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It'd also practically stop economic growth of areas outside large cities and slow down economic growth of the city itself. Many businesses would be ruined (and

It'd also practically stop economic growth of areas outside large cities and slow down economic growth of the city itself. Many businesses would be ruined (and thus people working on them). Many people would loose their jobs. This is a very backwards approach. Why don't we destroy our cities that have replaced the beautiful nature that used to be there instead of them?

jonasvp 9y ago
[citation needed] Cars are a net negative for societies (see e.g. https://tu-dresden.de/bu/verkehr/ivs/voeko/ressourcen/dateien/vortraege_prof_becker/EP_External-costs-car-final_UB_20121206_neu.pdf?lang=de https://tu-dresden.de/bu/verkehr/ivs/voeko/ressourcen/dateie...). Just imagine having most (80%+) of goods transported by cargo bike: lots of (local!) employment, lots of new technology needed, etc.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  So let's take a different approach: Let's find a better solution for individual transportation that doesn't require human labor (e.g. pedaling) and offers the same benefits (ability to comfortably make 500 km per working day, for example - that's average daily mileage of a taxi driver).
  - noelwelsh 9y ago
    You seem very much in favour of cars, but also imagining that cities without cars would look much like cities with cars. Huge amounts of land are given over to roads and parking. Get rid of these and you have much denser cities without decreasing usable space per inhabitant.
    - tjansen 9y ago
      I assume you're talking about US cities. Because IMHO most European cities are already far too dense. You can hardly see the sky.
      - noelwelsh 9y ago
        All cities with cars, and no, they aren't.
        mantas 9y ago
        But if you make cities even densier, you'll have to restrict their height. People on the first floor still want sunlight for a reasonable time :) Meanwhile wide streets allow tall buildings..
- 72deluxe 9y ago
  Like sofas, armchairs, refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, flat-screen TVs and oak beds? Great idea, but how would you feasibly transport them? The deliveroo boxes are going to have to increase in size...
  - bildung 9y ago
    Been there, done that :) Just buy a good trailer. You get 10 top notch bikes plus trailer for the price of a car.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    Most of these could be transported on bike trailers. The bed will probably need to be shipped in disassembled form, but then again, I've never seen beds shipped in one piece. That said, there are certainly things that you absolutely have to transport with some sort of automobile. But there's no problem with exempting such transports from a possible car ban.
  - Heliosmaster 9y ago
    In the Netherlands bakfiets (http://img.tweede-hands.net/pics/00/13/08/63/97/3c.jpg?d0cc3157e3 http://img.tweede-hands.net/pics/00/13/08/63/97/3c.jpg?d0cc3...) can be easily used to transport this kind of things. Also, realistically, do you need to transport these things on a daily basis? Can you not rent a (electric) truck whenever you need this kind of things?
    - kazen44 9y ago
      Heck, a car in the netherlands is also very, very expensive. Especially if you live in the inner core of a relatively old city, which are not designed for cars and where parking space is at a premium. I'm fairly sure most people working normal office kind of jobs could easily live without a car, especially if cities use that money to make public transport available to more "remote" regions easily. My employer actually used this reasoning and has an office next to the train station, which makes traveling with public transport from other cities a breeze and prevents the company from having to pay massive fees for parking space.
kss238 9y ago
A city ban on cars would effect areas outside of cities?
- TomMarius 9y ago
  Yes, of course. People from outside the city come to the city by car to buy goods and offer their services because mass transit is not available or not practical. It's impossible to make mass transit practical for everyone.
  - kss238 9y ago
    So how does that stop economic growth of areas outside of the city? Sounds like it would ignite economic growth as smaller cities have to create their own services.
    - TomMarius 9y ago
      If it was better to have these services in the area outside the city, they'd already exist. These areas are too sparsely populated for these services to practically exist, and the ones that already exist depend on car traffic from the cities that would cease to exist if it was impractical to own a car in the city.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    It is practical to offer parking at train stations at the outskirts of the city so that people can commute to the train station and leave their car outside the exclusion zones.
    - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
      That does happen in some cities - also to provide an alternative to exorbitant inner city parking costs - but it will add a lot of overhead to your trip, so for a daily commute it becomes unfeasible unless you're okay with adding 30-60 minutes to it. Every day. (I did public transit to my assignment (working as a consultant) for five years; won't work with my current one as it's a 2 hour journey for just 60 kilometers).
CalRobert 9y ago
For what it's worth, I'm trying to find a place that is free of cars because, well, they ruin life if you enjoy walking and cycling. So far, places that come to mind are central Ghent and Rothenburg ob der Tauber (sadly the latter allows cars but they're still very few in number). If I were there I would expect to work remote, or start my own gig. I'd shop locally. There are very few places in the world where you can live near other people and escape automobiles, and I suspect there are at least a few other people like myself.
- agmcleod 9y ago
  In many cases I see cycling ruin life if you enjoy driving or walking ;). I do find places that i've seen be bike friendly in Europe do a much better job at this. But cyclists in Toronto can be pretty awful. Likewise can pedestrians and cars. Whichever way I travel, the other two are annoying me or causing me grief somehow.
  - CalRobert 9y ago
    Some people are inconsiderate :-( . Some of those people ride bikes. I've been annoyed at bicyclists while walking along holding my helmet just after docking my Dublinbike, even. But a jerk walking is virtually certainly not going to kill me (or my kid). A jerk cycling almost certainly won't either. But a jerk driving quite possibly will - after all, where I come from there's a 9/11 on the roads every month due to drivers, and the dead are disproportionately people walking or cycling. Of course, 100 years ago the streets were for walking (or horses, bikes, early autos, whathaveyou) and it was quite a feat that auto makers convinced people that only folks inside cars deserved to use 90% of it (all of it, in much of the US), and that it was perfectly normal to leave people walking clinging on to a shred of space at the edge.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - Noos 9y ago
      Actually a jerk walking may kill you and your kid...its called "mugging" which can happen when you walk places, and which really can't happen easily if you are in a car. And there are many areas in an average city where it's completely unsafe to walk in. And keep in mind, it's a lot more dangerous for a woman to walk alone than the average HN poster, especially if they need to do so at night.
matt4077 9y ago
Living in a densely populated city is far less resource-consuming than living in rural areas. You should be thankful for cities, especially if you enjoy living in nature. Distributing city populations evenly across the land would do serious harm to that natural beauty you claim to enjoy.

