11 ms·

Restricting Manhattan’s 14th street to buses has been a success

204 points by js2 7y ago

rememberlenny 7y ago
This is one of the more exciting things that has happened to traffic in NYC. Getting rid of cars in a city isn't possible, but being able to make this change to one street at a time seems feasible. I live a block away from this area, and it's completely transformed the neighborhood. It's much safer to walk across 14th st. There are many shops in the area that seem to be getting more foot traffic (no data behind this). There are more people congregating around the bench/sitting areas around 14th street.
- Silverwood 7y ago
  I visited 14th street yesterday and was amazed by the change. I'm hoping that the city stops offering free street parking next.
  - kspacewalk2 7y ago
    Free street parking in Manhattan. Can anything be more ludicrous and unfair?
    - anonu 7y ago
      Not sure if your comment is sarcastic. But free is a major mispricing by the city. All you need to do is go to the garage next door to see that they charge $40 for the day. The streets are a public good and they should be for cyclists and pedestrians.
- adrr 7y ago
  This is a better strategy than trying to put bike lanes on every street. Drivers don't pay attention enough. Risk of getting doored or having some car turn right without checking their blindspot/mirrors is too high.
  - mgleason_3 7y ago
    Vancouver took their 2-lane each way (4 total) roads and dedicated the outer lane to bikes. They protected that lane from car with planters. So, it can definitely be done. That said, IDK if it’s a resounding success. There may be measures by which it is, I’m just not aware. For example, I found it difficult as a pedestrian and saw a few collisions and lots of near misses between bikes and pedestrians. The planters create a nice protected area which feels like it’s safe for walking and crossing. But the bikes were moving quickly and quite unyielding in their perceived right-of-way. When we were there, there was definitely other challenges. There were terrible traffic jams - especially going into the city. It seems like a lot of traffic needs to go through the city to get somewhere else. It didn’t seem like they had adequate public transportation.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      > Vancouver took their 2-lane each way (4 total) roads and dedicated the outer lane to bikes. They protected that lane from car with planters. So, it can definitely be done. Makes snowplowing a mess. NYC can’t just shutdown like Vancouver does every time it snows :)
      - jrockway 7y ago
        It is street parking that ruins winter for bikes. The snow plows can't get to the edge of the road, so the bike lane which marks the parking/plowable road area suffers. I don't think it's a big deal because we don't really get a lot of snow in NYC. A plan to improve the 50 weeks a year without snow on the ground is better than not doing the plan because a couple weeks in February will be miserable.
        Scoundreller 7y ago
        About 20-40 inches per year in NYC, while 12 is lucky in a year in Vancouver. And is prone to melting when the sun comes out. The Pacific moderates a lot better than the Atlantic!
        7y ago
Wowfunhappy 7y ago
As far as I'm concerned, cars have no place in Manhattan, and should be banned from all but a handful of designated roads. Maybe give out special licenses to the disabled, or anyone else who physically requires a car—that way, they'll actually be able to get around at reasonable speeds, too.
- chongli 7y ago
  If you're disabled, wouldn't it be better to use a motorized wheelchair? Then you can go anywhere that's wheelchair accessible, without creating any risks for pedestrians.
  - phoobahr 7y ago
    That doesn’t work for the visually impaired, for those with epilepsy, for the extremely short of stature, for persons without hands, for those who are aged or living with progressive impairments who shouldn’t drive but for whom a $10k-$50k power chair is not an appropriate solution. Not to mention those who could not afford them even if they wanted them. I won’t even touch social issues related to hierarchies of disability. You know what works for everyone though? Dropping the pretender that everyone “needs” personal transport and embracing accessible transit and the infrastructure that requires and offers.
    - chongli 7y ago
      When I said disabled people, I meant disabled with respect to walking, not driving. Most of the groups of people you mentioned are capable of walking on their own and so would be just fine in a car-free, walkable neighbourhood. For those who cannot walk but also somehow cannot use a motorized wheelchair but can use a car? I am not sure who would fall into this group of people, but it has to be extremely small. We should be able to find some form of accommodation for them. As for people who cannot afford a wheelchair or other accessibility device? I think we should fund these for people, using public funds. It's the most humane thing to do, as it provides for the greatest potential autonomy, which I think everyone has a right to.
throebd 7y ago
Maybe fix the metro first? Kiev in Ukraine has better metro than NYC.
- wetpaws 7y ago
  This is a false dichotomy. One does not exclude another.
  - close04 7y ago
