9 ms·

Have you seen the streets in lower Manhattan? If they get any narrower there wouldnt be any room for cars. There are also already tons of bike lanes. Most New Y

Have you seen the streets in lower Manhattan? If they get any narrower there wouldnt be any room for cars. There are also already tons of bike lanes. Most New Yorker's don't drive - they walk, bike, take the train, or taxi/uber. Don't you think if the answers were this simple someone would have done this already?

marxidad 10y ago
The problems may be more political than technical.
- the_gastropod 10y ago
  As uncommon as car ownership is in NYC, it's incredible how much friction there is around reducing roadway for cars. Every bike lane added in the city is a hard fought battle. So I think you're absolutely right—the solutions are well understood. Changing car culture is difficult.
  - superuser2 10y ago
    Perhaps because while most people don't own cars, they do depend on them (even if only in special circumstances) in the form of cabs.
    - bradleyjg 10y ago
      If that were what was mostly going on there'd be a heck of lot less on street parking. Essentially none of Manhattan should have any on street parking at all. Some standing zones for deliveries and pick up / drop offs (but not loitering forever, I'm looking at you black cars) and that's it. You'd be able to cut width of a typical street by 1/3.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    You don't understand why people might like cabs, trucks, busses, and emergency vehicles? People don't drive their own cars already.
    - acdha 10y ago
      None of those need street parking – in fact, you'd dramatically improve their experience if the parking lanes were replaced with dedicated transit / bike lanes, etc. and a few dedicated taxi/etc. loading spaces. One of the reasons for this is that street parking is usually subsidized well below the market rates and so drivers will spend a significant amount of time looking for a cheaper parking space rather than simply parking in a garage, and they're using road capacity until they either find a space (and then block the lane while they slowly attempt to parallel park) or give up and pay to park off-street: “In 2006, surveyors interviewed drivers stopped at a traffic signal in the SoHo district of Manhattan, and 28 percent reported they were cruising for curb parking. A similar study in Brooklyn found that 45 percent of drivers were cruising. The same results might be found on many other streets in New York because off-street parking is generally far more expensive than on-street parking. In midtown Manhattan, for example, the price for the first hour of off-street parking is often about $20, while curb parking is only $1. Parking for an hour at the curb saves $19, but drivers first have to cruise to find a space on the street.” http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf
  - mancerayder 10y ago
    There's NYC and there's NYC. Manhattan is a small part of NYC: Staten Island, you must have a car. Large swathes of Queens and even Brooklyn have no pub transport (buses can be pretty awful due to traffic although they do exist). I think that's a big block of people opposed. Another political consideration is that the State of New York has control over elements of policy that would otherwise be anti-car. For example, the congestion tax they wanted to bring in, it was the state government that killed that. I still agree that congestion control, disincentives for car use, wider sidewalks, all should be done. Some of us wish NYC could declare independence so we could choose our own policy, but that's a different story...
philipov 10y ago
Getting rid of cars is a feature, not a bug.
- jinushaun 10y ago
  I think getting rid of cars isn't going to fix the problems the people in this article are complaining about. It's the age old problem that plague all popular cities around the world: tourists versus residents. And having visited places like Florence, Paris and Barcelona, I'd rather see the residents get their way.
  - baron816 10y ago
    Residents aren't the ones with cars. No one in this area own a car.
    - ghaff 10y ago
      Except the residents (and workers) use taxis, Ubers, black cars, etc. And, as the article notes, the local businesses need to get deliveries, repair people, etc. I would guess the issue doesn't come so much from owners' private cars traveling through the area. I was adding that I made the mistake of passing through Times Square on my way to some destination a number of months back. As in the article, you literally could not walk on the sidewalk which was effectively blocked by the mass of people. Times Square (like areas of downtown) is an extreme example, but things do get really crowded. (And you can't just do away with road traffic there. You're at intersection of two major N-S avenues.)
      - philipov 10y ago
        Residents use the subway. Taxis are mostly for visitors: tourists, or day trippers from the periphery.
      - viewer5 10y ago
        What are "black cars"?
macNchz 10y ago
> Have you seen the streets in lower Manhattan? If they get any narrower there wouldnt be any room for cars. It'd be well within the realm of reason to consider closing a bunch of the narrowest/most heavily foot-trafficked streets in lower manhattan to cars and only allowing delivery trucks during certain hours of the day. It's an extremely impractical place to drive anyway.
- pm90 10y ago
  I would imagine the advent of delivery drones would be a nice solution to getting supplies in and out of dense urban areas, after which there would be no need for allowing vehicles (other than emergency or public transportation).
  - notliketherest 10y ago
    Yeah good luck getting a drone to deliver a 400pound pallet of soda.
  - nashashmi 10y ago
    The biggest delivery truck traffic is for furniture, goods (one or two UPS trucks for an entire building), or garbage. No amount of drone tech can reduce/eliminate truck traffic for an entire building.
    - TillE 10y ago
      The slightly more sane idea would be to look in the other direction, and build underground. That would be extremely expensive and have to deal with all sorts of issues, but at least it's physically possible. The actually realistic solution is to focus on developing housing and infrastructure in the outer boroughs; Brooklyn and Queens are full of the absolute worst kind of inefficient quasi-suburban accumulated sprawl.
      - krschultz 10y ago
        Or build the street up 1 level and have an underground level on the current street - isn't this basically how Chicago built sewers?
kartan 10y ago
> If they get any narrower there wouldnt be any room for cars. Relevant: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-36791485 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-36791485 "A spokesman said the project would contribute to the mayor's aim of improving air quality and make Oxford Street "a far safer and more pleasant place to visit"."
TulliusCicero 10y ago
Oh really, tons of bike lanes? Well, there are at least an order of magnitude more car lanes than bike lanes, so surely reallocating some of them for bikes will be no problem then, since there's a veritable smorgasbord of space for cars as it is. Bike lanes can handle much higher peak loads of people, so they're a more efficient use of space. > Most New Yorker's don't drive - they walk, bike, take the train, or taxi/uber. Yes, and those non-car modes should obviously have more surface space. If way more New Yorkers walk than drive, why is there more street space for cars than peds? > Don't you think if the answers were this simple someone would have done this already? No. Politically it can be very difficult to take space away from cars, even when it's obviously the right thing to do.
- finid 10y ago
  It would be actually easy to take space from cars in boroughs other than Manhattan. It just takes some push and a champion.
  - notJim 10y ago
    Really? I had the opposite experience. If you take away even one parking spot, people in Brooklyn go absolutely insane. The city was considering putting in bike lanes in my neighborhood, and tons of people showed up to the meeting in opposition to it. They all had their own reasons, but it was pretty clear that the 2 real motivations were a general dislike of cyclists, and a desire to not lose parking spots. http://gothamist.com/2016/06/22/yell_louder_cyclists.php http://gothamist.com/2016/06/22/yell_louder_cyclists.php
    - dispose13432 10y ago
      Why doesn't someone just build a huge commercial parking lot, and rent out parking spots? In a dense city like NY, it may actually work
      - scott_s 10y ago
        There's parking garages all over the city.
baybal2 10y ago
>If they get any narrower there wouldnt be any room for cars. Americans like gigantic cars. They need to make them smaller, like in Japan
MrFantastic 10y ago
Narrow lanes decrease car speeds and reduce accidents and fatalities.
kruhft 10y ago
Get rid of cars in the area? The area is easily walkable for its size. Doesn't Paris do this downtown?

