough that cabs should be allowed in cities where private cars are banned/strongly discouraged.
If driving into Manhattan were not an option, I would expect demand for housing in Manhattan would go up[0]. Of course, housing in Manhattan is already incredibly expensive...
I'm sure Manhattan would become very pleasant for those who could still afford to live there.
[0] (Suppose for the sake of argument my preference for commuting was driving,walking,transit (in that order.) With the option of driving eliminated my second preference would be to walk, which means finding housing closer to my workplace in Manhattan.)
Your preference aside, most of the people who commute into Manhattan already take mass transit rather than a car. I don’t think too much would change for most.
I don’t know where you live, but NYC is very different than the rest of the U.S. when it comes to transportation. In NYC, only around half of people own a car (in Manhattan it’s even less: around a quarter).
> If driving into Manhattan were not an option, I would expect demand for housing in Manhattan would go up[0]. Of course, housing in Manhattan is already incredibly expensive...
Why?
And we recover all that wasted space on roads to build parks and a lot more housing.
This is in fact a trend in European city centers. It is wonderful and amazing.
Areas where before closing for traffic it didn’t make sense to drive anyway because walking is literally faster due to narrow streets, too many cars, etc. I don’t understand why people choose to drive there unless someone explicitly tells them they can’t.
I moved to Manhattan last year, and while there some things I've been annoyed about, it wouldn't have occurred to me to put "cars" on that list. I didn't bring my car here, and having driven a rental a couple times in the city, it's hard for me to imagine why anyone drives here if they don't have to: the experience as a driver is far, far worse than as a pedestrian.
Cars are noisy (engines, superfluous horns) and lower air quality. They often drive aggressively and are a hazard to bicyclists and pedestrians. They cause congestion, slowing buses that are vastly more space-efficient.
Look at some of “urban plazas” [1] that have replaced short sections of road and witness how much more peaceful and open the city can feel when roads are removed in favor of people. Or, go down to 14th St. I was there this past week and it was wonderful—so much quieter and more open, and buses were moving smoothly.
> The thought of how pleasant Manhattan would become if only cabs + busses + delivery trucks + ambulances were allowed makes me almost too happy.
was the part that made no sense. Cabs are at least as noisy
and air-quality-deficient as other cars, and there will be a lot more of them if other cars are banned from some large part of Manhattan.
As a pedestrian (which is every day), I've never felt as threatened by cars as I did when I was driving a rental in NYC, which happened only a couple times.
> Busses and delivery trucks are the most noisy and polluting
Once private cars are off the road, busses and trucks would spend less time in traffic. That increases their economic yield, which in turn, makes a gradual electrification mandate economically feasible.
1. When everybody is walking outside, instead of transiting through cars, it is a lot harder for pedestrians to be robbed. Also, police actually start caring more about pedestrian safety when so many people are walking. Walkable neighbourhoods can be a lot safer than the safest car-friendly neighbourhoods, with the right system.
2. As for carrying, based on my experience of living in a walkable neighbourhood where thousands of people lived within a kilometer of the central shopping area, a lot of people would bring carts that they would push their groceries home in. If you can push a small wheeled grocery cart through the total 100 meter aisles of the grocery store, then you can push a big wheeled cart the 1000 meter to your house on the sidewalk. Given that I often saw 80 year olds doing that, most healthy people should also be able to do it, no problem.
The article is a bit lacking in facts. Here's some more info from another source [1]:
"The MTA and Department of Transportation announced Monday that beginning July 1, private cars will be banned along 14th Street from Third to Ninth Avenues from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m."
"It’s part of the MTA’s plan to increase bus service while repairs continue on the L train."
This conclusion of “a phenomenal success” is based on “a span of several days.” Again, several days.
I want this to be true. I support this policy decision. I don’t own a car, live in NY, and want to see the streets reclaimed from drivers. Love it.
But if someone declared this experiment a terrible failure after /several days/ I would laugh and say, “please wait a bit so we can examine some real data.”
Please, urbanists, consider waiting a bit before calling this “a phenomenal success.” Let’s have some evidentiary standards.
In the six years I lived in NYC proper, there was a giant flood, a giant power outage, several hurricanes, several blizzards, several city-wide protests, and countless large events taking place on the streets.
That's just a few events I thought of off the top of my head. That doesn't cover the normal ebb and flow of activity in the city - it's pretty busy around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and dead in February, and a zoo in the summertime. How do all those things affect this? What happens when school is out? What happens during shopping season? What happens in heat waves or during snowstorms?
The point is, a lot of different things can happen in the city on pretty annual cycle, and declaring this a success even after a month is pretty silly and potentially very costly.