jonasvp 9y ago

[citation needed] Cars are a net negative for societies (see e.g. https://tu-dresden.de/bu/verkehr/ivs/voeko/ressourcen/dateien/vortraege_prof_becker/EP_External-costs-car-final_UB_20121206_neu.pdf?lang=de https://tu-dresden.de/bu/verkehr/ivs/voeko/ressourcen/dateie...). Just imagine having most (80%+) of goods transported by cargo bike: lots of (local!) employment, lots of new technology needed, etc.

TomMarius 9y ago
So let's take a different approach: Let's find a better solution for individual transportation that doesn't require human labor (e.g. pedaling) and offers the same benefits (ability to comfortably make 500 km per working day, for example - that's average daily mileage of a taxi driver).
- noelwelsh 9y ago
  You seem very much in favour of cars, but also imagining that cities without cars would look much like cities with cars. Huge amounts of land are given over to roads and parking. Get rid of these and you have much denser cities without decreasing usable space per inhabitant.
  - tjansen 9y ago
    I assume you're talking about US cities. Because IMHO most European cities are already far too dense. You can hardly see the sky.
    - noelwelsh 9y ago
      All cities with cars, and no, they aren't.
      - mantas 9y ago
        But if you make cities even densier, you'll have to restrict their height. People on the first floor still want sunlight for a reasonable time :) Meanwhile wide streets allow tall buildings..
72deluxe 9y ago
Like sofas, armchairs, refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers, flat-screen TVs and oak beds? Great idea, but how would you feasibly transport them? The deliveroo boxes are going to have to increase in size...
- bildung 9y ago
  Been there, done that :) Just buy a good trailer. You get 10 top notch bikes plus trailer for the price of a car.
- majewsky 9y ago
  Most of these could be transported on bike trailers. The bed will probably need to be shipped in disassembled form, but then again, I've never seen beds shipped in one piece. That said, there are certainly things that you absolutely have to transport with some sort of automobile. But there's no problem with exempting such transports from a possible car ban.
- Heliosmaster 9y ago
  In the Netherlands bakfiets (http://img.tweede-hands.net/pics/00/13/08/63/97/3c.jpg?d0cc3157e3 http://img.tweede-hands.net/pics/00/13/08/63/97/3c.jpg?d0cc3...) can be easily used to transport this kind of things. Also, realistically, do you need to transport these things on a daily basis? Can you not rent a (electric) truck whenever you need this kind of things?
  - kazen44 9y ago
    Heck, a car in the netherlands is also very, very expensive. Especially if you live in the inner core of a relatively old city, which are not designed for cars and where parking space is at a premium. I'm fairly sure most people working normal office kind of jobs could easily live without a car, especially if cities use that money to make public transport available to more "remote" regions easily. My employer actually used this reasoning and has an office next to the train station, which makes traveling with public transport from other cities a breeze and prevents the company from having to pay massive fees for parking space.