    No but the order is important. Making public transport better first would make the transition away from car traffic somewhat smoother. Many cities already successfully pulled this off and this method received far more popular support than just cutting off car traffic and expecting the people to "deal with it" without having good options.
    - techsupporter 7y ago
      Except that the order usually goes like this: 1. You can't take away personal car access; the public transportation sucks! Make it better, first. 2. You can't improve public transportation; everybody drives so it's not a good cost investment. Get more people to ride transit, first. 3. Goto 1
      - close04 7y ago
        Most European cities that shifted away from car traffic did exactly that. First they improved public transport and encouraged any other alternatives like bicycles. They invested in that infrastructure until it was ready to take over. Then they started to slowly "push" people away from cars by turning some streets or city centers into pedestrian zones. You collect the returns after you invest. Otherwise almost any initiative would get bogged down into your 3 point loop. When companies build a new HQ they don't tear down the old one first. The "loop" is a fake conundrum.
        techsupporter 7y ago
rubyboss 7y ago
I don't understand this anti-car sentiment from the city liberals. It's already happened here in London and it's getting worse. From 20mph speed limits to blocking roads for bus-only traffic to ultra-low emission zones and congestion charges. It's becoming pretty clear that they don't want people to own their own cars. I'm struggling to see how this is progress.
- snovv_crash 7y ago
  In the city, space is a limited resource. Hogging limited resources is generally considered rude, whether you're liberal or conservative, urban or rural. The difference is just what people consider a limited resource.
- omosubi 7y ago
  Because cars have a lot of externalities that negatively affect cities? Pollution, noise, increase in collisions, space required to house and fuel them to name a few. I, and many other people, prefer areas of cities where cars aren't dominant and would like to see more of it
  - electric_muse 7y ago
    But I’m not sure this is a widely held preference. Seems to be a vocal minority trying to impose their will on others.
    - omosubi 7y ago
      That may be true but it's largely how our political system works. Regardless, you can try to fight back or just move to someplace that has the density and mobility you want.
    - audunw 7y ago
      Any data on that? Here around Oslo, there is quite a bit of opposition to banning cars from the city - but mostly from people living outside of it. People who live in the city, and who should have the most say, seems to like it. The green party grew in the recent election. Data has shown that businesses are doing well. Some do better, some the same, some worse (like furniture stores, which is a silly thing to have in a city centre anyway). There's certainly a growing preference for car-free cities. Seems to me like younger people prefer it. Not just because they don't have cars.. I do now, but I really don't like to use it in the city. My wife and I take it to the closest metro station with free parking, and take the metro the rest of the way. Much less stressful. Seems to me like it is mostly old people who are opposed to banning cars. When they were young, the cities were not as dense, cars not as prevalent, and people didn't care as much about air pollution. They could drive straight into the city centre and park wherever. They don't want to give up on that, even if it means being stuck in traffic and driving around the city centre for half an hour to find a free parking spot. It's an inconvenience they've gotten used to. But the inconveniences of public transportation? Unbearable!
baxtr 7y ago
Cities were designed around cars. It’s time for a change.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Very few cities were. Cities for the most part were designed around horse drawn carriages and tons of foot traffic.
  - elgenie 7y ago
    Not in the US, though. Even the city centers that predated the widespread adoption of automobiles were by and large redesigned towards cars. Then in the 50s and 60s whole city neighborhoods were razed for interstates.
  - baxtr 7y ago
    That's a very narrow way to read my comment. Cities are rebuilt all the time. My city now invest heavily into bike lanes reducing the number of car lanes from 2 to 1 and replacing them by bike lanes. That is a choice, which can be made every year by any city.
    - jacquesm 7y ago
      Of course there is no reason to leave things as they are. But any city older than 120 years - and that's the bulk of them near where I live - will have had horses and carriages as the bulk carriers of their time. Except for those parts where boats were used, but that requires some pretty rare conditions (Venice, Amsterdam, Bruges). Getting rid of cars is a good thing, let's hope we get rid of them in inner cities before electrics take over and rob us of that chance. The pollution caused by cars is one of the main drivers of getting rid of them, if that reason is dealt with then it will be much harder to marshal the forces required to see this through.
- cryptonector 7y ago
  New York wasn't.
randall 7y ago
