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A thought experiment I often perform in Manhattan: Look at the road, and imagine that every car is two pedestrians. Consider how much empty space would be left
by Wowfunhappy 5y ago
A thought experiment I often perform in Manhattan: Look at the road, and imagine that every car is two pedestrians. Consider how much empty space would be left on the road.
Now, look at the amount of empty space on the sidewalk. Notice anything?
In cities, cars take up an inordinate amount of physical space—far more than their fair share. And then drivers still complain they don't have enough room and are stuck in traffic, because of course they are, cars are huge!
Screw cars in cities. In busy areas like lower Manhattan, you shouldn't be able to drive at all unless you have a documented need (commercial vehicle, physical disability, etc). Make sure the people who truly have to drive can actually get around without waiting in traffic, and then leave the rest of the space for pedestrians, cyclists, and others who can use the resource efficiently.
- DoneWithAllThat 5y agoWhat do you mean by “fair share” in this context?
- alistairSH 5y agoI wouldn’t use “fair share” myself. But personal cars are horribly space-inefficient. See linked image. Add in required parking and it’s even worse. https://www.detroittransit.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/space-needed-to-move-ppl-by-bus-bike-car-AV.jpg https://www.detroittransit.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/sp...
- avaldes 5y agoIf I understand correctly, what that image is saying it doesn't matter what type of car you use still they're all space inefficient?
- alistairSH 5y agoYes. Similar images have been published over the years, all attempting to show how space inefficient cars are compared to other transit options. This particular one takes it a step further by calling out EVs as no better than ICEVs with regard to space consumption.
- decafninja 5y agoThe solution is for most people to drive Miatas or Smart4Twos. I'm only half joking. When I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s, the family vehicle of choice for most of my friends and I was the "generic midsized family sedan" - Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, etc. Plus the Accords and Camrys of the late 80s and 90s was closer in size to a 2021 Civic than a 2021 Accord. I think we managed just fine, including taking extended multiday family road trips. I don't have kids, but talking to my friends who do, it sounds like nowadays the minimum acceptable size to shuttle around a single child is a Honda Pilot or Toyota Highlander (or the current fad - Kia Telluride). I'm only half-joking.
- alistairSH 5y agoTotally agree. Part of the upsize, at least for families, is child car seats. They're enormous now, and children seem to stay in them longer (boosters and things). A co-worker had a mid-2000s Passat and you couldn't fit a baby seat in the back without forcing the passenger into an awkward upright seatback. I'm not sure what you do about that. I'm in a relatively dense suburb outside DC and I just wish they'd spend a little more time/money on mixed transit options. We're like 80% there, but corners get cut and so bike lanes that dead-end, or sidewalks but not crosswalks, stuff like that.
- zbrozek 5y agoI wish we had ultracompact city cars in the US. Something barely big enough to hold one person and a smidge of cargo. Would take up about as much floor area as a person and a lug-behind piece of luggage. Basically the scooters you see all over Asia, but with a roof.
- cutemonster 5y agoScooters with roof and four wheels? Maybe solar panels on the roof
- mdorazio 5y agoThink you want the Toyota i-Road [1]. They tried to bring them to the US a couple times and no one wanted them. It's a demand problem, not a supply one. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByQ1hkv1rj4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByQ1hkv1rj4
- paulryanrogers 5y agoWith laws and regulations outlawing or discouraging full sized cars in cities I think the demand would suddenly increase.
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- zbrozek 5y agoThese would almost certainly be required to be LSVs in the US, limiting them to <25 mph and forbidding them from many areas and routes. Those limitations suppress demand - it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Other laws keep ATVs, side-by-sides, and other smaller vehicles off streets, and crash requirements push up vehicle frame sizes and weights. It's a slow-motion arms race towards consumer-targeted armored personnel carriers.
