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Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm
- NPMaxwell 7y agoPart of the change is due to the appearance of alternative powered vehicles. In Tokyo, it seems like every mother is riding an electric cargo bike with covered seating for two kids and room for groceries -- the minivan of bicycles. In Seattle, the morning commute is full of electric skateboards, scooters, onewheels, and wheelchairs. It looks doable.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoHow do those work in winter? We had electric scooters, but they were all scooped up by their parent companies in October ahead of the coming months of hell.
- tomtheelder 7y agoMostly fine, sometimes a problem. It's pretty much like regular bikes (or cars for that matter): some might not work well if there is significant snow/ice, but then you will just need one that is suitable for those sort of conditions. The scooter companies are putting out very low end models that aren't designed for any sort of adverse conditions, and they are scared of lawsuits/blowback from accidents. This sort of transportation is in its infancy. Bikes are in a better place, and we have bikes that can ride fairly safely on full on snow.
- wcarron 7y agoI hope e-scooters never make it out of infancy. Bikes are infinitely more practical and capable. They are more stable at all speeds. They can have significantly more cargo carrying capacity. Bikes can be fitted (for the most part) with different tires/wheels to handle adverse conditions more easily than a scooter can. I hope for the infanticide of e-scooter transportation. It's a grotesque, subooptimal solution than exists in spite of a superior low-cost offering that is faaaar more mature.
- mikestew 7y agoI have several examples of both, and ride them to work and shopping. And I completely agree with you. Scooters are a hoot to ride, and if I don’t have to carry more than my backpack will hold, I’d rather commute on the scooter. But you need both hands, making even signaling a chore, and you can only carry what fits on your back. Scooters are no more difficult to ride than a bicycle, but they are much more difficult to ride safely than a bicycle. Compare to my electric bike with front and rear racks, a rack trunk, and a comfy seat and coffee cup holder. Scooters pack small, that’s about the only utilitarian plus they have going IMO.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoI bought a non-electric, but large-wheeled kick scooter a few months ago for getting around NYC. I absolutely love it. Bikes are a little annoying to stop and start; "walking" your bike for a short stretch requires physically dismounting. My scooter allows me to constantly transition between standing, walking, and riding as environmental conditions require. Also... it's stupid, but if I have to wear a helmet to do something, I'm not going to do it. I can't imagine riding a bike without a helmet, because it would be too easy to hit a bump and fall over. On my scooter, however, I feel relatively safe without a helmet. There have been a couple times when I've lost control of my scooter for some reason or another, but because I'm basically standing, I've just kind of jumped off.
- mntmoss 7y agoI basically agree. In my experience as a rider of one, the main downside of urban kick scooters is that they lack infrastructure. They're too slow to be bikes and play in traffic, but their existence tends to offend and frighten pedestrians, even though their control over acceleration is quite good, about as good as someone running. That quality makes them chimerical, one of the most unpredictable users of the road, and one of the factors in me hanging it up was having my day ruined by people getting upset at me. The biggest real dangers come from grooves and potholes(I took a spill that needed stitches in my younger days, trying to ride inside a groove) and from using pedestrian infrastructure at speed(cross-traffic can lead to near-misses where the car doesn't expect you to jump out so fast, or the bike expects you to plow through and you stop instead). The electrics are a nifty invention, but also one that makes their character more like bikes. They fit in a little better as all-purpose transports, but they also lack the simple convenience of a light kick scooter.
- amwelles 7y agoWith the right gear, cycling in winter isn’t bad at all, provided the path is clear.
- tachyonbeam 7y agoAnecdotal, but I've ridden a bike in winter only once. There was a lot of melted snow "slush". I almost slipped twice. One of those two times, I was right in front of a car when my back wheel slid off to the side, and I caught myself from falling just in time. I've never done it again, it seems suicidal to me. It was a mountain-style bike, and I would have assumed the tires had enough grip. I'm sure you can pick up tricks and get better at this with experience, but it seems at least an order of magnitude more dangerous than summer time biking.
- aeharding 7y agoStudded bike tires are common in bike friendly, cold cities. Work great with ice. It's all about the right tool for the job. Although what a lot of winter bike commuters do in my city is go by bike 95% of the winter, and take the bus when the conditions are really bad.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoIt really seems to be an activity that takes a special type of person to enjoy - my wife, being an avid summer biker, tried winter biking a single time, and came back with a giant bruise on her knee and a bent pedal and swore never again.