One can have evidentiary standards which don't in every circumstance require a long time period. For example, there are (rarely) medical clinical trials which are ended early because the experimental group's protocol (say, a drug or a procedure) works so well that it would be inappropriate to wait longer to give all the study participants the experimental intervention.
People who know more statistics better than I do could provide a more analytical description, but basically given the results so far, the likelihood of a "failure" (for whatever definition the city has chosen) is extremely low.
I wish they works ban cars on the Las Vegas strip. It would require rerouting hotel entrances. But the amount of real estate it would free up would be incredible.
Out of interest, how much real estate would it actually free up? I assume you still need roads for emergency services, delivery trucks, construction vehicles, etc...
Maybe the number of lanes can be reduced, but that wouldn't exactly free up any sizeable amount of real estate that could be used for more housing, or would it?
Cities are rebuilt all the time. My city now invest heavily into bike lanes reducing the number of car lanes from 2 to 1 and replacing them by bike lanes. That is a choice, which can be made every year by any city.
Of course there is no reason to leave things as they are. But any city older than 120 years - and that's the bulk of them near where I live - will have had horses and carriages as the bulk carriers of their time. Except for those parts where boats were used, but that requires some pretty rare conditions (Venice, Amsterdam, Bruges).
Getting rid of cars is a good thing, let's hope we get rid of them in inner cities before electrics take over and rob us of that chance. The pollution caused by cars is one of the main drivers of getting rid of them, if that reason is dealt with then it will be much harder to marshal the forces required to see this through.
Not in the US, though. Even the city centers that predated the widespread adoption of automobiles were by and large redesigned towards cars. Then in the 50s and 60s whole city neighborhoods were razed for interstates.
Until Robert Moses came along, after which every borough outside of Manhattan got royally screwed with noisy and polluting elevated freeways, demolishing thousands of housing units in the BX and black and brown neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens.
Things change over time. It's never too late to reverse that painful legacy, and this 14th St. project is but the first step.
Pedantically speaking, many of the freeways are actually at-grade or sunken: e.g., Cross-Bronx, Grand Central, Major Deegan. Still had massive deleterious effects on their neighborhoods, though.
I’m torn on the cars in Manhattan debate. I live my whole city life on public transport. I hate the pollution of cars and I hate how perilous it is for my kids to cross the streets.
At the same time we sometimes do want to or have to travel outside the city. I’m not really sure how that would work in a car free city.
Sort of. It sounds OK in pure theory. In practice when we end up loading the car to visit parents/grandparents for a week plus a dog in tow I’m not sure how we end up getting from our apartment door to the peripheral rental car zone which this being Manhattan is presumably in NJ. That’s a lot of cargo! Again I would love a car free Manhattan if I could figure out how to make it work. But many of those who argue this most vehemently I often suspect aren’t trying to raise families in NYC.
Ironically with a superblock style plan, 14th Street would be one of the only streets where cars are allowed.
Jokes aside, yes, I really hope this is the beginning of the end of cars in Manhattan. When it was announced I was thrilled: here was the perfect flash point to grow the anti-car movement in NYC. Now we have to deliver.
No but the order is important. Making public transport better first would make the transition away from car traffic somewhat smoother.
Many cities already successfully pulled this off and this method received far more popular support than just cutting off car traffic and expecting the people to "deal with it" without having good options.
Most European cities that shifted away from car traffic did exactly that. First they improved public transport and encouraged any other alternatives like bicycles. They invested in that infrastructure until it was ready to take over. Then they started to slowly "push" people away from cars by turning some streets or city centers into pedestrian zones.
You collect the returns after you invest. Otherwise almost any initiative would get bogged down into your 3 point loop. When companies build a new HQ they don't tear down the old one first. The "loop" is a fake conundrum.
It's not a fake conundrum in political systems, especially when--as so often happens--road projects sail through the legislature with nary a peep but public transit spending has to be voted on (often more than once) by the people in the region or, sometimes, statewide. European countries often don't have these barriers or at least have a political and government legacy where the people see the investments as worth it. That's not a situation we often enjoy in the States, some reasons cultural and some self-inflicted.
For example, in western Washington, we've repeatedly voted to tax ourselves for transit. Our regional leaders had to push, prod, and beg our state elected leaders to pass laws permitting us to have those votes. (Meanwhile, road projects sail through.) Yet, more often than not, we've voted yes. But in November, through our tediously broken initiative system, the entire state will get to vote on whether to repeal our locally-approved taxing authority because a political shyster likes running bumper-sticker-politics campaigns on $30 car tabs because "nobody uses transit."
