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Prepare yourselves. A key factor of for solving climate change will be actions like this. Removing free parking and replacing with bike/bus/walking space is an

• aminozuur 6y ago
  I personally love being in highly 'walkable' areas, and I confess I don't spend much time thinking about the climate. The peace of mind I get from roaming around freely by foot, without worrying about cars or hearing traffic, is bliss.
  • sandworm101 6y ago
    >> highly 'walkable' areas An area does not become walkable because there are no cars. First you have to ensure that journey distances are within walking range. That means having stores, work locations, and living locations all within a kilometer or two at most (not everyone is capable of riding a bike at race speeds every day). Paris, at least some parts of Paris, might have that in place. So too maybe NYC or SF. But a great many places are not setup that way and don't have mass transit infrastructure to convert quickly.
    • KMnO4 6y ago
      Not to mention the climate. There are many places that aren't walkable simply because they are frozen for most of the year. Cars are a tool to overcome that in the same way that air conditioning allows businesses to operate in Arizona summers.
      • oblio 6y ago
        > Not to mention the climate. There are many places that aren't walkable simply because they are frozen for most of the year. Which places are you thinking about? I'm from a place that's quite cold during the winter (-15C some days) plus can have quite a bit of snow. I don't find cold places to be as unwalkable as hot ones. You get used to the cold, the snow/ice are generally cleared after a few days. If anything, walkability is frequently about how a place looks and winter time can look quite nice with all the snow.
        • apocalyptic0n3 6y ago
          For a while, I was living in Marquette, MI and that got to -10 to -20F (-23C to -29C) many days during the winter, even during the day, and that was before factoring in the wind chill and the 3 feet of snow around you. They'd frequently cancel classes because it was dangerous to go outside if you had any skin exposed. And Marquette is a relatively small town that I'd classify as mostly "walkable". But on those days, walking 2 miles to the grocery story was not something anyone should have been doing nor were the roads or sidewalks clear enough to ride any kind of bike (if you even can at those temperatures). I now live on the other extreme in Phoenix, AZ and during the summer, you'll see 115F (46C) or higher for ~2 months a year with no cloud cover. That's hot enough that you don't even really sweat while walking; it evaporates so quickly that it can't do its job. We've had people at my office go for walks during lunch and collapse after 15 minutes due to it. And Phoenix is one of the most unwalkable places to live imaginable from a layout/distance standpoint to boot. But I will admit both of those are in the extremes and most of the country isn't like that, although many areas will have quite a few days that go subzero (-17C) and over 100F (38C) each year. I think a big thing the US needs to do is start rezoning areas and rely less on everyone living on a half acre of land 2 miles from the nearest non-residential building. Unless that happens, much of the US won't be able to realistically implement policies like Paris is.
          • coryrc 6y ago
            If the city was built like those in deserts, with narrow walking paths between 2-3+ story buildings, with awnings over the walkway, it would be no problem.
      • ska 6y ago
        >here are many places that aren't walkable simply because they are frozen for most of the year. You have to be a lot below freezing before mere temperature makes a city unwalkable. Very few places actually get that cold with any regularity. If sidewalks are maintained and it isn't crazy windy, you really don't need to change your walking behaviour much at all. Heat is in practice often worse for walkability, especially when combined with humidity.
    • SamuelAdams 6y ago
      Also consider the climate / weather. Paris might be OK during the winter, but some place like Michigan might have very terrible winters - walking around outside is possible but not terribly fun, cycling on icy sidewalks is also generally not a good experience. In almost all cases in the winter it's easier to be in a climate controlled method of transportation, which for most people is a private vehicle. During the summer months it's great though.
      • nemetroid 6y ago
        Walking and cycling in winter in Stockholm (or, for that matter, Umeå) is fine.
      • fpoling 6y ago
        In Oslo snow and ice can lasts up to 5 months. Yet it does not prevent people from going outside as city does reasonable job in general to keep pavements walkable. Surely that can be improved, but I do not see how one can blame climate and not local city government for snow heaps with ice on the pavements.