- shoes_for_thee 7y agoI biked every day of the year for about ten years in NYC with an average commute of about six miles each way. This included a ride over either Manhattan or Williamsburg bridge, which get icy faster and stay slushy longer than terrestrial roads. Always on regular 23c or 25c road tires. I usually fell over about once per winter, which always kind of sucked. But by my estimation, riding the subway was a more miserable kind of experience. You slide around a bit but you get used to it. The bike is usually but not always more stable than it feels.
- srhngpr 7y agoYou must be from Calgary! Unfortunately, scooters and bikes won't work when there is so much snow during the winter.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y agoThat's downright insulting! I'm from Edmonton. Yeah, I fear we have too much snow - while bicycles can still be used by the most stubborn, electric vehicles can't summon up that curmudgeonly spirit that will get them out of every second snow drift.
- srhngpr 7y agoI'm very sorry to hear that! coming from a Vancouverite. I spend a decent chunk of the year in Calgary for work and last year they kept the Lime bikes during the winter and on non-snow days, it was actually useful for getting around downtown. But this year they got rid of those too. Car2go is no longer in Calgary either, so transportation options are super limited.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago> I'm very sorry to hear that! coming from a Vancouverite. Not even made - given everything going on, I'm sincerely thinking about heading out that way myself.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoNot entirely true: https://www.boredpanda.com/students-bicycle-school-winter-snow-oulu-finland/ https://www.boredpanda.com/students-bicycle-school-winter-sn... However I think below zero is better for biking than near zero to avoid remelting.
- throw0101a 7y agoIs Calgary any worse than Finland? * https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/never-mind-the-plows-five-things-i-learned-from-the-worlds-most-bike-friendly-winter-city https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/never-mind-the-plo... > Oulu in Finland and Winnipeg in Canada are two winter cities with remarkably different stories. Oulu is just like Winnipeg – except for the bike paths stretching for miles in every direction and the thousands of people riding bicycles in the snow – says Winter Bike to Work Day founder Anders Swanson * https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/feb/12/ice-cycles-northerly-world-cities-winter-bicycle-revolution https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/feb/12/ice-cycles-no...
- lm28469 7y agoMost likely because the batteries would be cold 24/7, which doesn't happen with personal bikes since you can detach them.
- mikestew 7y agoSeattle-area scooter rider here. I don’t ride rentals, I have a Boosted Rev and a Xiaomi M365 (what many rentals use). I don’t think the rentals and the Xiaomi are really meant to be used in the wet of a Seattle winter. Even the Rev, which touts its weather-resistance, needs a fender extender if you don’t want to get covered in crap (which makes me question how much they tested said weather-resistance). That said, it’s just another single-track vehicle like a bike, and all that comes with it. Such as, riding on ice or snow is foolish. But even if it’s just rain, reduced traction means increased chance of locking a wheel and dumping it. Hence the likely reason the rentals went away, along with who the hell is going to ride them in the rain? (Answer: people that went ahead and just bought their own.) In summary, my only complaint is that by just standing there instead of pedaling, it is kind of hard to stay warm when it is chilly. Otherwise, empty trails make for a great ride this time of year.
- davchana 7y agoYes, I myself bought an elec scooter after experiencing the one in Los Angeles, & had to park it back in room because of all rain & winter.
- agensaequivocum 7y agoNot really when you have 5-7+ kids.
- jacquesm 7y agoNumber or age? 5-7 and even 10 year olds can easily be transported by bakfiets, it happens all the time in NL, besides that when they're 10 they can cycle by themselves (earlier even).
- abyssin 7y agoWhen you have 5-7+ kids, you don't have them all at once. By the time you're having the last ones, the eldest can cycle on their own.
- joejerryronnie 7y agoThe anti-quint/sext/septuplet bias in this comment is astounding.
- noobermin 7y agoChasing a rabbit trail here but how many parents have >4 children in the US?