marxidad 10y ago

The problems may be more political than technical.

the_gastropod 10y ago
As uncommon as car ownership is in NYC, it's incredible how much friction there is around reducing roadway for cars. Every bike lane added in the city is a hard fought battle. So I think you're absolutely right—the solutions are well understood. Changing car culture is difficult.
- superuser2 10y ago
  Perhaps because while most people don't own cars, they do depend on them (even if only in special circumstances) in the form of cabs.
  - bradleyjg 10y ago
    If that were what was mostly going on there'd be a heck of lot less on street parking. Essentially none of Manhattan should have any on street parking at all. Some standing zones for deliveries and pick up / drop offs (but not loitering forever, I'm looking at you black cars) and that's it. You'd be able to cut width of a typical street by 1/3.
- duaneb 10y ago
  You don't understand why people might like cabs, trucks, busses, and emergency vehicles? People don't drive their own cars already.
  - acdha 10y ago
    None of those need street parking – in fact, you'd dramatically improve their experience if the parking lanes were replaced with dedicated transit / bike lanes, etc. and a few dedicated taxi/etc. loading spaces. One of the reasons for this is that street parking is usually subsidized well below the market rates and so drivers will spend a significant amount of time looking for a cheaper parking space rather than simply parking in a garage, and they're using road capacity until they either find a space (and then block the lane while they slowly attempt to parallel park) or give up and pay to park off-street: “In 2006, surveyors interviewed drivers stopped at a traffic signal in the SoHo district of Manhattan, and 28 percent reported they were cruising for curb parking. A similar study in Brooklyn found that 45 percent of drivers were cruising. The same results might be found on many other streets in New York because off-street parking is generally far more expensive than on-street parking. In midtown Manhattan, for example, the price for the first hour of off-street parking is often about $20, while curb parking is only $1. Parking for an hour at the curb saves $19, but drivers first have to cruise to find a space on the street.” http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf http://shoup.bol.ucla.edu/CruisingForParkingAccess.pdf
- mancerayder 10y ago
  There's NYC and there's NYC. Manhattan is a small part of NYC: Staten Island, you must have a car. Large swathes of Queens and even Brooklyn have no pub transport (buses can be pretty awful due to traffic although they do exist). I think that's a big block of people opposed. Another political consideration is that the State of New York has control over elements of policy that would otherwise be anti-car. For example, the congestion tax they wanted to bring in, it was the state government that killed that. I still agree that congestion control, disincentives for car use, wider sidewalks, all should be done. Some of us wish NYC could declare independence so we could choose our own policy, but that's a different story...

