5 ms·

As a European, this seems like an impossible feat at this point. It has been tried, but the cities have evolved in a way where this is just unfeasible. EU citi

by n2d4 3y ago

As a European, this seems like an impossible feat at this point. It has been tried, but the cities have evolved in a way where this is just unfeasible. EU cities have mostly been built to be dense around train & bus stations. US cities (besides NY) are extremely large, flat, and spread out. Even if you had public transportation, it would be practically impossible to get from A to B because there are no hotspots besides the downtown/city center. The concept of a "car city" is real. It's a vicious cycle that the US entered at some point, and besides rebuilding the cities entirely there's not much hope for public transport.

komali2 3y ago
Aren't there examples of European cities that "converted?" Amsterdam at least somewhat comes to mind: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...
- n2d4 3y ago
  According to the article, Amsterdam was still built with bicycles in mind: > At the start of the 20th century, bikes far outnumbered cars in Dutch cities and the bicycle was considered a respectable mode of transport for men and women. But when the Dutch economy began to boom in the post-war era, more and more people were able to afford cars Amsterdam also has 50% higher population density than Los Angeles, despite housing much fewer people.
  - komali2 3y ago
    Well fair enough, but I really don't think Americans should throw their hands up in the air and say "we just can't do it." This is the country that landed a man on the moon after all, it should be a solvable problem. Maybe the Europeans can't help with their own experience, but the American solution of "just add another lane" is self-evidently unsustainable. Something new is needed.
    - n2d4 3y ago
      I agree, but self-driving cars (in the success case) are something new. More safety, less traffic, no more parking. I could see them make the way to Europe too (I'd love to have Waymos in my rural village, where cars are still common).
      - gambiting 3y ago
        >>less traffic, no more parking. These two goals are incompatible. If the idea is that self driving cars don't need to park, they can just drive around in circles until needed(which is an absolutely insane idea for a whole number of reasons, but let's stick with it for a second), then that will only increase not decrease traffic. >>I could see them make the way to Europe too I've love to see a Waymo navigate some narrow British roads where there is no road signage and there is no defined priority. Like, this is a real situation encountered on a road here by myself just few months ago, skip to 1:30 to see the interesting bit - I'd love to hear proponents of self driving cars explain to me exactly what the car would do in this case. Hand over to a remote operator? There is no signal there, sorry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO_OsjSRnEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO_OsjSRnEU
        oakesm9 3y ago
        No idea what a driverless car would do, but that VW driver acts like they’ve never reversed in their life…
        n2d4 3y ago
        Less traffic and no parking is compatible because there are fewer total cars, as Waymos are shared.
        gambiting 3y ago
        I don't see any indication(other than some people on HN saying this) that people would not want to own a personal vehicle anymore just because self driving cars are a thing. Whether the car drives itself or not, people want to have their own personal space. Not to mention the (very common) need for things like child seats which don't really work with shared cars.
- gambiting 3y ago
  >>Aren't there examples of European cities that "converted?" Loads and loads and loads - at least here in the UK, nearly every city centre is converting to be pedestrian only, with cars being pushed further and further out, with councils emphasising that you should really park your car at one of the massive park&ride car parks outside of the city centre then just take a metro or bus in. That's a good thing in my opinion. It's really shocking to look at pictures taken from the city centre just 30 years ago and see that cars basically were prioritized everywhere, the main shopping street in Newcastle for instance used to be a normal road with cars parked on either side - it hasn't been like that for a long time and the city manages just fine.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    Not really. If the city is older than cars it didn’t really convert from a car centric city. It tried to convert to one for a while, but that’s not the same as being built with cars in existence. Atlanta has interstate interchanges that can fit the entire Vatican in them. Every major city in the west is packed with boulevards 6 lanes across. The US didn’t just accommodate cars, it optimized for them as it was building out. Making that walkable again isn’t a matter of converting a 6 lane road into a pedestrian walkway…