- 5y ago
- addicted 5y agoI’ve also thought the same as you and wondered what the best way to achieve such a result would be. I think the best thing the city could do is eliminate on street parking. Not just free on street parking but on street parking entirely. Every block gets a loading/unloading space, and the rest can be used for open restaurants and other people oriented uses. In addition it will greatly reduce a lot of unnecessary driving. And a congestion charge needs to be implemented ASAP to eliminate a lot of the driving across Manhattan which basically treats some of the worlds most expensive real estate as a glorified thoroughfare.
- sails 5y agoLondon has this - congestion charge, it probably isn't high enough because London traffic is still terrible, but at £15/$20 it does discourage frequent casual trips. https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge
- cguess 5y agoNYC will hopefully have it sooner rather than later. However, it depends on the state legislature, many of whom live an 8+ hour drive away from the city and haven't visited it in years but are convinced they know the best for those of us who live here.
- mkoubaa 5y agoBan cars one street at a time and let the frog boil
- Wowfunhappy 5y agoI think we should literally just close most roads to cars, and restrict the remainder to trucks, taxis, busses, and anyone who would be allowed in a traditional handicapped parking spot. I'm all for congestion pricing and I wouldn't be against a proposal to eliminate on-street parking—but I think a lot of drivers would just use parking garages.
- arp242 5y ago
- criddell 5y agoManhattan might be different, but in a lot of cities most pedestrians are also occasionally drivers. When they vote, they still ask for better roads.
- itronitron 5y agoA simple metric like # of people times meter lanes of road divided by square meter of sidewalk would be useful in characterizing areas. I recently vacationed in a neighborhood where the local grocery store was within walking distance but there was no sidewalk or walking path to get there. Any sidewalks that are put in are cut into personal property instead of the roadway, so there isn't much support for them among voters.
- itronitron 5y agoAnother solution could be to make cars half as wide and twice as tall as they are now. That way they would take up less space, you could effectively double capacity on roadways and foster a lot of technological innovation relative to maintaining balance and safety.
- yifanl 5y agoThat would involve retrofitting almost every garage and parking lot in the country, which feels like a non-starter.
- tengbretson 5y agoHistorically, major cities haven't just existed to serve the needs of their residents, but have served as cultural and economic centers for outlying rural and suburban areas. Part of that responsibility included being actually accessible to these people.
- dc-programmer 5y agoAmericans cities should stop bending over backwards for suburbanites. Especially so because suburbs split off into their own counties so they don’t have to contribute by paying taxes to pay for the city streets and services they use. They just want to take but not give in any way
- Wowfunhappy 5y agoAbsolutely, and they can either take commuter rail or park at a garage just outside the city or city center.
- TacticalCoder 5y agoThey can also decide to hardly ever come to the city again. And that is lost revenue for the city. It's hard to have your cake and it eat too.
- NovemberWhiskey 5y ago>Screw cars in cities. In busy areas like lower Manhattan, you shouldn't be able to drive at all unless you have a documented need (commercial vehicle, physical disability, etc). Unfortunately, this attitude is one of the contributing factors to the impossibility of sensible discussion on this topic. I live in Lower Manhattan, and I own a car. I garage park, which costs a small fortune but means I don't take up space on a sidewalk; not that there's really a meaningful amount of street parking in Lower Manhattan anyway - which is why parking garages cost $70 per day. I contribute next-to-nothing in terms of street crowding based on the times when the car is in use and the places where I travel. And yet still this isn't good enough for the car abolitionists.
- zeendo 5y agoDo we just disagree that the current situation with respect to car usage/traffic/crashes/pedestrian safety in cities needs to be seriously changed or do you have some better proposal? Would it really be much of a problem to take a bus to the garage where your car is parked? And even if it is then maybe that's better than the situation we have today?