You're right that the "loop" need not happen and often doesn't in most circumstances but people are very persnickety about transportation and their deity-granted right to park their vehicle on a free street directly in front of their place of residence.
It's still a valid point: If there were a better alternative to cars for the people who currently drive cars then wouldn't they use it? So provide a better solution instead of using force.
The Budapest metro is the second oldest metro in the entire world. Only preceeded by the London metro. Boston is the 6th oldest beaten by Chicago in the US.
I don't understand this anti-car sentiment from the city liberals. It's already happened here in London and it's getting worse. From 20mph speed limits to blocking roads for bus-only traffic to ultra-low emission zones and congestion charges. It's becoming pretty clear that they don't want people to own their own cars. I'm struggling to see how this is progress.
Because cars have a lot of externalities that negatively affect cities? Pollution, noise, increase in collisions, space required to house and fuel them to name a few. I, and many other people, prefer areas of cities where cars aren't dominant and would like to see more of it
Any data on that? Here around Oslo, there is quite a bit of opposition to banning cars from the city - but mostly from people living outside of it. People who live in the city, and who should have the most say, seems to like it. The green party grew in the recent election.
Data has shown that businesses are doing well. Some do better, some the same, some worse (like furniture stores, which is a silly thing to have in a city centre anyway).
There's certainly a growing preference for car-free cities. Seems to me like younger people prefer it. Not just because they don't have cars.. I do now, but I really don't like to use it in the city. My wife and I take it to the closest metro station with free parking, and take the metro the rest of the way. Much less stressful.
Seems to me like it is mostly old people who are opposed to banning cars. When they were young, the cities were not as dense, cars not as prevalent, and people didn't care as much about air pollution. They could drive straight into the city centre and park wherever. They don't want to give up on that, even if it means being stuck in traffic and driving around the city centre for half an hour to find a free parking spot. It's an inconvenience they've gotten used to. But the inconveniences of public transportation? Unbearable!
Last time I was in Oslo it looked like the network of motorways in the city were well developed relative to London. It would be a shame if they banned cars in a city that is so well-equipped to handle them.
That's how all change begins. And in this case, it's pretty easy for any reasonable person to understand that less cars in cities is better for almost every reason other than a simple selfish desire to be inside a car and take up a car's worth of space and air pollution rather than a human's worth.
That may be true but it's largely how our political system works. Regardless, you can try to fight back or just move to someplace that has the density and mobility you want.
Just about anyone who has breathed London air in the last 30 years sees how it is progress. Dirty, smelly and unhealthy that creates a coating on clothes, furniture and windows. That's probably not ideal for lungs.
We notice, and hate it every time we visit the relatives down there. "Start breathing crap" kicks in around Hendon.
It is the heavy diesel vehicles that are the problem - i.e. buses and taxis mainly, but also commercial vans and trucks.
A universal diesel ban (including public transport) would go a long way to improving air quality IMO. There are viable electric buses, but apparently the way TfL runs it's contracts means it is not commercially viable for bus companies to use EV buses (due to requiring new vehicles on new contracts, but the contracts not being long enough to recoup the costs of EV buses Vs cheaper diesel)
Unfortunately the black cab unions have TfL by the balls so they'll never ban them (just like how black cabs are somehow exempt from ULEZ)
Yes EV vehicles still create brake and tyre particles, but EVs use brake pads less, and I'd rather have just the brake pad and tyre particles to deal with, rahlther than brake, tyre AND diesel particulates.
New diesel cabs can no longer be licensed in London. All new licensed taxis must be zero-emissions capable, ie: electric.
As London taxi licenses expire after 15 years, the last diesel cabs will be gone by the end of 2032. But given how many electrics there already are, in practice the vast majority will be electric long before then.
I agree that more needs to be done about buses. We are starting to see some electric buses, but they're not being rolled out fast enough. TfL needs to stop buying new diesel buses immediately.
Not just new vehicles: moving to electric busses also needs a bunch of other initial infrastructure investment, from chargers, potentially more depot space to power grid improvements to actually feed a depot full of charging busses.
Well if BoJo had thought a little more on the new Routemaster. Contracts may be from Westminster - as that sounds just like the idiocy of UK railways that had a very similar issue.
Exempting cabs from the ULEZ is bizarre and unforgivable. It could have been a perfect push to electric.
It sounds like you are agreeing with me that you don't want people to own their own cars? I suppose we should all just do as the millenials do: rent cars by the mile (Uber) at ridiculously expensive rates.
Even when I briefly worked in London in the 90s there was no point having the car. I am truly puzzled so many locals bothered. Uber or cab should only need to be occasional - there is great, albeit crowded public transport.
