4 ms·

I guess I don't see how banning cars in cities solves that problem for the elderly (particularly outside of cities).

ip26 8y ago
Banning cars in a city or some part of a city is a step in the process of making a city where you don't need a car. Removing the traffic, exhaust, & safety risk to other users helps make biking, walking, bussing, and rail faster, safer, & more pleasant.
- closeparen 8y ago
  Traffic is irrelevant for trains. It has some effect on buses, which can be mitigated with HOV lanes. (Usually the problem there is frequency and a lack of express service). At the distances most people need to travel to reach their workplaces from affordable housing, walking and cycling are never going to be pleasant. Banning cars from a city is a straight-up transfer of quality of life from the suburban masses to the richest in the center. Drastically increasing high-rise housing supply in the center is a much more meaningful step.
  - ip26 8y ago
    Drastically increasing high-rise housing supply in the center is a much more meaningful step. What are you going to do with all those extra cars? Traffic is irrelevant for trains Not for trolleys!
    - closeparen 8y ago
      Nothing. Developers can dig garages if they care to, or not if they don’t. We’ve already established that driving in the urban core is unreasonable, so congestion is not a concern. Trolleys are just buses with fewer degrees of freedom.
cultus 8y ago
You said that your dad's anti-BART habit is hard to break, but elderly should really be encouraged to use public transit. It is safer and healthier. I get that transit sucks in suburbs, but that is something that should be fixed. People live in high density areas. The residents should have higher priority than folks from the suburbs who choose to drive rather than taking public transit. That means having usable and human-focused urban design. I generally am very much for pricing in externalities, as you say. But when it comes to cars in very dense areas, there is a significant discontinuity in social cost between zero cars (pedestrians can freely use the streets, no traffic lights, etc) and a few cars (like in congestion pricing schemes). With even a few cars, walking becomes far more inconvenient, and there is much less public space. In dense urban cores, a huge proportion of the land area is essentially vacant, only used by a small minority that choose to drive. It is really a bizarre way of doing things.
- kcorbitt 8y ago
  > But when it comes to cars in very dense areas, there is a significant discontinuity in social cost between zero cars (pedestrians can freely use the streets, no traffic lights, etc) and a few cars (like in congestion pricing schemes). In my experience that's not quite the case. I lived in Barcelona's old town for about a year, and while it was technically legal to drive on many of the narrow, medieval-era streets, in practice it was enough of a pain that drivers rarely did. Because of the high volume of pedestrians, the few cars that did come through were forced to travel very slowly and the burden was on them to avoid hitting anyone, not the other way around. So I don't think you have to go all the way down to 0 cars to get most of the safety benefits – there's a tipping point somewhere earlier.
  - kareemsabri 8y ago
    Totally! The all-or-none option seems extreme to me, especially in America, where we have lots of roads that can handle quite a few cars.
  - cultus 8y ago
    I have walked and accidentally driven in such areas in Europe, but the street layout and dynamics are very different in the US. The problem is that in the US we have wide, straight streets. We don't have the same kind of built-in traffic calming. There is also much more driver entitlement here. Turning some areas into woonerfs might be a solution. It's also worth pointing out that many pedestrianized areas still allow delivery vehicles.

ip26 8y ago

Banning cars in a city or some part of a city is a step in the process of making a city where you don't need a car. Removing the traffic, exhaust, & safety risk to other users helps make biking, walking, bussing, and rail faster, safer, & more pleasant.

closeparen 8y ago
Traffic is irrelevant for trains. It has some effect on buses, which can be mitigated with HOV lanes. (Usually the problem there is frequency and a lack of express service). At the distances most people need to travel to reach their workplaces from affordable housing, walking and cycling are never going to be pleasant. Banning cars from a city is a straight-up transfer of quality of life from the suburban masses to the richest in the center. Drastically increasing high-rise housing supply in the center is a much more meaningful step.
- ip26 8y ago
  Drastically increasing high-rise housing supply in the center is a much more meaningful step. What are you going to do with all those extra cars? Traffic is irrelevant for trains Not for trolleys!
  - closeparen 8y ago
    Nothing. Developers can dig garages if they care to, or not if they don’t. We’ve already established that driving in the urban core is unreasonable, so congestion is not a concern. Trolleys are just buses with fewer degrees of freedom.

cultus 8y ago

You said that your dad's anti-BART habit is hard to break, but elderly should really be encouraged to use public transit. It is safer and healthier. I get that transit sucks in suburbs, but that is something that should be fixed. People live in high density areas. The residents should have higher priority than folks from the suburbs who choose to drive rather than taking public transit. That means having usable and human-focused urban design. I generally am very much for pricing in externalities, as you say. But when it comes to cars in very dense areas, there is a significant discontinuity in social cost between zero cars (pedestrians can freely use the streets, no traffic lights, etc) and a few cars (like in congestion pricing schemes). With even a few cars, walking becomes far more inconvenient, and there is much less public space. In dense urban cores, a huge proportion of the land area is essentially vacant, only used by a small minority that choose to drive. It is really a bizarre way of doing things.

kcorbitt 8y ago
> But when it comes to cars in very dense areas, there is a significant discontinuity in social cost between zero cars (pedestrians can freely use the streets, no traffic lights, etc) and a few cars (like in congestion pricing schemes). In my experience that's not quite the case. I lived in Barcelona's old town for about a year, and while it was technically legal to drive on many of the narrow, medieval-era streets, in practice it was enough of a pain that drivers rarely did. Because of the high volume of pedestrians, the few cars that did come through were forced to travel very slowly and the burden was on them to avoid hitting anyone, not the other way around. So I don't think you have to go all the way down to 0 cars to get most of the safety benefits – there's a tipping point somewhere earlier.
- kareemsabri 8y ago
  Totally! The all-or-none option seems extreme to me, especially in America, where we have lots of roads that can handle quite a few cars.
- cultus 8y ago
  I have walked and accidentally driven in such areas in Europe, but the street layout and dynamics are very different in the US. The problem is that in the US we have wide, straight streets. We don't have the same kind of built-in traffic calming. There is also much more driver entitlement here. Turning some areas into woonerfs might be a solution. It's also worth pointing out that many pedestrianized areas still allow delivery vehicles.