        • sandworm101 6y ago
          >> In Oslo snow and ice can lasts up to 5 months. According to wikipedia, average lows in Oslo are about -5. That's pretty warm. Salt still melts snow at those temperatures. Even sunlight will melt snow on pavement at -5. But below around -10/-15 salt stops melting ice, vastly increasing the manpower needed to clear roads/sidewalks. Clearing ice at proper winter temperatures requires mechanical means, hammers, if not propane torches.
          • joshspankit 6y ago
            Where I grew up (Edmonton, Alberta), the winter is a force to be reckoned with as not only does the sun not melt the snow away once it’s settled in October, but “warm” days bring 6+inches of slush that can then freeze solid to the roads and sidewalks if it’s not cleared before nightfall. Biking was practically impossible (and very dangerous), and sometimes even walking a few blocks was a challenge. That being said, I’d still advocate for places like Edmonton being “15-min” cities, and in-fact it would make it much easier in the winter when transportation is more limited.
    • 0xB31B1B 6y ago
      “Not everyone can go at bike race speeds” With eBikes the number of folks who can go at bike race speeds is incredible. I also know a lot of disable folks who can use eBikes but cannot drive. It’s an incredible technology.
      • sandworm101 6y ago
        If we are going down that road, slap a large enough battery/motor on it and you have an electric motorcycle capable of any speed you want. Slap on a couple extra wheels and you are getting close to a Tesla. "Walkable" means not having high speed vehicles sharing space with pedestrians.
        • zilian 6y ago
          Yeah just a few extra tons of components, materials extracted around the world per car. Nothing to see here, good luck to your kids.
      • angry_octet 6y ago
        People on electric scooters travel at frightening speeds in Paris, often without helmets. Even without cars it looks extremely dangerous. I am curious to know the injury (quadriplegia?) rate. I think people seriously underrate the safety benefits of micro cars, and the necessity of car like vehicles for older people.
        • mc32 6y ago
          I once saw a couple of scooters collide (same direction), one of the riders fell and looked like they did somersaults -fortunately they were wearing helmets. Pony is yes even at lower speeds collisions can be dangerous.
        • Triv888 6y ago
          In florida too, but on any motorcycle the helmet isnt needed... But yeah motorcycles are probably an order of magnitude more dangerous then cars... Specially with cars around.
    • wasdfff 6y ago
      Id say any american town over 15k people has a little spit of downtown or some other commercial corridor built before 1950s suburbanization that is in varying states of boom or bust. These corridors are all zoned to be perfectly walkable.
    • Zarel 6y ago
      > That means having stores, work locations, and living locations all within a kilometer or two at most (not everyone is capable of riding a bike at race speeds every day). I've heard that this is already true of everywhere except the US, and the main reason it's not true of the US is zoning laws.
  • 8bitsrule 6y ago
    I moved into a walkable Seattle downtown-fringe area in 2005. Most needed stuff was sold within a few blocks. Thanks to great nearby transit connects to anywhere in the region, sold my vehicle after a year. Lived there 12 years ... 120k miles less gas & maintenance. Miss it a lot now (one bus, nearest stores 2 miles, nearest transit station is a 15 min ride away. Perfect for Covid I guess.)
• ekianjo 6y ago
  > but after it takes place everyone agrees things are much much better with less cars and no one wants to go back. Except that most people cannot live in Paris because it's too expensive and need to commute every day. And using the RER which is dirty, smells like piss and full of graffitis, overcrowded at peak hours and often on strike is so unreliable that it is hardly an enticing option.
  • 0xB31B1B 6y ago
    The majority of the people who are prohibited from living in Paris due to cost but commute in for work use transit, they’d do not drive. Redistributing road space from cars to bike and transit space is a benefit to them. Additionally an eBike costs an order of magnitude less than a car and is functionally the same range/value as a commute tool.
    • LandR 6y ago
      > eBike costs an order of magnitude less than a car and is functionally the same range/value as a commute tool. Except on rainy days in car I arrive at work warm and dry. On eBike I arrive wet, cold and miserable.