- joejerryronnie 7y agoProbably less than 1%
- taborj 7y agoThis is a findable answer[0], though this only shows 3 or more children. Looks like 7,008,000 families have 3 or more children. Looking at the same site[1] for the number of people between, say, 15 and 49 (the thought being anyone less than 15 probably isn't a "parent" and anyone over 49 doesn't have children living at home anymore, or at least not ones they need to transport), we get 150.67 million "parents". Some quick math gets us about 4.6%. Incidentally, that's similar to the number of LGBTQ persons in the US (4.5%)[2] [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/183790/number-of-families-in-the-us-by-number-of-children/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183790/number-of-familie... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the-us-by-sex-and-age/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the... [2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/234863/estimate-lgbt-population-rises.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/234863/estimate-lgbt-population...
- kyeb 7y agoI would love to see more streets like this.
- Jamwinner 7y agoWe get it citylab, you hate cars, and think everyone lives in the downtown of a metropolis. Meanwhile, the rest of us have places to be, and 99% of my country has no public transport. While I agree that city centers need more walking room, the categorical exclusion of longer distant transport options will just create more parking lots at the border of such areas. The more modern planning ignores the forest (countries) for the trees (big cities), the technological and class divide will only widen.
- C1sc0cat 7y agoIts a very common failing of architecture fans who want to decide how the masses live without actually asking the end users.
- durkie 7y agoThey are called Citylab, after all.
- monknomo 7y ago80% of Americans live in an urban area
- big_chungus 7y agoMany of those live near and around a city, rather than in it, and commute daily.
- 0b0001 7y agoThat's one of the things that need to be solved, rather than celebrated. Commuting -- no matter which transport you're using, is a waste of time and energy.
- big_chungus 7y agoI agree, but I also don't want to live like a sardine in a can, packed in with millions of others, living in a small box, having no green space, etc. I'm generally a social person, but don't like living that close to that many people. Many others seem to agree.
- spats1990 7y agoThe average U.S. car carries an average of 1.56 people and weighs an average, for new cars, of almost two tons.
- pif 7y agoYes, and ... ? What's exactly your point?
- dwnvoted2hell 7y agoThe average U.S. car carries an average of 1.56 people and weighs an average, for new cars, of almost two tons.
- spats1990 7y agoJust thought I'd toss it in there as a sort of topping or garnish for the article. Private cars in urban areas are incredibly inefficient from just about any direction you choose to view it from.
- annoyingnoob 7y agoAll cars are inefficient, they use most of their power just to move themselves. Biking on the roads between my house and my work is suicidal.
- peterwwillis 7y agoWell they're efficient for use cases that any other transportation option doesn't work for. Just like a bus is very efficient at moving 80 people in one direction, a car is efficient at moving one person in 80 directions. If we didn't have private cars, businesses couldn't efficiently do things like deliveries, and individual people couldn't make trips that are outside the scope of public transit. So to replace them entirely we still need to fill those gaps.
- spats1990 7y agoMaybe my British English is hindering communication of my point here, because by "private car" I meant "car for private personal i.e. non-commercial use" as I've noted elsewhere, in many areas there is no way around use of private cars due to the lack of population density.
- tzs 7y ago> When asked what they like most about a city they have visited [...] It's the people who live there you need to ask. People visiting a city generally have different goals and different constraints than people who live there.
- ctdonath 7y agoIf I can't drive to near my destination, I'll not likely visit that city.
- adimitrov 7y agoHonest question: why? It seems patently absurd to me, especially when you're visiting. I'm visiting Berlin right now. It's a car friendly city in a car friendly country and I wouldn't want to drive anywhere here if you paid me. Too much of a hassle. Besides driving is so incredibly boring. If you're visiting, you're not going to really experience the city from behind the windows of a metal box. Maybe Northern American cities are different, but I haven't yet visited a European city where driving would be clearly preferable.
- dominotw 7y agoother options in USA are 1. Being abused by TSA 2. Take amtrak and get left middle of nowhere at 1 am , 2 days late. 3. Take greyhound/
- adimitrov 7y agoBut that's between cities. Fwiw, I'm in Berlin by train. But by car would have been an option, too. But in the city? There are so many better options!
- tharne 7y agoThis is a depressingly accurate assessment.
- lallysingh 7y ago
- Someone 7y agoFor those claiming this can’t be done in the USA: the article talks about streets, not roads. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/street https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/street: "a thoroughfare especially in a city, town, or village that is wider than an alley or lane and that usually includes sidewalks” https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/road https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/road: "an open way for vehicles, persons, and animals, especially one lying outside of an urban district” Street implies relatively dense building and, historically, implied people walked and kids played on them. This doesn’t claim you won’t be able to drive a car between neighbourhoods.
