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I sold my car earlier this year, and started bicycle commuting again about a month ago. I honestly hadn't realized just how wasteful of space car traffic is. W

I sold my car earlier this year, and started bicycle commuting again about a month ago. I honestly hadn't realized just how wasteful of space car traffic is. When I commuted by public transit, It was mostly not directly visible to me, especially when I took the train and just bypassed all the traffic. But riding my bike, I see just how clogged up the roads get, and just how much the flow gets disturbed by people blocking intersections and creating gridlock. The vast majority of these cars are only transporting a single occupant, even the huge 7-seat SUVs. The amount of wasted space is simply astounding. If we could keep even just the city centers free of cars, there would be so much more space available for pedestrians and cyclists and city life. Sure, allow some commercial traffic, such as deliveries, tradesmen with jobs to do in the city, buses and taxi services. Ban all private car traffic, and only hand out temporary permits for transporting home bulky objects or similar short-term undertakings. Price it so that people won't just buy one every single day. Maybe set a limit on how many permits are allowed per month, to prevent the wealthy from gaming the system. Quality of life would increase massively.

mattlondon 8y ago
They kinda tried that in London with congestion charging - i.e. you have to pay £11.50 or £21.50 (depending on vehicle) a day to drive into central London. Latest data I could easily find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge) was that after 10 years of operation it reduced traffic by 10% (ten). A report from 2014 said that traffic levels are now close to pre-congestion-charge levels (https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/cc-changes-march-2014/user_uploads/cc-impact-assessment.pdf https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/cc-changes-march-2014...). The public buses and privately-run taxis are everywhere and are significant causes of traffic in my anecdotal experience (e.g. bus blocking the road waiting for someone to finish talking to the driver, bus blocking junction, buses blocking road waiting to get into bus stop where 5 other buses already are waiting to pick-up or put-down, taxi-drivers stopping in illegal places to drop people off or doing illegal u-turns etc etc. Whats worse is the buses are diesel and pump out loads of fumes from their heavy diesel engines. Bus ridership is falling (http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/londons-bus-ridership-is-falling-three-times-faster-than-the-rest-of-englands/ http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/londons-bus-ridership-is-falling...) yet we still have to put up with them and their diesel. tl;dr - charging doesn't work at the £10-20/day prices (equivalent to 3.6 to 6.7 Big Macs on the BigMacIndex a day to drive into london) I guess it might work if the fees go up an order of magnitude.

mattlondon 8y ago

They kinda tried that in London with congestion charging - i.e. you have to pay £11.50 or £21.50 (depending on vehicle) a day to drive into central London. Latest data I could easily find (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge) was that after 10 years of operation it reduced traffic by 10% (ten). A report from 2014 said that traffic levels are now close to pre-congestion-charge levels (https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/cc-changes-march-2014/user_uploads/cc-impact-assessment.pdf https://consultations.tfl.gov.uk/roads/cc-changes-march-2014...). The public buses and privately-run taxis are everywhere and are significant causes of traffic in my anecdotal experience (e.g. bus blocking the road waiting for someone to finish talking to the driver, bus blocking junction, buses blocking road waiting to get into bus stop where 5 other buses already are waiting to pick-up or put-down, taxi-drivers stopping in illegal places to drop people off or doing illegal u-turns etc etc. Whats worse is the buses are diesel and pump out loads of fumes from their heavy diesel engines. Bus ridership is falling (http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/londons-bus-ridership-is-falling-three-times-faster-than-the-rest-of-englands/ http://www.mayorwatch.co.uk/londons-bus-ridership-is-falling...) yet we still have to put up with them and their diesel. tl;dr - charging doesn't work at the £10-20/day prices (equivalent to 3.6 to 6.7 Big Macs on the BigMacIndex a day to drive into london) I guess it might work if the fees go up an order of magnitude.