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This is a good idea when considering how people will get around in their daily routines, but I'd be interested in hearing your perspective on how goods, service

This is a good idea when considering how people will get around in their daily routines, but I'd be interested in hearing your perspective on how goods, services, and infrastructure would operate with entirely no roads? Specifically getting food/goods/supplies to businesses, restaurants, hospitals, and other facilities that are required for such a city to exist. You could potentially utilize rail for this but then you face the last mile problem. Additionally considering things like emergency services, rail seems like it would be entirely inefficient for getting someone immediate medical attention.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago
Sorry about the delay, I'm rate limited here on HN. As another commenter suggested, emergency vehicles especially could still use pedestrian walkways, which would still be needed to get from station to endpoint, and should be sufficiently wide to allow a lot of free movement. The so-called last mile. As a perk, pedestrians and bicycles are easier to move to part ways for emergency vehicles. I think that a lot of freight could be handled the same way. A limited number of licensed carriers could operate light mule vehicles to bring freight from the nearest station (assuming rail stations had decent cargo-unloading stops as well) and operate along pedestrian walks during low traffic hours. (Your mail and your deliveries should not be delivered during regular starts or ends of the work day, or mealtimes. I'd go so far as to say construction traffic should be in the dead of night.) Since they'd need to coexist with pedestrians, but only travel a very short distance, from the nearest station, I'd propose these would be slow as heck, and since they wouldn't be traversing rough terrain, they could have extremely low ground clearance as well. The key importance is that these pedestrian walkways be first and foremost, for pedestrians, and that personnel transportation vehicles be non-existent along them. The occasional off-peak freight cart isn't going to be a huge burden on transportation efficiency or pedestrian safety.

ocdtrekkie 10y ago

Sorry about the delay, I'm rate limited here on HN. As another commenter suggested, emergency vehicles especially could still use pedestrian walkways, which would still be needed to get from station to endpoint, and should be sufficiently wide to allow a lot of free movement. The so-called last mile. As a perk, pedestrians and bicycles are easier to move to part ways for emergency vehicles. I think that a lot of freight could be handled the same way. A limited number of licensed carriers could operate light mule vehicles to bring freight from the nearest station (assuming rail stations had decent cargo-unloading stops as well) and operate along pedestrian walks during low traffic hours. (Your mail and your deliveries should not be delivered during regular starts or ends of the work day, or mealtimes. I'd go so far as to say construction traffic should be in the dead of night.) Since they'd need to coexist with pedestrians, but only travel a very short distance, from the nearest station, I'd propose these would be slow as heck, and since they wouldn't be traversing rough terrain, they could have extremely low ground clearance as well. The key importance is that these pedestrian walkways be first and foremost, for pedestrians, and that personnel transportation vehicles be non-existent along them. The occasional off-peak freight cart isn't going to be a huge burden on transportation efficiency or pedestrian safety.