- onreact 7y agoYeah, I live in Berlin and we have an increasing number of car free zones here where people can move around without being afraid of getting killed. Even children play outside again in such areas without risking their life. Not to mention the lack of noise, pollution and clogged up space with parking cars. Cafes thrive and people stroll around to spend their time and money. Businesses return from the outskirts etc. It's a dream for everybody. Also crime rates drop as drug dealers can't drive through anymore.
- metalliqaz 7y agoi think crime rate has little to do with "drug dealers driving through". drug dealers live in the cities too, and most of the ones that interact with users don't have cars. i think falling crime rates are more likely due to improve economic vibrancy
- microtherion 7y agoI would picture a Berlin drug dealer as being perfectly comfortable riding a bicycle.
- tomcooks 7y agoMost street drug dealers use bicycles, EU and abroad. More freedom of movement, no license nor plate.
- HorstG 7y agoDrug dealers in Berlin populate the parks and subway stations mostly. Easier to hide in the crowds or shrubbery, if they hide at all. Police usually never bother them.
- onreact 7y agoYeah, but you only mean low level ones who barely earn enough to eat. I don't mean those. I mean the bigger fish.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- greenonions 7y agoIowa City has a pedestrian mall in the heart of downtown and it's the most charming, lively, interesting place in the city. Not to mention, it's safe, fun, and pleasant for all ages. There's music, dancing, a playground, food, etc.
- jroschen 7y agoIowa City and their pedestrian mall is easily one of the best places to spend a couples days at in the Midwest. Being a college town, it’s a bit of an oasis in the Midwest for all sorts of fantastic local restaurants, arts, and people. Without the pedestrian mall, it wouldn’t be half the city it is today. https://thinkiowacity.com https://thinkiowacity.com
- greenonions 7y agoI get an unsecure error viewing that site on mobile.
- jroschen 7y agoSorry about that, for some reason, this site requires www. https://www.thinkiowacity.com https://www.thinkiowacity.com
- LarryDarrell 7y agoMy city of roughly a half million was mostly developed post-WW2. Even the denser areas are not really walkable. They tried painting bike lanes on existing roads, but that has just increased the number of bike fatalities. Maybe expanding bus service 500-1000% and having it run 24/7 would work. Anything less means low-wagers will still need a car. Passing a Fair Scheduling Act and giving low wage workers a daily $10 to $20 dollar Uber/Lyft credit would do more to dramatically improve lives than mass transit spending. But that is less fun to think about.
- noobermin 7y agoA lot of research found painted bike lanes don't help without protection.
- asdfqwer234 7y agoIt's incredible how defensive people are being. Maybe they're reacting to the ridiculous title (no more cars anywhere!), but it's self-evident to anyone who lives in a major city that cars don't belong in crowded city centers. Let's be rational: city X (SF, NY, Berlin, etc) has a downtown which is 2x2 miles where thousands/millions of people commute to each day. Car traffic in these areas is awful because cars are disproportionately large compared to bikes/scooters etc and congestion is a queuing problem. The sooner people realize this, and the sooner they get rid of their combative, tribalist, cars vs. bikes/e-scooters mentality, then the sooner we can enact political change to alleviate congestion and make cities cleaner, safer, and less crowded.
- carapace 7y agoIn re: > Heading out west, San Francisco’s government has voted to close Market Street to cars. Market Street is one of the main thoroughfares in the city’s downtown It's not closed to cars, just private cars, if I understand correctly. There will still be cars and buses, and car traffic will still be crossing market street. http://www.bettermarketstreetsf.org/docs/bms-vehicle-circulation-proposed-072619.pdf http://www.bettermarketstreetsf.org/docs/bms-vehicle-circula... - - - - Edit: The more I look into this the worse it seems. I thought I was reading the picture wrong, but they have bike lanes running between bus stops and pedestrians: > At curbside transit stops, the protected bikeway would be placed between the transit stop and the pedestrian through zone. Boarding and alighting transit customers would be separated from the bikeway with a raised railing-like feature and provided a designated place to cross the bikeway. On the sidewalk between the bikeway and the pedestrian throughzone, there would be the 3-foot buffer zone provided except at the aforementioned designated crossing places where there would be crosswalk markings and other features. ~"ResponsesToComments_Vol1_Better Market Street.pdf" from https://sfplanning.org/project/better-market-street-environmental-review-process#info https://sfplanning.org/project/better-market-street-environm... It seems to me that the new Market St. would maybe be safer, but it will be much less convenient for each mode of travel. It seems to me to combine all the right elements but in all the wrong ways. E.g. the "protected" bike lanes aren't really separate from the pedestrians, so bike riders are not going to be able to go fast on them, because there will be people there. This obviates the bike path: If you can't ride faster than pedestrians anyway then you might as well just mix the two kinds of traffic and let people sort it out naturally. The new plan doesn't seem to me to help people commute by bike.
