6 ms·

Part of the problem is you can’t just convert an area to a pedestrian area as people still need to be able to get there. You need to construct low cost parking

Part of the problem is you can’t just convert an area to a pedestrian area as people still need to be able to get there. You need to construct low cost parking garages around the area so people can still get there.

Cockbrand 3y ago
Comments like this make me appreciate living in a city that has a pretty comprehensive public transport coverage, and where bicycling is at least tolerable. The city you describe seems to be only usable by car.
- david2ndaccount 3y ago
  Many cities in the US are only usable by car. You can’t just leap from a car-based city to a non-car-based city, you have to provide transitionary options (also even car-optional cities still have parking garages).
  - Cockbrand 3y ago
    Absolutely, and while the transition is probably desirable, it'll take a long time. And yes, of course there's in fact still too much car traffic around here, and parking garages exist in great numbers.
  - 8note 3y ago
    What it takes is tearing down large swaths of current car infrastructure and the buildings surrounding it. Eg. Seattle tearing down the viaduct a few years back Which is what it took to turn American cities into car based to begin with.
    - lazyasciiart 3y ago
      That's not a great example, because Seattle spent kajillions of dollars on a ridiculous tunnel under the city to replace the viaduct AND THEN built a second ground-level highway on the newly available delightful waterfront space. Seattle's way of getting rid of the viaduct is a colossal waste of money and years of work for a terrible shitty result that is 1000% car based. A giant failure.
      - sushisource 3y ago
        I don't think it's a _complete_ waste. It's better than it was before, but, it's absolutely true it could've been done much, much better than what we got.
  - jeddy3 3y ago
    Sure, but many cities in the world are not in the US.
  - astrodust 3y ago
    Somehow many cities took the leap from extremely pedestrian friendly in 1900 to completely car based, so "you can't just" is clearly not true. It just takes a lot of willpower, or in the case of cars, tons of lobbying.
    - midoridensha 3y ago
      Don't forget a huge post-war economic boom, plus a bunch of racism and white flight.
- the_doctah 3y ago
  Having just returned from Europe I feel like the public transportation options are so much better. On the flip side, Amsterdam is great, but I felt like I was constantly dodging bicycles.
- Reubachi 3y ago
  There's currently very little incentive to pedestrianize actual problem cities from all concerned parties. Because pedestrians are still largely able to bike, walk, bus etc just fine. And drivers are largely able to commute/park just fine. We need to be honest that the folks most concerned (rightfully so) with urban car congestion are wealthy upper class people who moved TO the cities for their upperclass nature. Should we totally upend one of these groups in an attempt to solve an unsolvable problem for both groups? Bit of rambling but I am fascinated by this problem.
  - Someone 3y ago
    > Because pedestrians are still largely able to bike, walk, bus etc just fine. I don’t see how that’s true for most cities in the USA. For walking, in many cases, there isn’t even a sidewalk for pedestrians to use. If there is, crossing stroads is way more difficult (large distances between crossing opportunities) and dangerous (e.g. no pedestrian islands halfway) than needed.
    - lapetitejort 3y ago
      Same goes for biking. If there is a bike lane, you still have two ton vehicles buzzing sometimes inches away from you at twice or three times your speed. The smallest intersection scares me. Turning left requires me to come to a complete stop and wait for a chance to change lanes and turn. It's equivalent to crossing the street on foot. When I arrive, I have to search for a bike rack. My nearest grocery store has one rack for five bicycles tucked in the far corner of the plaza (I have never seen a bike parked there, however). My favorite coffee shop has no bike racks anywhere on the street, so I lock up to a sign in the parking lot. There's no way to escape this as my house is flanked by two stroads. I hear constant traffic sounds well into the night. I live in a beautiful old neighborhood that predates the Ford Model T. I've seen pictures of ox-driven carriages rolling by historical downtown buildings. We had a cable car that ran down one of the current stroads. My city could drastically drop car dependency if we had the will.