It was entirely counter-productive, slower than cycling, expensive and just about zero chance of convenient parking. After one or two attempts, I left it at home and took the train down each week.
I take public transport or cycle to work every day as I work in the City and it's faster and more convenient. People should be inspired to take public transport instead of driving because it's better and faster to do so, not restricted by levying giant taxes and blocking roads.
These are comparative measures - you can make public transit better and faster by making driving expensive and worse, even if public transit doesn't improve.
Or, you know. Catch the bus. Or the tram, or the train, or the ferry. Or walk. Or run. Or ride. Or get on a scooter. Of roller blade. Or use a skateboard.
In the city, space is a limited resource. Hogging limited resources is generally considered rude, whether you're liberal or conservative, urban or rural. The difference is just what people consider a limited resource.
40,000 people are killed every single year in the USA due to cars. Over 2 million are injured or disabled. And that is direct deaths, not including deaths from pollution.
That is the tip of the iceberg for problems with cars.
And yet, you can't see why cars are a problem? I don't believe you.
Manhattan is a dense enough place that transportation is focused on moving people, and it just so happens that single-occupant vehicles is the least space-efficient way to move people. It's not anti-car, it's just a recognition that single-occupant vehicles ought to be at the bottom of the totem pole in terms of contesting for the scarce space allocated for transportation.
In the U.S. at least; we've seen the greatest number of pedestrian deaths since 1990
and
> Traffic deaths are now the leading cause of death globally for those between the ages of 5 and 29.
> Pedestrian deaths are up 51.5 percent since hitting a low of 4,109 in 2009, according to GHSA. They now make up 16 percent of all road deaths, up from 12 percent in 2009.
I don't mean to be one of those "but, well" people, but, well, in my experience it hasn't been. I've not had a car for quite some time and still carry luggage and groceries. The added fitness from walking more has probably helped quite a bit.
It is a very common sight to see people in my neighborhood get on a bus with one of those square rolling carts with a week's (or more) worth of groceries. I've considered doing the same thing but between my spouse and I, we can fit everything we want in our two backpacks and two to three reusable handle bags.
Lots of how we run society is for the collective good. Strangely, transportation seems to be the opposite. We subsidize the hell out of individual transport while minimizing collective, more efficient transport. What most of us who advocate for public / group transport want is for those to be more even.
As someone who lives in cities and has never owned a car, doing just fine here with walking my groceries back weekly and taking luggage around when I travel thanks very much. Doesn't work for everyone but that's why we have suburbs and plenty of car first/primary cities like Houston or Portland.
Around half of NYC residents don’t own a car. In Manhattan 3 of 4 don’t own one. Luggage bags have wheels and lots of older people have small wheeled carts for moving groceries, etc. more easily.
Movement of all but the rarest, large items is not a problem.
I have had absolutely no problem lugging my luggage to the airport or carrying my groceries on foot or by mixed foot/train/bus. It might require some modifications to your trip (e.g., going more frequently, or purchasing some personal shopping carts to carry stuff around in), but it's not that hard.
Depending on area of course, but usually a grocer or supermarket is much closer, meaning that more frequent and smaller trips aren't an issue and mean you often have fresher produce to work with.
Ride-hailing apps now make that point moot, as do on-demand car rental services like Zipcar and car2go. Nonetheless I've never had a problem getting groceries on and off the bus.
This kind of thing makes sense in Manhattan. Manhattan is relatively tiny, and it is dense, and there is workable public transit. A subway system with stations every quarter mile or less does wonders.
It just doesn't extrapolate to anywhere else in the country particularly well. Even Boston is a shit-show without cars, and that is another dense, old, East Coast city with legacy public transit, albeit much less well designed.
Congestion charges and upzoning would fix that issue, but people with the same outlook on this problem (aka NIMBYs) that you do seem to hate those things as well.
People often forget this fact but the vast majority of cities east of the Mississippi in the U.S. developed without cars for most of their existence. Streetcars were the name of the game until the 1950s, after which personal car ownership was heavily pushed and subsidized by the government after bending to the will of GM, Ford, and Chrysler.
The entire idea of designing our cities around car ownership and the single-family household is extraordinarily new and unnatural. There's nothing prohibiting us from creating density in these post-WWII cities; just look at Denver or Portland and their massive successes with public transit and upzoning.
The core issue is simply that cars physically take up too much space on the road, and move too few passengers.
This simple physics problem can be solved solved with 19th century solutions as NYC has here. Make exclusive room for buses, which are dramatically more space efficient than cars. Problem solved.