      • egeozcan 6y ago
        ...and eBikes tend to get stolen, way more often than cars are. I jumped on the eBike ship very early but I simply can't leave it anywhere.
        • 0wis 6y ago
          Its because you were alone. Paris was well known to be unsafe even for a mechanical bike. With the CoViD measures, many Parisians got equipped with high end electric and non-electric bikes and the number of them exploded. Now that there are other pricy bikes everywhere, the risk that your bike will be targeted by a robber has highly reduced. Moreover, cops and random pedestrian are also more aware. Ultra qualitative data, would be better to find more quantitative to build the case but without more info, it is how I feel it.
• gedy 6y ago
  > A key factor of for solving climate change will be actions like this Maybe, but seeing how Western nation's personal transport being way down due to COVID having little effect on CO2 leads me believe the real issue for the future is China's manufacturing sector, which will not go down.
  • iso1631 6y ago
    Countries need to charge a carbon tax - including on imports. Massive boost to local, green, manufacturing and trade. The politcal view is "can't do that, price of cheap imported tat will increase and people would have to buy locally, which would be awful"
    • gedy 6y ago
      > including on imports Yes this is key, as otherwise it's just outsourcing to others and hiding under carpet at the expense of local jobs.
      • iso1631 6y ago
        Worse than that, rather than using 100KWh of natural gas power to generate, you buy from abroad, from a less efficient producer who uses 150kWh of coal fired power, and then use another 100kWh of oil power to transport it. With gas being 1 "badness" per 100KWh, oil being 2 and coal being 3, this would mean avoiding 1 unit locally, but getting importing 5 units. The beauty of a carbon tax is that it satisfies those on both the environmental side ("the left") and the localism side ("the right"). The only ones not liking it are globalists that don't care about the environment.
    • 0wis 6y ago
      May need more cultural changes before a law. Trials in France haven’t worked. Minimalism, KonMari methods and digital nomad trends (to name a few) are showing that you can live a very happy, fulfilled and wealthy life with a lot less material stuff. A solution could be to be mass communicate on this to help people become confident enough for a carbon tax.
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• quotemstr 6y ago
  Bullshit: isn't incredibly impactful. Short low speed trips in city centers by electric vehicles have marginal contribution to global emissions. What's really motivating policies like this is an aesthetic aversion to cars from a few loud people who think they can socially engineer a beautiful shining future for humanity whether we want it or not. I like cars. I'm perfectly happy to talk about emissions, but I'm not willing to give up my car on some new urbanist's say-so. You're right about one thing though: we should all expect a lot more of this top down meddling with our lives.
  • FriskyAlter 6y ago
    You may like cars but you're not entitled to public spaces to park it. And without those, you may find that owning a car is rather cumbersome.
    • pfortuny 6y ago
      He is not entitled but (at least in my country) you pay a tax to be able to drive it (where the car is registered), so probably not "entitlement" but some right he does have.
      • ajmadesc 6y ago
        But does that tax levied on that car / maintenance expenses cover the costs of road maintenance, excess utility infrastructure from the sprawl that driving infrastructure incentivises, negative health and environmental externalities. I highly highly doubt it.
    • quotemstr 6y ago
      I'd be perfectly happy paying for the public space my car occupies. I'm a fan of congestion charges and tolling every road. But bans on cars altogether? No way in hell.
      • lkbm 6y ago
        Has anyone mentioned banning cars here? I know people talk about it — I talk about it, semi-seriously — but I don't see any comments here mentioning banning cars (except yours), and it's not in the article.
• fpoling 6y ago
  In Oslo, Norway I talked with few car owners that were affected by removal of parking spaces in the city. They supported it as it saved them time. They need to walk more to the parking, but they spent less time sitting in traffic jams. There is no single factor that contributed. Perhaps it is more efficient if everybody drives to one big parking, perhaps people overall started to use cars less, perhaps rash hour became more spread in time leading to lesser max car density and smaller jams. Whatever the reason, it was win-win.