Imagine if, in high density areas like Manhattan, cars were simply not allowed. Wow. The thought of how pleasant Manhattan would become if only cabs + busses + delivery trucks + ambulances were allowed makes me almost too happy. Would be so awesome.
- Swizec 7y ago
  This is in fact a trend in European city centers. It is wonderful and amazing. Areas where before closing for traffic it didn’t make sense to drive anyway because walking is literally faster due to narrow streets, too many cars, etc. I don’t understand why people choose to drive there unless someone explicitly tells them they can’t.
- electric_muse 7y ago
  Busses and delivery trucks are the most noisy and polluting! That doesn’t seem like the panacea you suggest.
  - komaromy 7y ago
    On a per-unit basis, sure. There are way more cars than buses or delivery trucks though.
    - erik_seaberg 7y ago
      If I can't use my car, a lot more things need to be delivered. Anything I can't carry for half a mile, anything for which I'd be robbed …
      - megaremote 7y ago
        So you will consume less to? Another bonus.
      - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
        1. When everybody is walking outside, instead of transiting through cars, it is a lot harder for pedestrians to be robbed. Also, police actually start caring more about pedestrian safety when so many people are walking. Walkable neighbourhoods can be a lot safer than the safest car-friendly neighbourhoods, with the right system. 2. As for carrying, based on my experience of living in a walkable neighbourhood where thousands of people lived within a kilometer of the central shopping area, a lot of people would bring carts that they would push their groceries home in. If you can push a small wheeled grocery cart through the total 100 meter aisles of the grocery store, then you can push a big wheeled cart the 1000 meter to your house on the sidewalk. Given that I often saw 80 year olds doing that, most healthy people should also be able to do it, no problem.
gniv 7y ago
The article is a bit lacking in facts. Here's some more info from another source [1]: "The MTA and Department of Transportation announced Monday that beginning July 1, private cars will be banned along 14th Street from Third to Ninth Avenues from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m." "It’s part of the MTA’s plan to increase bus service while repairs continue on the L train." [1] https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2019/06/11/commuter-alert-most-of-14th-street-will-be-closed-to-cars-most-of-the-time-starting-july/ https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2019/06/11/commuter-alert-most-...
- Merrill 7y ago
  Repairs aren't the only cause of mass transit outages. There are also the occasional MTA strikes, which happened in '66, '80, and 2005. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_New_York_City_transit_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_New_York_City_transit_str...
chrismcb 7y ago
I wish they works ban cars on the Las Vegas strip. It would require rerouting hotel entrances. But the amount of real estate it would free up would be incredible.
- woutr_be 7y ago
  Out of interest, how much real estate would it actually free up? I assume you still need roads for emergency services, delivery trucks, construction vehicles, etc... Maybe the number of lanes can be reduced, but that wouldn't exactly free up any sizeable amount of real estate that could be used for more housing, or would it?
jshaqaw 7y ago
I’m torn on the cars in Manhattan debate. I live my whole city life on public transport. I hate the pollution of cars and I hate how perilous it is for my kids to cross the streets. At the same time we sometimes do want to or have to travel outside the city. I’m not really sure how that would work in a car free city.
- danielharan 7y ago
  You could have parking with rental cars on the periphery of the city or its car-free zone.
  - jshaqaw 7y ago
    Sort of. It sounds OK in pure theory. In practice when we end up loading the car to visit parents/grandparents for a week plus a dog in tow I’m not sure how we end up getting from our apartment door to the peripheral rental car zone which this being Manhattan is presumably in NJ. That’s a lot of cargo! Again I would love a car free Manhattan if I could figure out how to make it work. But many of those who argue this most vehemently I often suspect aren’t trying to raise families in NYC.
Tiktaalik 7y ago
The tech industry is floating all these complex technological ideas so solve traffic congestion, from apps that track traffic, to ride hailing to autonomous cars, but the reality is that traffic congestion is not a tech problem but rather a simple physics problem (and political problem). The core issue is simply that cars physically take up too much space on the road, and move too few passengers. This simple physics problem can be solved solved with 19th century solutions as NYC has here. Make exclusive room for buses, which are dramatically more space efficient than cars. Problem solved.
- buss 7y ago
  This is exactly right. Most of the problems in cities aren't due to technology, they're due to bad governance. Our solutions need to be political, not just technological.
- repsilat 7y ago