philipov 10y ago

Getting rid of cars is a feature, not a bug.

jinushaun 10y ago
I think getting rid of cars isn't going to fix the problems the people in this article are complaining about. It's the age old problem that plague all popular cities around the world: tourists versus residents. And having visited places like Florence, Paris and Barcelona, I'd rather see the residents get their way.
- baron816 10y ago
  Residents aren't the ones with cars. No one in this area own a car.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    Except the residents (and workers) use taxis, Ubers, black cars, etc. And, as the article notes, the local businesses need to get deliveries, repair people, etc. I would guess the issue doesn't come so much from owners' private cars traveling through the area. I was adding that I made the mistake of passing through Times Square on my way to some destination a number of months back. As in the article, you literally could not walk on the sidewalk which was effectively blocked by the mass of people. Times Square (like areas of downtown) is an extreme example, but things do get really crowded. (And you can't just do away with road traffic there. You're at intersection of two major N-S avenues.)
    - philipov 10y ago
      Residents use the subway. Taxis are mostly for visitors: tourists, or day trippers from the periphery.
    - viewer5 10y ago
      What are "black cars"?

macNchz 10y ago

> Have you seen the streets in lower Manhattan? If they get any narrower there wouldnt be any room for cars. It'd be well within the realm of reason to consider closing a bunch of the narrowest/most heavily foot-trafficked streets in lower manhattan to cars and only allowing delivery trucks during certain hours of the day. It's an extremely impractical place to drive anyway.

pm90 10y ago
I would imagine the advent of delivery drones would be a nice solution to getting supplies in and out of dense urban areas, after which there would be no need for allowing vehicles (other than emergency or public transportation).
- notliketherest 10y ago
  Yeah good luck getting a drone to deliver a 400pound pallet of soda.
- nashashmi 10y ago
  The biggest delivery truck traffic is for furniture, goods (one or two UPS trucks for an entire building), or garbage. No amount of drone tech can reduce/eliminate truck traffic for an entire building.
  - TillE 10y ago
    The slightly more sane idea would be to look in the other direction, and build underground. That would be extremely expensive and have to deal with all sorts of issues, but at least it's physically possible. The actually realistic solution is to focus on developing housing and infrastructure in the outer boroughs; Brooklyn and Queens are full of the absolute worst kind of inefficient quasi-suburban accumulated sprawl.
    - krschultz 10y ago
      Or build the street up 1 level and have an underground level on the current street - isn't this basically how Chicago built sewers?

kartan 10y ago

> If they get any narrower there wouldnt be any room for cars. Relevant: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-36791485 http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-36791485 "A spokesman said the project would contribute to the mayor's aim of improving air quality and make Oxford Street "a far safer and more pleasant place to visit"."

TulliusCicero 10y ago

Oh really, tons of bike lanes? Well, there are at least an order of magnitude more car lanes than bike lanes, so surely reallocating some of them for bikes will be no problem then, since there's a veritable smorgasbord of space for cars as it is. Bike lanes can handle much higher peak loads of people, so they're a more efficient use of space. > Most New Yorker's don't drive - they walk, bike, take the train, or taxi/uber. Yes, and those non-car modes should obviously have more surface space. If way more New Yorkers walk than drive, why is there more street space for cars than peds? > Don't you think if the answers were this simple someone would have done this already? No. Politically it can be very difficult to take space away from cars, even when it's obviously the right thing to do.

finid 10y ago
It would be actually easy to take space from cars in boroughs other than Manhattan. It just takes some push and a champion.
- notJim 10y ago
  Really? I had the opposite experience. If you take away even one parking spot, people in Brooklyn go absolutely insane. The city was considering putting in bike lanes in my neighborhood, and tons of people showed up to the meeting in opposition to it. They all had their own reasons, but it was pretty clear that the 2 real motivations were a general dislike of cyclists, and a desire to not lose parking spots. http://gothamist.com/2016/06/22/yell_louder_cyclists.php http://gothamist.com/2016/06/22/yell_louder_cyclists.php
  - dispose13432 10y ago
    Why doesn't someone just build a huge commercial parking lot, and rent out parking spots? In a dense city like NY, it may actually work
    - scott_s 10y ago
      There's parking garages all over the city.

baybal2 10y ago

>If they get any narrower there wouldnt be any room for cars. Americans like gigantic cars. They need to make them smaller, like in Japan

MrFantastic 10y ago

Narrow lanes decrease car speeds and reduce accidents and fatalities.

kruhft 10y ago

Get rid of cars in the area? The area is easily walkable for its size. Doesn't Paris do this downtown?