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What's really needed is to segregate cars from pedestrians. Tunnels for self driving electric cars, cars otherwise banned. Part of why Venice is so beautiful.

What's really needed is to segregate cars from pedestrians. Tunnels for self driving electric cars, cars otherwise banned. Part of why Venice is so beautiful. Yes I know, tunnels are expensive. Surely there's a way to bring technological deflation to tunneling. For starters, self driving electric cars would emit no noxious gasses and could have narrower tunnels with higher capacity. Just for city centers, make up for all that wasted automotive space (parking, roads) with higher density and more life.

thwarted 10y ago
If you're going to build tunnels for vehicles, you might as well put tracks in.
- paulsutter 10y ago
  But then you need transfers if the destination is out in the burbs, and that's terrible for door to door transit times. Underground uber with no stoplights and no pedestrians clogging the intersections, with nice onramps to regular highways and your door to door times will be dramatically lower.
Anechoic 10y ago
Surely there's a way to bring technological deflation to tunneling. Tunnels are complex beasts. Existing utilities need to be located snd rerouted. You need drainage. You may need soil stabilization. You need ventilation - yes if the tunnel was restricted to electrical vehicles there won't be ICE emissions but you do have to guard against settling of harmful gases, not to mention fire. You need emergency egress. And tunnel sizing isn't just determined by passenger vehicles, you need to allow for maintenance vehicles (like paving machines) and emergency vehicles.
Kadin 10y ago
Cars wouldn't be so much of a problem if there were fewer of them. A mostly-pedestrianized street with a car going down it at low speed every 5 minutes isn't much of an issue. There was a time in many major US cities where cars coexisted with pedestrians and other vehicles, because there were simply fewer cars. But there seems to be a certain tipping point where you get enough cars, and they push everything else off of the roads (either de facto or de jure), and what you have left is an automobile-dominated wasteland. The straightforward solution in places like Manhattan with limited entrances and exits is simply to limit the number of cars at the bridges and tunnels and toll the hell out of them. If it cost $150 or $200 to drive into Manhattan (rough guess at the market-clearing price for "car permits" if you wanted to return to a pre-1960s level), I suspect there wouldn't be nearly as many cars on the road, and you wouldn't have very many pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities. The political will to do this, of course, is the problem.
pmontra 10y ago
Segregation can happen also by using kerbs. That can't happens with the road layout inthe picture. The cars should park on the other side, but the costs go way up: narrow the road and segregate cyclists from pedestrians. The bike road should be on the same level as the road, not of the sidewalk. Btw, there are almost no bicycles in Venice, Italy. Roads too narrow, sometimes only one or two slim people wide, and too many pedestrians, almost all of them tourists. Edit: and the zillion of bridges with steps. Venice is hostile to any kind of wheels.

thwarted 10y ago

If you're going to build tunnels for vehicles, you might as well put tracks in.

paulsutter 10y ago
But then you need transfers if the destination is out in the burbs, and that's terrible for door to door transit times. Underground uber with no stoplights and no pedestrians clogging the intersections, with nice onramps to regular highways and your door to door times will be dramatically lower.

Anechoic 10y ago

Surely there's a way to bring technological deflation to tunneling. Tunnels are complex beasts. Existing utilities need to be located snd rerouted. You need drainage. You may need soil stabilization. You need ventilation - yes if the tunnel was restricted to electrical vehicles there won't be ICE emissions but you do have to guard against settling of harmful gases, not to mention fire. You need emergency egress. And tunnel sizing isn't just determined by passenger vehicles, you need to allow for maintenance vehicles (like paving machines) and emergency vehicles.

Kadin 10y ago

Cars wouldn't be so much of a problem if there were fewer of them. A mostly-pedestrianized street with a car going down it at low speed every 5 minutes isn't much of an issue. There was a time in many major US cities where cars coexisted with pedestrians and other vehicles, because there were simply fewer cars. But there seems to be a certain tipping point where you get enough cars, and they push everything else off of the roads (either de facto or de jure), and what you have left is an automobile-dominated wasteland. The straightforward solution in places like Manhattan with limited entrances and exits is simply to limit the number of cars at the bridges and tunnels and toll the hell out of them. If it cost $150 or $200 to drive into Manhattan (rough guess at the market-clearing price for "car permits" if you wanted to return to a pre-1960s level), I suspect there wouldn't be nearly as many cars on the road, and you wouldn't have very many pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities. The political will to do this, of course, is the problem.

pmontra 10y ago

Segregation can happen also by using kerbs. That can't happens with the road layout inthe picture. The cars should park on the other side, but the costs go way up: narrow the road and segregate cyclists from pedestrians. The bike road should be on the same level as the road, not of the sidewalk. Btw, there are almost no bicycles in Venice, Italy. Roads too narrow, sometimes only one or two slim people wide, and too many pedestrians, almost all of them tourists. Edit: and the zillion of bridges with steps. Venice is hostile to any kind of wheels.