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I've left Paris 12 years ago. I hate cars so much. Glad to see they're realizing those things. People should never forget how the car industry lobbied so that
by jokoon 7y ago
I've left Paris 12 years ago. I hate cars so much.
Glad to see they're realizing those things.
People should never forget how the car industry lobbied so that cars own most of the street. Biking and walking have become marginal things. How often do you realize you can't go from point A to B because it's impossible to street walk anymore? I've walked around cities many times, and I could not go in a direction because of how roads could not be crossed.
The "1-person car " meme is a real, real problem. Most people think that driving is a right, but we soon realize it's more a privilege and a source of problems.
- momokoko 7y ago> People should never forget how the car industry lobbied so that cars own most of the street. Please stop with the conspiracy stories. I hate cars more than anyone, but all this "Big Auto" stuff just discredits the entire thing as a bunch of fanatics.
- dhhdhdsbdb 7y agoThere is a documented history of this kind of thing. See https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history
- momokoko 7y agoThat is a vox article. It's fun to read and gets a lot of shares on social media. But it wildly exaggerates reality and wildly downplays that massive demand and growth in car ownership during that period. The idea that everyone hated cars and the evil car lobby came in and forced it upon them is flat out incorrect.
- smt88 7y agoI don't see the article claiming people hated cars. What the auto industry accomplished was to push the government to favor cars to the eventual exclusion of almost every other form of transit. Even if people didn't hate cars, this still wasn't a fair fight in an open market. It was an industry co-opting consumer and voter power.
- yazboo 7y ago> The idea that everyone hated cars and the evil car lobby came in and forced it upon them is flat out incorrect. This idea is not present in the article and is a wild exaggeration of your own.
- petersellers 7y agoYou'll probably convince more people by citing evidence to support your claims instead of using ad homs.
- momokoko 7y agoLiterally and chart about automobile ownership from 1940 to 1980.
- MereInterest 7y agoSuch a chart would in no manner prove your point. Something can become prevalent could be because (a) it is the preferred option out of many equivalent and equally available options or (b) it is the chosen option due to having been given preferentially treatment. Given that your time period contains Eisenhower's expansion of the federal highway system, option (b) is the more reasonable interpretation.
- drewcoo 7y agoClaiming that people like Henry Ford sought to make his product ubiquitous is a conspiracy theory? Henry Ford, publisher of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion? Amazing!
- BurningFrog 7y agoThe controversial claim is that he succeeded. To spell it out, the alternative theory is that maybe cars won fair and square. There is always lobbying in all directions. That doesn't mean it's always the decisive factor when something that was lobbied for won.
- carapace 7y agoIt's not a conspiracy story: they were quite open about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AFn7MiJz_s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AFn7MiJz_s Adam Ruins Everything - Why Jaywalking Is a Crime
- coldtea 7y agoSorry, you need to wise up to the world. Conspiracy is not just about the BS stuff regarding aliens and illuminati. It's also, and that's totally real and extremely common, big business interests, politicians, etc, working together to further their profits in covert ways, with under the table deals, bribes, trusts, price fixing, and several other ways... Ever head of "conspiracy to commit fraud"? The real courts punish tons of cases of very real conspiracies every year... Just because you've been conditioned by pop culture to associate conspiracies with aliens and illuminati and crazy people, doesn't mean actual conspiracies involving big car lobbies, big petrol, big pharma, big food, etc, don't happen every day...
- hdfbdtbcdg 7y ago> How often do you realize you can't go from point A to B because it's impossible to street walk anymore? Never. Literally never. I live in a European city though. Edit: In the City I live in there are literally no cases where I can't walk if I have time and inclination. Norway has taken a different approach to city planning to the US.
- thedstrat 7y agoI’m jealous. I’ve lived in California oregon and Washington my whole life. You basically can’t walk to most nearby locations because of freeways, interstates, etc. In my current city there’s only two stores I can walk to because I’m walled in by major streets/freeways
- rvanlaar 7y agoTo be clear, there is no way to pass those streets/freeways on foot or by bike? As in no pedestrian crossing? That's shitty planning. I've never seen such a place in Europe.