  Autonomous cars and ride-hailing weren't/aren't meant to solve traffic congestion. Traffic tracking actually does help by allowing people to make use of underused capacity. Otherwise, I agree -- cars take up too much room, especially when there's just one or two people in them. And I like bus lanes, but I think per-vehicle traffic pricing is a better idea, because it achieves the "densification incentive" in a way that also works for carpooling and private bus-like modes. And before someone says it's regressive, a toll is less onerous than a ban, which is what bus-only lanes are. And (way off topic) I think if income taxes are progressive enough then other types of taxation don't need to be -- and probably shouldn't be, if their purpose is to price externalities.
  - Arnt 7y ago
    Actually does help? If the bus is to be dependable, it needs to arrive on time, and that means that the lane in front of it needs to be free. Consistently free — the bus past my house stops 20 times, so that's 20 points at which the bus needs to be on time on order to be seen as dependable. The bus needs to drive at the same speed every day, and even be able to drive a little faster. You can either regard the free asphalt as "spare capacity" or regard it as being used by the bus that's not visible right now, but will pass by in a minute or two. Perhaps it's more correct to say that the free asphalt is being used by the route schedule than the vehicle itself.
mapgrep 7y ago
This conclusion of “a phenomenal success” is based on “a span of several days.” Again, several days. I want this to be true. I support this policy decision. I don’t own a car, live in NY, and want to see the streets reclaimed from drivers. Love it. But if someone declared this experiment a terrible failure after /several days/ I would laugh and say, “please wait a bit so we can examine some real data.” Please, urbanists, consider waiting a bit before calling this “a phenomenal success.” Let’s have some evidentiary standards.
- Wowfunhappy 7y ago
  Well, it hasn't caused the immediate armageddon some were predicting. It may be early yet, but realistically, what catastrophes do you foresee that wouldn't have come by now?
  - hoorayimhelping 7y ago
    In the six years I lived in NYC proper, there was a giant flood, a giant power outage, several hurricanes, several blizzards, several city-wide protests, and countless large events taking place on the streets. That's just a few events I thought of off the top of my head. That doesn't cover the normal ebb and flow of activity in the city - it's pretty busy around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and dead in February, and a zoo in the summertime. How do all those things affect this? What happens when school is out? What happens during shopping season? What happens in heat waves or during snowstorms? The point is, a lot of different things can happen in the city on pretty annual cycle, and declaring this a success even after a month is pretty silly and potentially very costly.
    - fishingisfun 7y ago
      not even a month
- andrewem 7y ago
  One can have evidentiary standards which don't in every circumstance require a long time period. For example, there are (rarely) medical clinical trials which are ended early because the experimental group's protocol (say, a drug or a procedure) works so well that it would be inappropriate to wait longer to give all the study participants the experimental intervention. People who know more statistics better than I do could provide a more analytical description, but basically given the results so far, the likelihood of a "failure" (for whatever definition the city has chosen) is extremely low.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
thrower123 7y ago
This kind of thing makes sense in Manhattan. Manhattan is relatively tiny, and it is dense, and there is workable public transit. A subway system with stations every quarter mile or less does wonders. It just doesn't extrapolate to anywhere else in the country particularly well. Even Boston is a shit-show without cars, and that is another dense, old, East Coast city with legacy public transit, albeit much less well designed. It's a complete non-starter most places.
- kunai 7y ago
  Congestion charges and upzoning would fix that issue, but people with the same outlook on this problem (aka NIMBYs) that you do seem to hate those things as well. People often forget this fact but the vast majority of cities east of the Mississippi in the U.S. developed without cars for most of their existence. Streetcars were the name of the game until the 1950s, after which personal car ownership was heavily pushed and subsidized by the government after bending to the will of GM, Ford, and Chrysler. The entire idea of designing our cities around car ownership and the single-family household is extraordinarily new and unnatural. There's nothing prohibiting us from creating density in these post-WWII cities; just look at Denver or Portland and their massive successes with public transit and upzoning.
Ericson2314 7y ago
Ironically with a superblock style plan, 14th Street would be one of the only streets where cars are allowed. Jokes aside, yes, I really hope this is the beginning of the end of cars in Manhattan. When it was announced I was thrilled: here was the perfect flash point to grow the anti-car movement in NYC. Now we have to deliver.
wging 7y ago
Seattle did this for a stretch of 3rd. I don't have the data to call it a success (or failure) but buses on 3rd seem pretty quick to me.