    - mjmahone17 3y ago
      I recently needed to book a hotel in a medium-sized town. There is a shuttle I need to get to leaving on one side of the road, and three different hotels on the other side, immediately across from the shuttle stop. I can’t book any of those hotels because this “Main Street” is 6 lanes, there are no crosswalks for 1 mile in either direction, and the sidewalk on the 3-hotel side doesn’t exist (the only way to get to any of those hotels appears to be to drive). Whereas if I was in a car I could turn left from the 3-hotels’ lot into the lot where the shuttle is stopping in under 1/4 mile. It’s absurd when you can drive for 1/4 mile or walk for 2.
ghayes 3y ago
I never understood why you can’t do this to say 10% of city roads. That way there’s still car accessibility and you can continue to grow public transit, as well. Personally I think the majority of roads should be reclaimed to pedestrians and tracked rail cars. The only exception would be street-local deliveries/residents can enter and drive at say 3mph yielding to all pedestrians.
- pharmakom 3y ago
  People literally took to the streets (ironic, I know) when they tried this in London, UK
  - pmg102 3y ago
    SOME people did, yes. Others quietly enjoyed the improvements. Things seem to be moving in the right direction, despite the usual reactionary noises. I read that no councillor had suffered at the ballot box for their pro-LTN news. Which suggests it's a noisy minority.
  - _Wintermute 3y ago
    A vocal minority, who largely lived outside of London.
notatoad 3y ago
converting an area is hard, but a street is easy. we don't need to pedestrianize whole city centers, just pick the streets where it makes sense. cars don't need every street. people are perfectly willing to walk a block if that's their only option. if you close a street to cars, people will park on the next street over and walk. the street parking in front of a business is never enough for all the patrons of that business anyways, people are usually parking and then walking 1-2 blocks to get where they're going. removing the street parking in front of a business only removes the hope of finding that perfect parking space.
- david2ndaccount 3y ago
  This sounds like the worst of both worlds. We should ban on-street parking regardless.
adolph 3y ago
> Part of the problem is you can’t just convert an area to a pedestrian area as people still need to be able to get there. You need to construct low cost parking garages around the area so people can still get there. From what I've seen pedestrian area conversion typically includes perimeter parking. A interesting case similar to conversion to exclude cars, is the conversion of very old places to have cars. Guanajuato, MX was built up in the 1500's. For the majority of the old town residences and businesses alike are inaccessible by car. The city did convert some major roads, creeks and mines to roads, but parking for many is relatively distant. [Edit, update from state to city of Gto] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanajuato_(city) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanajuato_(city) https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g150799-i726-k1701090-Driving_Parking_around_Guanajuato-Guanajuato_Central_Mexico_and_Gulf_Coast.html https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g150799-i726-k1701090-...
panick21_ 3y ago
Yes you can. There is usually enough parking around the area and just having a basic bus usually already leads to far more use of the area. And if there is really not enough parking, then there is a commercial reason to build it.