kss238 9y ago

A city ban on cars would effect areas outside of cities?

TomMarius 9y ago
Yes, of course. People from outside the city come to the city by car to buy goods and offer their services because mass transit is not available or not practical. It's impossible to make mass transit practical for everyone.
- kss238 9y ago
  So how does that stop economic growth of areas outside of the city? Sounds like it would ignite economic growth as smaller cities have to create their own services.
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    If it was better to have these services in the area outside the city, they'd already exist. These areas are too sparsely populated for these services to practically exist, and the ones that already exist depend on car traffic from the cities that would cease to exist if it was impractical to own a car in the city.
- adrianN 9y ago
  It is practical to offer parking at train stations at the outskirts of the city so that people can commute to the train station and leave their car outside the exclusion zones.
  - Cthulhu_ 9y ago
    That does happen in some cities - also to provide an alternative to exorbitant inner city parking costs - but it will add a lot of overhead to your trip, so for a daily commute it becomes unfeasible unless you're okay with adding 30-60 minutes to it. Every day. (I did public transit to my assignment (working as a consultant) for five years; won't work with my current one as it's a 2 hour journey for just 60 kilometers).

CalRobert 9y ago

For what it's worth, I'm trying to find a place that is free of cars because, well, they ruin life if you enjoy walking and cycling. So far, places that come to mind are central Ghent and Rothenburg ob der Tauber (sadly the latter allows cars but they're still very few in number). If I were there I would expect to work remote, or start my own gig. I'd shop locally. There are very few places in the world where you can live near other people and escape automobiles, and I suspect there are at least a few other people like myself.

agmcleod 9y ago
In many cases I see cycling ruin life if you enjoy driving or walking ;). I do find places that i've seen be bike friendly in Europe do a much better job at this. But cyclists in Toronto can be pretty awful. Likewise can pedestrians and cars. Whichever way I travel, the other two are annoying me or causing me grief somehow.
- CalRobert 9y ago
  Some people are inconsiderate :-( . Some of those people ride bikes. I've been annoyed at bicyclists while walking along holding my helmet just after docking my Dublinbike, even. But a jerk walking is virtually certainly not going to kill me (or my kid). A jerk cycling almost certainly won't either. But a jerk driving quite possibly will - after all, where I come from there's a 9/11 on the roads every month due to drivers, and the dead are disproportionately people walking or cycling. Of course, 100 years ago the streets were for walking (or horses, bikes, early autos, whathaveyou) and it was quite a feat that auto makers convinced people that only folks inside cars deserved to use 90% of it (all of it, in much of the US), and that it was perfectly normal to leave people walking clinging on to a shred of space at the edge.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Noos 9y ago
    Actually a jerk walking may kill you and your kid...its called "mugging" which can happen when you walk places, and which really can't happen easily if you are in a car. And there are many areas in an average city where it's completely unsafe to walk in. And keep in mind, it's a lot more dangerous for a woman to walk alone than the average HN poster, especially if they need to do so at night.

matt4077 9y ago

Living in a densely populated city is far less resource-consuming than living in rural areas. You should be thankful for cities, especially if you enjoy living in nature. Distributing city populations evenly across the land would do serious harm to that natural beauty you claim to enjoy.