- avar 7y agoThere's a lot of amusing YouTube videos of tourists attempting to holiday there without a car, here's a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEAVSGYuhCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEAVSGYuhCY This sort of thing exists in Europe too, try walking out of an airport sometime, you can in some countries, but e.g. in Malaga I had to run across a highway because there was literally no way to get out of there otherwise, there simply aren't any footpaths.
- hdfbdtbcdg 7y agoIn Copenhagen the airport has bike racks - its a 20 minute cycle to the city center.
- avar 7y ago
- on_and_off 7y agoI left Paris 2 years ago. I wish to go back there someday, especially if it gets greener. Already, it is pretty easy to commute around Paris without a car in most cases. I actually had to buy a last mile vehicle only when I arrived in the USA. If a large city gets serious about banning/severely restricting car presence, I would immediately consider moving there.
- lorenzhs 7y agoMadrid banned most cars from the city center a few back, and while the new mayor recently tried to overturn that, he failed: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/07/madrid-car-ban-street-map-city-politics-mayor-court-decision/594487/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/07/madrid-car-ba...
- on_and_off 7y agoMediterranean weather + no cars ? I am officially psyched !. That will give me a good reason to learn Spanish :)
- Thimothy 7y agoHe. You are in for a disappointment if you think about moving to Madrid for the nice weather. Extremely dry, very hot summers, quite cold winters, Its more continental than Mediterranean. On the flip side, I keep hearing about some software companies opening development centers in southern Spain, so check out job offers around Malaga, if you are really interested in the Mediterranean thing.
- nvarsj 7y agoI’m another car hater. Living in London. Cars are everywhere. They park on the sidewalks. In some places you can’t even walk because the cars cover the entire sidewalk. Hammersmith bridge has closed due to constant, heavy truck traffic. Cars idle outside of schools in traffic all day as the kids play outside. Zebra crossings are incredibly dangerous as cars ignore them. Parents are afraid to let their kids go out and play due to the car traffic. I could go on and on. Dense urban cities are simply no place for cars.
- msclrhd 7y agoOne of the things I hate is when traffic ignores padestrian crossing indicators, including the ones with traffic lights, when traffic is backed up.
- nvarsj 7y agoYeah exactly. I’ve had a couple close calls with cars going right through zebra crossings where they had no visibility due to traffic. I’m extremely careful now but it’s still scary. It’s unfortunate that throughput is optimised over safety - otherwise these crossings on busy roads would all have traffic lights. There were nearly 1400 serious injuries to pedestrians in 2017, 250 of which were children [1]. That means life altering injuries, like losing a limb. If you compound that with the health effects of air pollution, the only conclusion is that cars are disastrous in cities. Worse, most of these cars aren’t local and the majority of locals take public transit. So it’s a minority of people inflicting their personal convenience on everyone else. If you complain about this in public, you are seen as a crazy person. 1. http://content.tfl.gov.uk/casualties-in-greater-london-2017.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/casualties-in-greater-london-2017....
- baxtr 7y agoCities in Europe are starting to build “bike speedways”. I am really looking forward to having them in my city https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bike_freeway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bike_freeway
- noobermin 7y agoConvince Americans that have never lived in another city type that isn't strip malls this. Things like speed cameras, road diets, et. al. are considered attacks on people's way of life. The wealthy ones even resist every attempt to make our cities into a more walkable form whilst enjoying their trips to Europe to see such quaint towns.
- JJMcJ 7y agoIn suburbs you will often have major boulevards, 6 lanes with 35 to 50 MPH (55 to 80 KPH approximately) speed limits and stop lights with half safe pedestrian crossings can be 1/2 a mile apart. It makes walking anywhere into anxious misery.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- thawaway1837 7y agoIt’s fascinating how once you mentally open yourself to the idea that cars do not need to be the biggest beneficiaries of public space, how our current city distributions start looking so ridiculous. And how such a nicer world is imaginable, if more people started agreeing to de prioritize cars and prioritize humans.