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Even without any cars, delivery, trade, construction and transit vehicles add up to a significant fraction of current traffic in big European cities. You can't
by barrkel 9y ago
Even without any cars, delivery, trade, construction and transit vehicles add up to a significant fraction of current traffic in big European cities. You can't remove this traffic without functionally harming city life.
London, where I live, has both congestion charging and emissions charging (ULEZ) but still has loads of traffic. I'd estimate about 75% of it is not private vehicles outside rush hour, and probably no more than 50% private during rush hour, in central areas. My estimates come from riding through it by motorcycle daily.
- adrianN 9y agoWhat's a "significant fraction"? Reducing traffic by, say 70% and eliminating all the parking space that goes along with the millions of cars could massively improve city life. Air pollution, noise pollution, deaths and injuries in accidents, all those things would be dramatically reduced. BTW, pedestrian zones exist in most cities. The stores there still get their goods delivered and emergency vehicles still have access. Turning most of a city in a pedestrian/cyclist zone doesn't mean that you can't have any car traffic at all.
- barrkel 9y agoI just looked out the window of our office and took a quick sample of the traffic. There's no bus route on our road, mind. Out of 10 vehicles, 2 looked private (no livery at least - one Mercedes S-class possibly chauffeured, the other could be Uber but wasn't a Prius so maybe not), 3 were black cabs, 3 were delivery vans and 2 were trade vans. Eliminate 70% of that traffic, and something will break. Kill taxis and business will suffer. Kill trade vans and basic utilities will be out of action for longer. Kill deliveries and the pace of economic activity will slow down. Deliveries are the best candidate for reduction, but don't forget use of delivery vans is directly related to public transport use - people who use public transport can't carry lots of stuff around, or trek out to centralized pickup hubs, so they need delivery vans instead.
- dmoy 9y agoHasn't London already done quite a bit to reduce private traffic in the city centre? Like you gotta pay 10 pounds to drive into the city center? That may explain why there's a smaller percentage of private vehicles, and quite possibly fewer vehicles being driven altogether.
- donjoe 9y agoAwesome, London's got 2.6E6 registered cars according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/314980/licensed-cars-in-london-england-united-kingdom/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/314980/licensed-cars-in-.... Since by your estimation, 50% of traffic during rush hour is private, these cars need a space to park. A parked car needs roughly 8sqm. That's 2.6E6 * 0.5 * 8sqm = 10 400 000sqm of parking area (plus commuters which are obviously not included) covered by cars not moved more than a couple of mins/day. And I bet 50% of the traffic wouldn't functionally harm cities, it would simply harm people's selfishness. A car is - in most of the cases - unnecessary and simply used as a status symbol.
- barrkel 9y agoWhoa, you're leaping to some conclusions there - most cars owned by Londoners are not used for commuting, they're for shopping, moving kids around, that kind of thing - things that public transport is a poor substitute for. Things like congestion charging apply only to the centre, where the congestion is, and that's where my comments apply. Most of the cars owned by Londoners are not in central London.
- zimpenfish 9y ago> things that public transport is a poor substitute for Largely because public transport is underfunded in London and, of course, ridiculously hampered by the car traffic. Try getting a bus down the A2 in peak hours or at the weekend. It's often quicker to walk. That's why people end up getting cars and ... making things worse for everyone.
- buro9 9y agoLondon has already proven, during the month of restrictions around the Olympic Games, that it is possible to massively reduce motorised vehicle traffic within zone 1 and zone 2 during the workday without causing harm to businesses and the functioning of the city. Most people felt that the quality of life in London dramatically improved during the games, and one of the major reasons cited is reduced traffic, cleaner air, pedestrianised zones, increase in cycling, smoother traffic flow for public transport, out of hour deliveries, etc. It's already been successfully done, there is just a lack of political will to make such measures permanent.
- zimpenfish 9y ago> cleaner air Ride 100 provides an excellent demonstration of this even just by closing -some- roads for -one- day. cf this graph of pollution on Putney High Street: https://twitter.com/jwoLondon/status/892004529545379840 https://twitter.com/jwoLondon/status/892004529545379840
- barrkel 9y agoPeople simply do business on a different day to cycle takeovers.
- zimpenfish 9y agoI can't really fathom what your point is here? No cars means no pollution -> reducing the amount of cars reduces the pollution. Is that disputed?
- wlesieutre 9y agoTheir point is that the closing a road once doesn't just make all the pollution not happen, it time-shifts some of it to other days when people are driving again. I expect there are some people who do make other arrangements and take a bus, so it's a net gain, but there are also those who take their car on Monday since they couldn't on Sunday. EDIT: I looked up how RideLondon works, map at the end of this PDF shows road closures https://d1ffaecguugkl4.cloudfront.net/ridelondon/live/uploads/cms_page_media/19/Central-Road-Closures-2017.pdf https://d1ffaecguugkl4.cloudfront.net/ridelondon/live/upload... So it's not even time-shifting necessarily. People can drive around that and just move the pollution from one street to the next. But yes, the pollution measurements on one of the closed roads would look better that day.