204 points by js2 7y ago

This is one of the more exciting things that has happened to traffic in NYC. Getting rid of cars in a city isn't possible, but being able to make this change to one street at a time seems feasible. I live a block away from this area, and it's completely transformed the neighborhood. It's much safer to walk across 14th st. There are many shops in the area that seem to be getting more foot traffic (no data behind this). There are more people congregating around the bench/sitting areas around 14th street.

Silverwood 7y ago
I visited 14th street yesterday and was amazed by the change. I'm hoping that the city stops offering free street parking next.
- kspacewalk2 7y ago
  Free street parking in Manhattan. Can anything be more ludicrous and unfair?
  - anonu 7y ago
    Not sure if your comment is sarcastic. But free is a major mispricing by the city. All you need to do is go to the garage next door to see that they charge $40 for the day. The streets are a public good and they should be for cyclists and pedestrians.
adrr 7y ago
This is a better strategy than trying to put bike lanes on every street. Drivers don't pay attention enough. Risk of getting doored or having some car turn right without checking their blindspot/mirrors is too high.
- mgleason_3 7y ago
  Vancouver took their 2-lane each way (4 total) roads and dedicated the outer lane to bikes. They protected that lane from car with planters. So, it can definitely be done. That said, IDK if it’s a resounding success. There may be measures by which it is, I’m just not aware. For example, I found it difficult as a pedestrian and saw a few collisions and lots of near misses between bikes and pedestrians. The planters create a nice protected area which feels like it’s safe for walking and crossing. But the bikes were moving quickly and quite unyielding in their perceived right-of-way. When we were there, there was definitely other challenges. There were terrible traffic jams - especially going into the city. It seems like a lot of traffic needs to go through the city to get somewhere else. It didn’t seem like they had adequate public transportation.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    > Vancouver took their 2-lane each way (4 total) roads and dedicated the outer lane to bikes. They protected that lane from car with planters. So, it can definitely be done. Makes snowplowing a mess. NYC can’t just shutdown like Vancouver does every time it snows :)
    - jrockway 7y ago
      It is street parking that ruins winter for bikes. The snow plows can't get to the edge of the road, so the bike lane which marks the parking/plowable road area suffers. I don't think it's a big deal because we don't really get a lot of snow in NYC. A plan to improve the 50 weeks a year without snow on the ground is better than not doing the plan because a couple weeks in February will be miserable.
      - Scoundreller 7y ago
        About 20-40 inches per year in NYC, while 12 is lucky in a year in Vancouver. And is prone to melting when the sun comes out. The Pacific moderates a lot better than the Atlantic!
      - 7y ago

Wowfunhappy 7y ago

As far as I'm concerned, cars have no place in Manhattan, and should be banned from all but a handful of designated roads. Maybe give out special licenses to the disabled, or anyone else who physically requires a car—that way, they'll actually be able to get around at reasonable speeds, too.

chongli 7y ago
If you're disabled, wouldn't it be better to use a motorized wheelchair? Then you can go anywhere that's wheelchair accessible, without creating any risks for pedestrians.
- phoobahr 7y ago
  That doesn’t work for the visually impaired, for those with epilepsy, for the extremely short of stature, for persons without hands, for those who are aged or living with progressive impairments who shouldn’t drive but for whom a $10k-$50k power chair is not an appropriate solution. Not to mention those who could not afford them even if they wanted them. I won’t even touch social issues related to hierarchies of disability. You know what works for everyone though? Dropping the pretender that everyone “needs” personal transport and embracing accessible transit and the infrastructure that requires and offers.
  - chongli 7y ago
    When I said disabled people, I meant disabled with respect to walking, not driving. Most of the groups of people you mentioned are capable of walking on their own and so would be just fine in a car-free, walkable neighbourhood. For those who cannot walk but also somehow cannot use a motorized wheelchair but can use a car? I am not sure who would fall into this group of people, but it has to be extremely small. We should be able to find some form of accommodation for them. As for people who cannot afford a wheelchair or other accessibility device? I think we should fund these for people, using public funds. It's the most humane thing to do, as it provides for the greatest potential autonomy, which I think everyone has a right to.

throebd 7y ago

Maybe fix the metro first? Kiev in Ukraine has better metro than NYC.