Cockbrand 3y ago

Comments like this make me appreciate living in a city that has a pretty comprehensive public transport coverage, and where bicycling is at least tolerable. The city you describe seems to be only usable by car.

david2ndaccount 3y ago
Many cities in the US are only usable by car. You can’t just leap from a car-based city to a non-car-based city, you have to provide transitionary options (also even car-optional cities still have parking garages).
- Cockbrand 3y ago
  Absolutely, and while the transition is probably desirable, it'll take a long time. And yes, of course there's in fact still too much car traffic around here, and parking garages exist in great numbers.
- 8note 3y ago
  What it takes is tearing down large swaths of current car infrastructure and the buildings surrounding it. Eg. Seattle tearing down the viaduct a few years back Which is what it took to turn American cities into car based to begin with.
  - lazyasciiart 3y ago
    That's not a great example, because Seattle spent kajillions of dollars on a ridiculous tunnel under the city to replace the viaduct AND THEN built a second ground-level highway on the newly available delightful waterfront space. Seattle's way of getting rid of the viaduct is a colossal waste of money and years of work for a terrible shitty result that is 1000% car based. A giant failure.
    - sushisource 3y ago
      I don't think it's a _complete_ waste. It's better than it was before, but, it's absolutely true it could've been done much, much better than what we got.
- jeddy3 3y ago
  Sure, but many cities in the world are not in the US.
- astrodust 3y ago
  Somehow many cities took the leap from extremely pedestrian friendly in 1900 to completely car based, so "you can't just" is clearly not true. It just takes a lot of willpower, or in the case of cars, tons of lobbying.
  - midoridensha 3y ago
    Don't forget a huge post-war economic boom, plus a bunch of racism and white flight.
the_doctah 3y ago
Having just returned from Europe I feel like the public transportation options are so much better. On the flip side, Amsterdam is great, but I felt like I was constantly dodging bicycles.
Reubachi 3y ago
There's currently very little incentive to pedestrianize actual problem cities from all concerned parties. Because pedestrians are still largely able to bike, walk, bus etc just fine. And drivers are largely able to commute/park just fine. We need to be honest that the folks most concerned (rightfully so) with urban car congestion are wealthy upper class people who moved TO the cities for their upperclass nature. Should we totally upend one of these groups in an attempt to solve an unsolvable problem for both groups? Bit of rambling but I am fascinated by this problem.
- Someone 3y ago
  > Because pedestrians are still largely able to bike, walk, bus etc just fine. I don’t see how that’s true for most cities in the USA. For walking, in many cases, there isn’t even a sidewalk for pedestrians to use. If there is, crossing stroads is way more difficult (large distances between crossing opportunities) and dangerous (e.g. no pedestrian islands halfway) than needed.
  - lapetitejort 3y ago
    Same goes for biking. If there is a bike lane, you still have two ton vehicles buzzing sometimes inches away from you at twice or three times your speed. The smallest intersection scares me. Turning left requires me to come to a complete stop and wait for a chance to change lanes and turn. It's equivalent to crossing the street on foot. When I arrive, I have to search for a bike rack. My nearest grocery store has one rack for five bicycles tucked in the far corner of the plaza (I have never seen a bike parked there, however). My favorite coffee shop has no bike racks anywhere on the street, so I lock up to a sign in the parking lot. There's no way to escape this as my house is flanked by two stroads. I hear constant traffic sounds well into the night. I live in a beautiful old neighborhood that predates the Ford Model T. I've seen pictures of ox-driven carriages rolling by historical downtown buildings. We had a cable car that ran down one of the current stroads. My city could drastically drop car dependency if we had the will.
  - mjmahone17 3y ago
    I recently needed to book a hotel in a medium-sized town. There is a shuttle I need to get to leaving on one side of the road, and three different hotels on the other side, immediately across from the shuttle stop. I can’t book any of those hotels because this “Main Street” is 6 lanes, there are no crosswalks for 1 mile in either direction, and the sidewalk on the 3-hotel side doesn’t exist (the only way to get to any of those hotels appears to be to drive). Whereas if I was in a car I could turn left from the 3-hotels’ lot into the lot where the shuttle is stopping in under 1/4 mile. It’s absurd when you can drive for 1/4 mile or walk for 2.

ghayes 3y ago

I never understood why you can’t do this to say 10% of city roads. That way there’s still car accessibility and you can continue to grow public transit, as well. Personally I think the majority of roads should be reclaimed to pedestrians and tracked rail cars. The only exception would be street-local deliveries/residents can enter and drive at say 3mph yielding to all pedestrians.

pharmakom 3y ago
People literally took to the streets (ironic, I know) when they tried this in London, UK
- pmg102 3y ago
  SOME people did, yes. Others quietly enjoyed the improvements. Things seem to be moving in the right direction, despite the usual reactionary noises. I read that no councillor had suffered at the ballot box for their pro-LTN news. Which suggests it's a noisy minority.
- _Wintermute 3y ago
  A vocal minority, who largely lived outside of London.

notatoad 3y ago

converting an area is hard, but a street is easy. we don't need to pedestrianize whole city centers, just pick the streets where it makes sense. cars don't need every street. people are perfectly willing to walk a block if that's their only option. if you close a street to cars, people will park on the next street over and walk. the street parking in front of a business is never enough for all the patrons of that business anyways, people are usually parking and then walking 1-2 blocks to get where they're going. removing the street parking in front of a business only removes the hope of finding that perfect parking space.

david2ndaccount 3y ago
This sounds like the worst of both worlds. We should ban on-street parking regardless.

adolph 3y ago

> Part of the problem is you can’t just convert an area to a pedestrian area as people still need to be able to get there. You need to construct low cost parking garages around the area so people can still get there. From what I've seen pedestrian area conversion typically includes perimeter parking. A interesting case similar to conversion to exclude cars, is the conversion of very old places to have cars. Guanajuato, MX was built up in the 1500's. For the majority of the old town residences and businesses alike are inaccessible by car. The city did convert some major roads, creeks and mines to roads, but parking for many is relatively distant. [Edit, update from state to city of Gto] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanajuato_(city) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanajuato_(city) https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g150799-i726-k1701090-Driving_Parking_around_Guanajuato-Guanajuato_Central_Mexico_and_Gulf_Coast.html https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g150799-i726-k1701090-...

panick21_ 3y ago

Yes you can. There is usually enough parking around the area and just having a basic bus usually already leads to far more use of the area. And if there is really not enough parking, then there is a commercial reason to build it.