    - gambiting 3y ago
      Well yes, the question was if there are any European cities that have done it - and as you said, that's been traditionally possible here because cities were never designed to be car-centric in the first place. In US, it's the opposite - cities were built with cars in mind, so just building parks over highways isn't going to solve anything.
- lozenge 3y ago
  Amsterdam was 2-4 storey apartments with narrow streets, but the streets were taken over by cars. Once enough traffic was removed/space reserved for busses, trams and bikes, the public transport was able to effectively serve users. The US has huge areas where each lot must be single family, at least 50% yard, etc. As well as huge parking lots around businesses. Therefore putting the residents much further from the places they need to be. Meaning busses and bikes would need to travel further. They still need to stop at an interval of say, 10 minutes walk, and therefore they're slower. Even if you gave them a dedicated lane this would not help. As well, in London I can take a bus and usually access dozens of services at my destination, like food, entertainment, shopping, etc. In the US, a destination might just have one service, and just a few random businesses in walking distance. Again increasing the number of miles travelled.
fodkodrasz 3y ago
Wild idea: maybe they could try to make a pilot project of that in - ironically - the decaying Motor City maybe. Also: the big car mania spilling over from the US to Europe makes driving in European cities/roads more and more difficult, as formerly bidirectional parts are now choke points where only a single oversized SUV can fit through at a time.
- worldsayshi 3y ago
  I suspect that if a metro would be built in a large car centric city over time the city would adapt to the metro and become less car centric. But making the economical argument for building the metro in the first place would be very hard. It would pay back over a time scale that capitalist economies hardly consider.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    No, capitalist economies tax effort and spend it on longer-term things. It's democracies where things can be rolled back by the next leader that are the main cause of short-termism. (I don't have a better alternative to democracy; just stating that's where the flaw is. Well, that and zero incentive to do things well/efficiently outside of political kudos).
    - Swenrekcah 3y ago
      Things used to work pretty well in capitalist democracies when the capitalists were well regulated and taxed and the demagogues didn’t have unrestricted personal access to the voter base.
      - thfuran 3y ago
        That was a pretty brief period, wasn't it?
PinguTS 3y ago
Funfact: San Franscisco has a public transport system in the area where the driverless cars are operating.
- spike021 3y ago
  It took how many years just to add one new line?
  - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    How many years to implement self driving cars? But really I think they’re the future of the city.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      That's because it's a hard problem, not because of local government.
      - withinboredom 3y ago
        I think the point of the comment was: is this even a problem that needs to be solved because we already have a perfectly good solution, it's just that nobody (for REASONS) wants to implement the solution. So, some company has to solve a "hard problem." A perfect "this is why we can't have nice things."
        edgyquant 3y ago
        Not everyone agrees that public transport and rebuilding cities around them is a good idea. That’s what you people who are obsessed with trains and busses don’t get. Self driving cars are still cars, and cars come with a freedom public transportation can’t match. It’s more likely that self driving cars become public transportation than we enact the fantasy that the US changes it’s entire cultural mindset to hate individual choice. I for one don’t want to ride a bus, every time I’ve been on one there’s been some drugged out maniac sketching everyone out. They’re also usually gross like public bathrooms and building more, forcing everyone to use them, isn’t going away to change that.
occz 3y ago
U.S cities were rebuilt to accommodate cars, and there's no reason they can't be rebuilt to undo this damage.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  USA has trouble building enough houses as it is, or a single bridge or piece of infrastructure, and you say they can simply rebuild entire cities?
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Over 50 years.
  - withinboredom 3y ago
    I mean... have you seen how much space is taken up by parking lots in the US? Often, the parking lot is bigger than the building it serves. That's a lot of space for homes ... shops ... instead of places for cars that do nothing.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  uh, what about the opportunity cost of rebuilding something that's already been built?