wetpaws 7y ago
This is a false dichotomy. One does not exclude another.
- close04 7y ago
  No but the order is important. Making public transport better first would make the transition away from car traffic somewhat smoother. Many cities already successfully pulled this off and this method received far more popular support than just cutting off car traffic and expecting the people to "deal with it" without having good options.
  - techsupporter 7y ago
    Except that the order usually goes like this: 1. You can't take away personal car access; the public transportation sucks! Make it better, first. 2. You can't improve public transportation; everybody drives so it's not a good cost investment. Get more people to ride transit, first. 3. Goto 1
    - close04 7y ago
      Most European cities that shifted away from car traffic did exactly that. First they improved public transport and encouraged any other alternatives like bicycles. They invested in that infrastructure until it was ready to take over. Then they started to slowly "push" people away from cars by turning some streets or city centers into pedestrian zones. You collect the returns after you invest. Otherwise almost any initiative would get bogged down into your 3 point loop. When companies build a new HQ they don't tear down the old one first. The "loop" is a fake conundrum.
      - techsupporter 7y ago

rubyboss 7y ago

I don't understand this anti-car sentiment from the city liberals. It's already happened here in London and it's getting worse. From 20mph speed limits to blocking roads for bus-only traffic to ultra-low emission zones and congestion charges. It's becoming pretty clear that they don't want people to own their own cars. I'm struggling to see how this is progress.

snovv_crash 7y ago
In the city, space is a limited resource. Hogging limited resources is generally considered rude, whether you're liberal or conservative, urban or rural. The difference is just what people consider a limited resource.
omosubi 7y ago
Because cars have a lot of externalities that negatively affect cities? Pollution, noise, increase in collisions, space required to house and fuel them to name a few. I, and many other people, prefer areas of cities where cars aren't dominant and would like to see more of it
- electric_muse 7y ago
  But I’m not sure this is a widely held preference. Seems to be a vocal minority trying to impose their will on others.
  - omosubi 7y ago
    That may be true but it's largely how our political system works. Regardless, you can try to fight back or just move to someplace that has the density and mobility you want.
  - audunw 7y ago
    Any data on that? Here around Oslo, there is quite a bit of opposition to banning cars from the city - but mostly from people living outside of it. People who live in the city, and who should have the most say, seems to like it. The green party grew in the recent election. Data has shown that businesses are doing well. Some do better, some the same, some worse (like furniture stores, which is a silly thing to have in a city centre anyway). There's certainly a growing preference for car-free cities. Seems to me like younger people prefer it. Not just because they don't have cars.. I do now, but I really don't like to use it in the city. My wife and I take it to the closest metro station with free parking, and take the metro the rest of the way. Much less stressful. Seems to me like it is mostly old people who are opposed to banning cars. When they were young, the cities were not as dense, cars not as prevalent, and people didn't care as much about air pollution. They could drive straight into the city centre and park wherever. They don't want to give up on that, even if it means being stuck in traffic and driving around the city centre for half an hour to find a free parking spot. It's an inconvenience they've gotten used to. But the inconveniences of public transportation? Unbearable!

baxtr 7y ago

Cities were designed around cars. It’s time for a change.

jacquesm 7y ago
Very few cities were. Cities for the most part were designed around horse drawn carriages and tons of foot traffic.
- elgenie 7y ago
  Not in the US, though. Even the city centers that predated the widespread adoption of automobiles were by and large redesigned towards cars. Then in the 50s and 60s whole city neighborhoods were razed for interstates.
- baxtr 7y ago
  That's a very narrow way to read my comment. Cities are rebuilt all the time. My city now invest heavily into bike lanes reducing the number of car lanes from 2 to 1 and replacing them by bike lanes. That is a choice, which can be made every year by any city.
  - jacquesm 7y ago
    Of course there is no reason to leave things as they are. But any city older than 120 years - and that's the bulk of them near where I live - will have had horses and carriages as the bulk carriers of their time. Except for those parts where boats were used, but that requires some pretty rare conditions (Venice, Amsterdam, Bruges). Getting rid of cars is a good thing, let's hope we get rid of them in inner cities before electrics take over and rob us of that chance. The pollution caused by cars is one of the main drivers of getting rid of them, if that reason is dealt with then it will be much harder to marshal the forces required to see this through.
cryptonector 7y ago
New York wasn't.

randall 7y ago

Imagine if, in high density areas like Manhattan, cars were simply not allowed. Wow. The thought of how pleasant Manhattan would become if only cabs + busses + delivery trucks + ambulances were allowed makes me almost too happy. Would be so awesome.