• ars 6y ago
  > with bike/bus/walking space is an incredibly high impact carbon reduction strategy. It is not. On a CO2 per mile bases cars emit less than non-vegan humans, because it takes a lot of energy to grow food. If you put 2 people in the car it's not even close. https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2014/07/22/walking-can-be-more-carbon-intensive-than-driving https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2014/07/22/walking-can... http://web.mit.edu/2.813/www/readings/DrivingVsWalking.pdf http://web.mit.edu/2.813/www/readings/DrivingVsWalking.pdf > but after it takes place everyone agrees things are much much better with less cars and no one wants to go back. Speak for yourself. Every place that has done that is basically a place I will never go to. Since I'm not there anymore I can't complain, right? It's especially stupid when a downtown of a large city does that - God help anyone who needs city services and lives in the suburbs. (Are you expected to walk for 3 hours? Spend a ton of money on a taxi? There is no bus.) What ends up happening is the city and the surrounding area mentally split into two, and they fight politically.
  • avianlyric 6y ago
    > It's especially stupid when a downtown of a large city does that - God help anyone who needs city services and lives in the suburbs. (Are you expected to walk for 3 hours? Spend a ton of money on a taxi? There is no bus.) This is Paris in the EU. Home to the densest (most stations per square mile) metro system in the world. Trust me, you don’t need a bus, nor will you walk for 3 hours. Don’t assume that every city in the world lacks resent public transport. That seems to be a uniquely American thing.
    • ars 6y ago
      And you think other cities are not talking about doing this? Also, I've taken public transport in major EU cities. It's a miserable experience compared to less dense city with a car. It basically discourages me from living in a large city, it's such a terrible experience. Which is, of course, my choice. But I think lots of people are going to start making that choice.....
      • 0xB31B1B 6y ago
• hackeraccount 6y ago
  This is like zoning away new housing construction. No one complains and everyone would agree that there's less traffic. There are a group of people that are hurt but those people aren't around to complain. The same with this. The people who need a car and can't get a space have to move out. Now it's true that population could be zero but to the extent it's more then zero you probably won't hear from them because they aren't in Paris.
  • 0xB31B1B 6y ago
    Very few people actually need a car. The status quo in most cities is that car use is extremely subsidized through free parking. Remove the subsidy and allow people to pay the cost for their choices.
    • wazoox 6y ago
      Parking in Paris costs 3€ and upwards per hour (24 to 60€/day) unless you're a resident with a special pricing. Hardly free...
    • bluGill 6y ago
      Might be true in Paris, but not in all cities. Most cities don't have the transport system to allow a serious about not having a car. Most cities are pretty small though, the bigger the city the more likely it is to have a transport system.
      • 0xB31B1B 6y ago
        This isn’t correct at all. If you look at cities by population and/or density pretty much all global cities, from SF to Lima to Tokyo have sufficient transit and non-car mode share.
        • bluGill 6y ago
          Most cities have a fraction of that population. The cities you named are a minority of the cities in the world.
• ashleyn 6y ago
  I already treat city visits like an oversized theme park. You go there, park in a lot, and everywhere else you take the train and bus.
• pjmlp 6y ago
  Great, but then they better be supportive of remote work, a proper transport infrastructure, or getting affordable rent prices.
• throwaway894345 6y ago
  Is this true? Is urban commuter traffic a significant contributor to carbon emissions (compared with carbon-based power, shipping goods across the world, etc)?
  • 0xB31B1B 6y ago
    Yes, commute is like ~10% of emissions in US IIRC
    • throwaway894345 6y ago
      Right, but how much of that would be affected by policies like these? I guarantee you this won’t happen in rural or suburban areas, and even in urban areas, presumably a good portion of that 10% is public transit, taxis, ride share, etc which wouldn’t be affected. Never mind the fact that these policies will only reduce (not eliminate) urbanites driving to work. As ideal as it may be, America isn’t going to completely overhaul its infrastructure to be more European in just a few decades. It will probably move incrementally in that direction, but the bulk of the commuter emissions problem is certainly going to be addressed by making commuter vehicles more efficient (e.g., electric).
• cm2187 6y ago
  So when we have switched to electric car you will be happy with more parking slots to be added?