by n2d4 3y ago

komali2 3y ago

Aren't there examples of European cities that "converted?" Amsterdam at least somewhat comes to mind: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...

n2d4 3y ago
According to the article, Amsterdam was still built with bicycles in mind: > At the start of the 20th century, bikes far outnumbered cars in Dutch cities and the bicycle was considered a respectable mode of transport for men and women. But when the Dutch economy began to boom in the post-war era, more and more people were able to afford cars Amsterdam also has 50% higher population density than Los Angeles, despite housing much fewer people.
- komali2 3y ago
  Well fair enough, but I really don't think Americans should throw their hands up in the air and say "we just can't do it." This is the country that landed a man on the moon after all, it should be a solvable problem. Maybe the Europeans can't help with their own experience, but the American solution of "just add another lane" is self-evidently unsustainable. Something new is needed.
  - n2d4 3y ago
    I agree, but self-driving cars (in the success case) are something new. More safety, less traffic, no more parking. I could see them make the way to Europe too (I'd love to have Waymos in my rural village, where cars are still common).
    - gambiting 3y ago
      >>less traffic, no more parking. These two goals are incompatible. If the idea is that self driving cars don't need to park, they can just drive around in circles until needed(which is an absolutely insane idea for a whole number of reasons, but let's stick with it for a second), then that will only increase not decrease traffic. >>I could see them make the way to Europe too I've love to see a Waymo navigate some narrow British roads where there is no road signage and there is no defined priority. Like, this is a real situation encountered on a road here by myself just few months ago, skip to 1:30 to see the interesting bit - I'd love to hear proponents of self driving cars explain to me exactly what the car would do in this case. Hand over to a remote operator? There is no signal there, sorry. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO_OsjSRnEU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO_OsjSRnEU
      - oakesm9 3y ago
        No idea what a driverless car would do, but that VW driver acts like they’ve never reversed in their life…
      - n2d4 3y ago
        Less traffic and no parking is compatible because there are fewer total cars, as Waymos are shared.
        gambiting 3y ago
        I don't see any indication(other than some people on HN saying this) that people would not want to own a personal vehicle anymore just because self driving cars are a thing. Whether the car drives itself or not, people want to have their own personal space. Not to mention the (very common) need for things like child seats which don't really work with shared cars.
gambiting 3y ago
>>Aren't there examples of European cities that "converted?" Loads and loads and loads - at least here in the UK, nearly every city centre is converting to be pedestrian only, with cars being pushed further and further out, with councils emphasising that you should really park your car at one of the massive park&ride car parks outside of the city centre then just take a metro or bus in. That's a good thing in my opinion. It's really shocking to look at pictures taken from the city centre just 30 years ago and see that cars basically were prioritized everywhere, the main shopping street in Newcastle for instance used to be a normal road with cars parked on either side - it hasn't been like that for a long time and the city manages just fine.
- kortilla 3y ago
  Not really. If the city is older than cars it didn’t really convert from a car centric city. It tried to convert to one for a while, but that’s not the same as being built with cars in existence. Atlanta has interstate interchanges that can fit the entire Vatican in them. Every major city in the west is packed with boulevards 6 lanes across. The US didn’t just accommodate cars, it optimized for them as it was building out. Making that walkable again isn’t a matter of converting a 6 lane road into a pedestrian walkway…
  - gambiting 3y ago
    Well yes, the question was if there are any European cities that have done it - and as you said, that's been traditionally possible here because cities were never designed to be car-centric in the first place. In US, it's the opposite - cities were built with cars in mind, so just building parks over highways isn't going to solve anything.
lozenge 3y ago
Amsterdam was 2-4 storey apartments with narrow streets, but the streets were taken over by cars. Once enough traffic was removed/space reserved for busses, trams and bikes, the public transport was able to effectively serve users. The US has huge areas where each lot must be single family, at least 50% yard, etc. As well as huge parking lots around businesses. Therefore putting the residents much further from the places they need to be. Meaning busses and bikes would need to travel further. They still need to stop at an interval of say, 10 minutes walk, and therefore they're slower. Even if you gave them a dedicated lane this would not help. As well, in London I can take a bus and usually access dozens of services at my destination, like food, entertainment, shopping, etc. In the US, a destination might just have one service, and just a few random businesses in walking distance. Again increasing the number of miles travelled.

fodkodrasz 3y ago

Wild idea: maybe they could try to make a pilot project of that in - ironically - the decaying Motor City maybe. Also: the big car mania spilling over from the US to Europe makes driving in European cities/roads more and more difficult, as formerly bidirectional parts are now choke points where only a single oversized SUV can fit through at a time.

worldsayshi 3y ago
I suspect that if a metro would be built in a large car centric city over time the city would adapt to the metro and become less car centric. But making the economical argument for building the metro in the first place would be very hard. It would pay back over a time scale that capitalist economies hardly consider.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  No, capitalist economies tax effort and spend it on longer-term things. It's democracies where things can be rolled back by the next leader that are the main cause of short-termism. (I don't have a better alternative to democracy; just stating that's where the flaw is. Well, that and zero incentive to do things well/efficiently outside of political kudos).
  - Swenrekcah 3y ago
    Things used to work pretty well in capitalist democracies when the capitalists were well regulated and taxed and the demagogues didn’t have unrestricted personal access to the voter base.
    - thfuran 3y ago
      That was a pretty brief period, wasn't it?

PinguTS 3y ago

Funfact: San Franscisco has a public transport system in the area where the driverless cars are operating.

spike021 3y ago
It took how many years just to add one new line?
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  How many years to implement self driving cars? But really I think they’re the future of the city.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    That's because it's a hard problem, not because of local government.
    - withinboredom 3y ago
      I think the point of the comment was: is this even a problem that needs to be solved because we already have a perfectly good solution, it's just that nobody (for REASONS) wants to implement the solution. So, some company has to solve a "hard problem." A perfect "this is why we can't have nice things."
      - edgyquant 3y ago
        Not everyone agrees that public transport and rebuilding cities around them is a good idea. That’s what you people who are obsessed with trains and busses don’t get. Self driving cars are still cars, and cars come with a freedom public transportation can’t match. It’s more likely that self driving cars become public transportation than we enact the fantasy that the US changes it’s entire cultural mindset to hate individual choice. I for one don’t want to ride a bus, every time I’ve been on one there’s been some drugged out maniac sketching everyone out. They’re also usually gross like public bathrooms and building more, forcing everyone to use them, isn’t going away to change that.

occz 3y ago

U.S cities were rebuilt to accommodate cars, and there's no reason they can't be rebuilt to undo this damage.

HPsquared 3y ago
USA has trouble building enough houses as it is, or a single bridge or piece of infrastructure, and you say they can simply rebuild entire cities?
- bluGill 3y ago
  Over 50 years.
- withinboredom 3y ago
  I mean... have you seen how much space is taken up by parking lots in the US? Often, the parking lot is bigger than the building it serves. That's a lot of space for homes ... shops ... instead of places for cars that do nothing.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
uh, what about the opportunity cost of rebuilding something that's already been built?