Swizec 7y ago
This is in fact a trend in European city centers. It is wonderful and amazing. Areas where before closing for traffic it didn’t make sense to drive anyway because walking is literally faster due to narrow streets, too many cars, etc. I don’t understand why people choose to drive there unless someone explicitly tells them they can’t.
electric_muse 7y ago
Busses and delivery trucks are the most noisy and polluting! That doesn’t seem like the panacea you suggest.
- komaromy 7y ago
  On a per-unit basis, sure. There are way more cars than buses or delivery trucks though.
  - erik_seaberg 7y ago
    If I can't use my car, a lot more things need to be delivered. Anything I can't carry for half a mile, anything for which I'd be robbed …
    - megaremote 7y ago
      So you will consume less to? Another bonus.
    - abdullahkhalids 7y ago
      1. When everybody is walking outside, instead of transiting through cars, it is a lot harder for pedestrians to be robbed. Also, police actually start caring more about pedestrian safety when so many people are walking. Walkable neighbourhoods can be a lot safer than the safest car-friendly neighbourhoods, with the right system. 2. As for carrying, based on my experience of living in a walkable neighbourhood where thousands of people lived within a kilometer of the central shopping area, a lot of people would bring carts that they would push their groceries home in. If you can push a small wheeled grocery cart through the total 100 meter aisles of the grocery store, then you can push a big wheeled cart the 1000 meter to your house on the sidewalk. Given that I often saw 80 year olds doing that, most healthy people should also be able to do it, no problem.

gniv 7y ago

The article is a bit lacking in facts. Here's some more info from another source [1]: "The MTA and Department of Transportation announced Monday that beginning July 1, private cars will be banned along 14th Street from Third to Ninth Avenues from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m." "It’s part of the MTA’s plan to increase bus service while repairs continue on the L train." [1] https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2019/06/11/commuter-alert-most-of-14th-street-will-be-closed-to-cars-most-of-the-time-starting-july/ https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2019/06/11/commuter-alert-most-...

Merrill 7y ago
Repairs aren't the only cause of mass transit outages. There are also the occasional MTA strikes, which happened in '66, '80, and 2005. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_New_York_City_transit_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_New_York_City_transit_str...

chrismcb 7y ago

I wish they works ban cars on the Las Vegas strip. It would require rerouting hotel entrances. But the amount of real estate it would free up would be incredible.

woutr_be 7y ago
Out of interest, how much real estate would it actually free up? I assume you still need roads for emergency services, delivery trucks, construction vehicles, etc... Maybe the number of lanes can be reduced, but that wouldn't exactly free up any sizeable amount of real estate that could be used for more housing, or would it?

jshaqaw 7y ago

I’m torn on the cars in Manhattan debate. I live my whole city life on public transport. I hate the pollution of cars and I hate how perilous it is for my kids to cross the streets. At the same time we sometimes do want to or have to travel outside the city. I’m not really sure how that would work in a car free city.

danielharan 7y ago
You could have parking with rental cars on the periphery of the city or its car-free zone.
- jshaqaw 7y ago
  Sort of. It sounds OK in pure theory. In practice when we end up loading the car to visit parents/grandparents for a week plus a dog in tow I’m not sure how we end up getting from our apartment door to the peripheral rental car zone which this being Manhattan is presumably in NJ. That’s a lot of cargo! Again I would love a car free Manhattan if I could figure out how to make it work. But many of those who argue this most vehemently I often suspect aren’t trying to raise families in NYC.

Tiktaalik 7y ago

The tech industry is floating all these complex technological ideas so solve traffic congestion, from apps that track traffic, to ride hailing to autonomous cars, but the reality is that traffic congestion is not a tech problem but rather a simple physics problem (and political problem). The core issue is simply that cars physically take up too much space on the road, and move too few passengers. This simple physics problem can be solved solved with 19th century solutions as NYC has here. Make exclusive room for buses, which are dramatically more space efficient than cars. Problem solved.