- helen___keller 7y agoCurrently living car-free. Pedestrian only streets are a godsend for quality of life. But considering that a couple generations worth of capital went into building a nation dependent on cars, I don't expect car-free streets to be too widespread and certainly not in the places I would really want them (e.g. I would love to have a pedestrian-only path feeding neighborhoods to train stations, so my morning commute isn't subject to the dangers of the car commute that I wanted to avoid. But it won't happen.) Car free streets are mainly in downtown shopping districts where cars never made sense in the first place (and everyone just goes two blocks over to grab an Uber so it's not really freeing congestion from roads or anything)
- gok 7y agoUS cities have repeatedly tried this. Around 85% of the time, it has been a complete failure and they go back to allowing cars. [1] [1] https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2013/07/25/16th-street-among-a-rare-breed-most.html https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2013/07/25/16th-stre...
- jamestimmins 7y agoFrom this article, it looks like pedestrian malls are an important piece, but they can't do all of the heavy lifting on their own. There has to be adequate density and multiple purposes so people are organically there at different times of the day to create a sense of safety. This is addressed extensively in The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
- curioussavage 7y agoNot in the suburbs... cheap automated taxis are a way more realistic idea for reducing traffic. Not just for last mile either. Switching transportation in the middle of a trip even once wastes a ton of time and adds hassle.
- maxsilver 7y ago> Not in the suburbs... Which, as a reminder for urbanists, really translates to "Not in the only place 90% of the nation's population is allowed to live"
- rootusrootus 7y agoBasically any city that isn't one of the biggest four or five, and even then just the core. Lots of mid-size cities, like Portland, are nearly 100% suburb.
- quadrangle 7y agoI understand drawing that line there, but the "suburb" of a good portion (half?) of Portland is the urban, neighborly sort that isn't the post-WWII culdesac sprawl. I mean, I guess suburban sprawl is the [awful] norm in the U.S., but then there's the non-sprawl suburb stuff like Portland's walkable grid with narrow streets…
- krschultz 7y agoIt's more like 27% rural, 43% suburb, 29% city. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/12/18/americans-say-theres-not-much-appeal-big-city-living-why-do-so-many-us-live-there/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/12/18/americans...
- maxsilver 7y ago~80% of the people in the Census Bureau's "29% urban" figure are actually in a suburban neighborhood, that happens to lie within the legal boundary of a urban-designated "city". It's like saying "Manhattan and Long Island are both in NYC, so they're basically the same".
- thatswrong0 7y agoSan Francisco had one street block near Union Square closed off for a looong time because of construction, and they put some fake turf on it. Occasionally there would be pop-up events, like a little Christmas fair. I would deliberately walk slightly out of my way to go up that block because it meant no cars and wayyy more room to walk. I loved it and was so disappointed to see it turned into a normal street again. Sidewalks are stupidly narrow here. Two people walking side by side can make it hard for people going the other way to walk around them. There are poles and trash cans and store front tables that take up even more room. Walking is a pretty dreary experience as a result - you feel like a second-class citizen. I would love it if the city just took even like.. one street going east-west, and one street going north-south, and convert them to walkable promenades for a sizable portion. I'm curious why this hasn't happened yet - is there significant local opposition? For storefronts or restaurants, the direct in-front parking would be lost yes, but there would definitely be more foot traffic, and there would still be parking on adjacent streets. I suppose the main loser would be homeowners that use street parking.