- NovemberWhiskey 5y ago>with respect to car usage/traffic/crashes/pedestrian safety Well, you see that's fascinating because if you look at crashes and pedestrian safety - as I understand it - Manhattan has fewer crashes and fewer pedestrian/cyclist injuries/deaths than does Brooklyn, Queens or the Bronx. Do you know how many traffic fatalities there were in the NYPD 1st, 5th and 7th precincts so far this year (that's the whole of Lower Manhattan below Houston)? Three. If you want to focus on the areas with the largest safety problems, your focus should not be in Manhattan. If you want to focus on the leading causes of collisions, it's distracted driving; not excess density. It's also not about air quality, because it's being made quite clear that electric cars are just as much of a problem as fossil-fueled powered ones. >Would it really be much of a problem to take a bus to the garage where your car is parked? Yes, in my case that would be a big problem - but actually the onus is on those who want changes to sell them in a sensible way to everyone, including the households in Manhattan (supposedly ~22%; although that was before the surge in purchases last year) that own cars despite the tremendous cost to do so. What we mainly hear is the prescription "ban private car operation in Manhattan", as if that is the outcome itself rather than a means to some actual goal. This despite the fact that nowhere else in the world has anything similar been achieved.
- rsj_hn 5y agoTwo people traveling 30 mph in a 10 by 50 foot rectangle have a throughput of 116 people per minute. If that same 10 by 50 rectangle holds 100 pedestrians walking at 3 mph, it will have a throughout of 528 people per minute which is 5 times better, But because they are only going at 3 miles per hour, it will take them 2 hours to walk 6 miles instead of 12 minutes, which is a factor of 10 loss of efficiency. Thus the loss in terms of throughput is more than offset by the gain in terms of time saved. Then when you add other factors such as protection from weather and ability to carry heavy things, you understand why streets have vehicles in them instead of just relying on pedestrians. Only in those situations where time has no value or distances are very short is the pedestrian option more efficient than the vehicle option.
- Wowfunhappy 5y agoBut you can't drive anywhere close to 30 mph in a crowded city center. A cyclist can probably move more quickly than a car.
- rsj_hn 5y agoLook you are arguing about the parameters, so I guess you acknowledge there is a trade off. Maybe in one city it's 2 miles you are willing to walk. Maybe in another, only 1 mile, or 4 miles. Point being, there is a reason people don't walk everywhere, which is that there is a space/time trade off. Once you understand this trade off, you'll also understand why we give more room to cars than to pedestrians, and why people walk short distances but not long distances. And I haven't even begun to model all the positive externalities of vehicles -- everything from letting trucks filled with goods stock your "local" coffeeshop, and workers to drive to that coffeeshop. And when the plumbing gets backed up or the ice-machine needs repair, someone will drive to that coffee shop -- right by your house -- and fix it, all so you can have a walkable neighborhood in which you can sip coffee and complain about cars. And there are other positive externalities including more price competition and thus cheaper goods, reduction in geographic monopolies, increases in homeownership rates, etc. I say this as someone who doesn't even own a car, but I recognize that I am extremely privileged to be able to work from anywhere and live in an expensive urban center where everyone spends long hours in their cars driving to me and catering to my needs, from delivering my groceries and packages to driving from the burbs to my neighborhood to cook me dinner. I am at the top of a huge pyramid reliant on vehicles -- and I know it. I'm not going to say "Let them eat cake". A good life-tip is that if you ever come up with some model of society that makes everyone look like they are doing something irrational, then odds are that your model is wrong, not that society is wrong. It can happen that you really are smarter than the system and that you've predicted all the important long term consequences of your proposals and correctly weighed them -- but it almost never does. And not for something as obvious as sidewalks being able to hold more people than cars per square foot. We need far fewer would-be social optimizers, and far more humility in these discussions, as our world is flooded with bad models and bad ideas.
- ramchip 5y agoWhat you're describing is a lot like this picture: https://www.danielbowen.com/2012/09/19/road-space-photo/ https://www.danielbowen.com/2012/09/19/road-space-photo/
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoSounds nice. But how to handle car ownership for the few times the metropolitan wants to experience the countryside? The same way as airports for general aviation, but for cars? Carports?
- Wowfunhappy 5y agoI think you’re basically describing ZipCar! The people I know who use it seem to like it a lot.