buss 7y ago
This is exactly right. Most of the problems in cities aren't due to technology, they're due to bad governance. Our solutions need to be political, not just technological.
repsilat 7y ago
Autonomous cars and ride-hailing weren't/aren't meant to solve traffic congestion. Traffic tracking actually does help by allowing people to make use of underused capacity. Otherwise, I agree -- cars take up too much room, especially when there's just one or two people in them. And I like bus lanes, but I think per-vehicle traffic pricing is a better idea, because it achieves the "densification incentive" in a way that also works for carpooling and private bus-like modes. And before someone says it's regressive, a toll is less onerous than a ban, which is what bus-only lanes are. And (way off topic) I think if income taxes are progressive enough then other types of taxation don't need to be -- and probably shouldn't be, if their purpose is to price externalities.
- Arnt 7y ago
  Actually does help? If the bus is to be dependable, it needs to arrive on time, and that means that the lane in front of it needs to be free. Consistently free — the bus past my house stops 20 times, so that's 20 points at which the bus needs to be on time on order to be seen as dependable. The bus needs to drive at the same speed every day, and even be able to drive a little faster. You can either regard the free asphalt as "spare capacity" or regard it as being used by the bus that's not visible right now, but will pass by in a minute or two. Perhaps it's more correct to say that the free asphalt is being used by the route schedule than the vehicle itself.

mapgrep 7y ago

This conclusion of “a phenomenal success” is based on “a span of several days.” Again, several days. I want this to be true. I support this policy decision. I don’t own a car, live in NY, and want to see the streets reclaimed from drivers. Love it. But if someone declared this experiment a terrible failure after /several days/ I would laugh and say, “please wait a bit so we can examine some real data.” Please, urbanists, consider waiting a bit before calling this “a phenomenal success.” Let’s have some evidentiary standards.

Wowfunhappy 7y ago
Well, it hasn't caused the immediate armageddon some were predicting. It may be early yet, but realistically, what catastrophes do you foresee that wouldn't have come by now?
- hoorayimhelping 7y ago
  In the six years I lived in NYC proper, there was a giant flood, a giant power outage, several hurricanes, several blizzards, several city-wide protests, and countless large events taking place on the streets. That's just a few events I thought of off the top of my head. That doesn't cover the normal ebb and flow of activity in the city - it's pretty busy around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and dead in February, and a zoo in the summertime. How do all those things affect this? What happens when school is out? What happens during shopping season? What happens in heat waves or during snowstorms? The point is, a lot of different things can happen in the city on pretty annual cycle, and declaring this a success even after a month is pretty silly and potentially very costly.
  - fishingisfun 7y ago
    not even a month
andrewem 7y ago
One can have evidentiary standards which don't in every circumstance require a long time period. For example, there are (rarely) medical clinical trials which are ended early because the experimental group's protocol (say, a drug or a procedure) works so well that it would be inappropriate to wait longer to give all the study participants the experimental intervention. People who know more statistics better than I do could provide a more analytical description, but basically given the results so far, the likelihood of a "failure" (for whatever definition the city has chosen) is extremely low.

deleted 7y ago

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thrower123 7y ago

This kind of thing makes sense in Manhattan. Manhattan is relatively tiny, and it is dense, and there is workable public transit. A subway system with stations every quarter mile or less does wonders. It just doesn't extrapolate to anywhere else in the country particularly well. Even Boston is a shit-show without cars, and that is another dense, old, East Coast city with legacy public transit, albeit much less well designed. It's a complete non-starter most places.

kunai 7y ago
Congestion charges and upzoning would fix that issue, but people with the same outlook on this problem (aka NIMBYs) that you do seem to hate those things as well. People often forget this fact but the vast majority of cities east of the Mississippi in the U.S. developed without cars for most of their existence. Streetcars were the name of the game until the 1950s, after which personal car ownership was heavily pushed and subsidized by the government after bending to the will of GM, Ford, and Chrysler. The entire idea of designing our cities around car ownership and the single-family household is extraordinarily new and unnatural. There's nothing prohibiting us from creating density in these post-WWII cities; just look at Denver or Portland and their massive successes with public transit and upzoning.

Ericson2314 7y ago

Ironically with a superblock style plan, 14th Street would be one of the only streets where cars are allowed. Jokes aside, yes, I really hope this is the beginning of the end of cars in Manhattan. When it was announced I was thrilled: here was the perfect flash point to grow the anti-car movement in NYC. Now we have to deliver.

wging 7y ago

Seattle did this for a stretch of 3rd. I don't have the data to call it a success (or failure) but buses on 3rd seem pretty quick to me.