- hadlock 7y agoThat was Stockton street, which stretches from Market Street (heart of downtown) to Pier 39 (heart of tourist district). Three blocks north of Union Square is a tunnel that burrows under China Town/Nob Hill and emerges in North Beach. It's a pretty critical artery for locals as it flattens the route between market st and the northern coastline of the city. There was a push to permanently close Stockton St in favor of making it pedestrian only, but as Stockton St (and the tunnel) is the (real) gateway to the heart of China Town, that movement was squashed pretty quickly. That said, I would love to see maybe 10% of the streets north of Market street turned into pedestrian-only, or reduced to one lane, converting the parking on both sides of the street into wider sidewalks and more trees. As dense as Nob/Russian Hill is, only one lane is really needed to service most of these neighborhoods. Retailers claim they need the parking but only once in five years have I driven to a market in Nob Hill.
- stevenwoo 7y agoAs a Bay Area resident was amazed to find many streets in Barcelona that had room for eight to ten lanes of cars instead reserve half the width or more for pedestrian walking space/open space outside the touristy areas. Forgot the name but there was one street like this I could see about a mile downhill to the ocean front. The only downside was how many pedestrians smoked.
- Balanceinfinity 7y agoSome cities simply can't do this, such as Los Angeles, Dallas, and Atlanta. It's not in their DNA. Things are simply too far apart and the infrastructure couldn't hold it. Other cities are moving toward "no cars" by simply allowing gridlock to make driving a car worthless. I visit NYC very often, and we used to take cabs all the time. Now, we never do, unless we have so much luggage we can't manage - it's a nightmare getting a cab through Manhattan. They might as well close most of Broadway, it's just a quagmire.
- noobermin 7y agoOne thing I'll add, the "allowing gridlock" is like "allowing water to fill a container". It more or less is what an incompressible fluid does which is essentially what traffic is. That's why road widenings don't neccessarily decrease congestion, when you take into the non-linear effects (induced demand).
- the8472 7y ago> which is essentially what traffic is No, not at all. Traffic is quite compressible, it just slows down when you do that. Which is the issue here.
- Nullabillity 7y ago> induced demand Oh no, more people can get to their destination by their preferred mode of transportation! How horrible!
- jamestimmins 7y agoThere's an important difference between having car-free areas and being entirely car free. The Santa Monica Promenade is actually a good example of this in practice. For several blocks near the beach it's pedestrian-only, and this has made it a destination for shopping and general hanging out. I used to work right near there and it was extremely nice to have somewhere to stroll and people watch without worrying about cars.
- tomphoolery 7y agoThe only real reason why we don't have car-free side streets in Philly (the ones that are too skinny for a car to get through anyway, forcing people to park on one of the sidewalks) is due to handicapped people becoming immobilized. I like the concept, but I'm curious how it will be implemented whilst also solving the problems for a large percentage of the population...
- thebean11 7y agoI might be way off base, but wouldn't those people have electric wheelchairs or something similar?
- rtkwe 7y agoThere's a middle ground where someone isn't wheelchair bound but does have a lot of trouble moving around where people fall through the cracks without cars or other vehicular transport.
- triceratops 7y agoElectric trike?
- rtkwe 7y agoThe little mobility scooters? They can help a lot. They're a pain to get from place to place though in the few time's I've been with people using them.
- noobermin 7y agoIt depends but having kneeling buses helps.
- amanaplanacanal 7y agoOn the other hand, a third of the population doesn’t drive, either because too young, too old, too poor, too handicapped, etc. Making things more walkable certainly helps that group of people.
- taborj 7y ago> When asked what they like most about a city they have visited, almost no one answers: “The cars whizzing by on the streets.” Hi from no one. I bet folks interested in cars often mention seeing the different makes and models as highlights of foreign travel. I know I do.
- 205guy 7y agoThe US has tons of car-free business districts, and they're well integrated into the cities and suburbs. They are surrounded by parking so that people who must drive can get there, then leave their car to walk around the shops. And they often has bus transit centers so that people can reach the area by public transportation. Except we call them shopping malls, and they're all privatized, meaning they're owned by big corporations who set the rent, access is controlled (no homeless), and freedoms are limited (no protests, so no free speech).
- franzmafka 7y agoWe can only pray. Oh, and petition, comment and vote, too.
- cafard 7y agoWashington, DC, has one car-free street: the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue NW between 15th and 17th Streets. The odd thing is that the street was closed after a man crashed an airplane on the White House lawn. (I except the case of blizzards--with a couple of feet of snow, you can ski or play tackle football in the middle of a main street.)