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Fully agreed. And while everything you said is super important and true, one piece that really makes me pumped about this movement to ditch cars is more around

Fully agreed. And while everything you said is super important and true, one piece that really makes me pumped about this movement to ditch cars is more around quality of life. If you have to get in a car and drive to a parking lot somewhere to get groceries, commute to work, go out with friends, get healthcare, etc. You will obviously live a less healthy life both physically but also mentally because of it. Walking is exercise, it's something we were all evolved to do and it keeps us healthy physically and mentally. It also encourages community when everyone isn't surrounded by a metal and plastic multi-ton machine. I recently moved to a walkable part of my city and it's actually amazing how much it's benefited my life. I say hi to neighbors and people who walk routes like I do, I get fresh air since not every street is filled to the brim with cars, but honestly one of the best effects is silence. Cars our LOUD. Even electric cars unfortunately, it really has little to do with the sound of the engine at speeds like 30mph, it's more about wind and tire noise. Meanwhile, people walking, biking, or on scooters are silent and it's brought me a lot of peace.

uneekname 3y ago
I totally agree about the noise and health benefits, but to me it's more a matter of respect and safety. In the U.S., we see too many pedestrians die each year. Our roads are built for cars only, with everything else as an afterthought. When I cross the street, drivers act like it's my responsibility to stay out of their way. If some people need to use cars for mobility or business reasons, that is fine with me. But they need to have the utmost respect for me as a pedestrian/bicyclist. And the way to accomplish that is to make streets that force cars to slow down and watch out. If we make our cities safe for walking and biking, more people will do so!
- willio58 3y ago
  > If some people need to use cars for mobility or business reasons, that is fine with me. Definitely. For stuff like that, emergency services, delivery, trash collection, etc. larger vehicles on streets are totally fine and I think most would agree. I don't even necessarily think we should ban all cars, but we should definitely stop incentivizing them by heavily subsidizing car infrastructure with city budgets funded by taxpayers. I think if we stop the incentives that were heavily lobbied for by car companies we'll find the _true_ most efficient ways to build cities which will most likely be heavily geared toward walkability and bike-ability, public transport, etc.
  - galangalalgol 3y ago
    On another HN thread it was discussed that because road wear and tire wear and hence micro plastics, scale to the fourth with vehicle weight, a few large delivery vehicles are far worse than many lighter ones. It is better for us all to use the lightest vehicle we can to go get groceries and take our garbage to the recycling facility (or landfill) than to have trahs trucks, delivery trucks, or busses move us about. Trains or other steel wheeled things are the best.
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      At the same time larger vehicles generally have a better engine size to capacity ratio, so if you don’t want to pillage the earth for raw earths, lithium, cobalt etc. then large vehicles are still good.
    - teemur 3y ago
      > road wear and tire wear and hence micro plastics, scale to the fourth with vehicle weight, (Emphasis mine) Do you have a source for this? I do not see how this specific claim could be true, and I am not sure how exactly that needs to be modified to make it true. I mean, if you take a vehicle that weights one ton and double the number of wheels, that specific claim says that the road/tire wear would not change, as the vehicle weight stays the same. Further, doubling the wheels can't easily be distinguished from splitting the load to two vehicles with half the weight, which should reduce wear & tear of each vehicle to one sixteenth, totaling to one eighth. So there is kind of a contradiction. And as a sanity check, a passenger car weights ~10^3 kg. A large truck weights ~10^4. So a truck would wear the road something like as much as 10 000 passenger cars. That's a bit hard to believe. So the actual law might be something like tear & wear scales to the fourth of the weight on a single wheel. But even that leaves something to hope, as I think you need to assume similar wheels. So maybe the actual law has something to do with pressure on the road?
      - galangalalgol 3y ago
        The original fourth power law relates to axle loads, which as you point out is not the same as what I said. So we should get rivian to add a lot more wheels on those amazon trucks. But even if they put as many on as they could fit, the capacity and load is so much higher than what each person getting a delivery would use, you are still in the hole vs a normal ev not to mention a trike just big enough to pop over to the warehouse at the train station to pick up your packages. Edit: forgot to paste link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  A lot of that can be solved by law too. I know a lot of Americans would see this as an infringement of their freedoms but it’s quite common in other countries to place the order of responsibility to the most vulnerable to least vulnerable. What I mean by this is that cyclists need to give way to pedestrians, and cars need to give way to cyclists and pedestrians. I’ve never quite understood the logic behind jaywalking laws because it penalises the vulnerable rather than places greater responsibility on those who are least vulnerable.
  - andrepd 3y ago
    It's useless to build a straight road, 4 wide lanes, then stick a sign on the side going "pls no speederino". The roads and the streets themselves need to be designed so that they do not allow unsafe use. Meaning any road/street shared by pedestrians needs to have narrow lanes, few lanes, sidewalks separated by e.g. a row of trees, speed bumps and raised crosswalks, bollards separating lanes, chicanes, etc.
    - hnlmorg 3y ago
      That's already the norm in the UK. To be honest I'd forgotten many residential roads in the US were dual cartridge ways. That does make things more tricky.
- lambdasquirrel 3y ago
  In some Canadian cities, they build the residential streets with only one lane (there’s still traffic in two directions), and it solves both the speed problem and helps with the density problem. I hated it at first, but once I’ve parked my car (probably to take the bus, no less), I’ve thought, gee this is nice.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago
  US pedestrians die at a higher rate than elsewhere but not because you have a lot more vehicle miles, it's down to the appalling quality of the roads (design construction, and maintenance), the shockingly casual attitude to drinking and driving, and the fact that so many US vehicles are pedestrian hostile. But all of those things seem to be an expression of the US majority way of thinking. That is what needs changing; if you don't pedestrians will still be run over by drunk drivers, etc.
- mikrotikker 3y ago
  I would personally give way to vehicles of any kind when walking, rather than expect them to give way to me. I have better visibility and awareness, I am easily manueverable and I can stop faster. I will not put my life in the hands of someone and just hope they see me in order to give way to me. I will take the initiative and be responsible for myself, not require others to be responsible for me... That is called "being a burden".
dv_dt 3y ago
This is such an interesting comment to me because it gets so much right on how to motivate ditching cars. If you were funding a campaign to eliminate cars to reduce carbon emissions I think you would meet with widespread resistance. If you promote an idea of a higher quality life that is possible w/o cars and explore that - in the end I think you'd end up removing many more cars than the first approach.
- Glide 3y ago
  It's a positive vision of where society can go rather than having to sacrifice and buckle down. Do people not remember riding bikes as kids? Riding a bike is _still_ fun. It never stopped being fun. Now you can do that and get to work.
  - jfim 3y ago
    It was fun until I got hit by a car when biking back from work. Now I just drive to work due to the risk of injury from distracted drivers and getting doored in bike lanes. It's really unfortunate because I'd rather bike, but the infrastructure in the US even in relatively bike friendly cities here is dangerous.
    - webdood90 3y ago
      if you're not already, you should advocate for the infrastructure in your city. these things do not happen on their own, we must push for the future we desire.
      - jfim 3y ago
        That's a good idea. What do you think is a good starting point for this?
        webdood90 3y ago
        Look to join neighborhood associations that influence city policy. Reach out to your council person or the mayor, depending on how big your city is. Talk to neighbors.
j45 3y ago
Too many cities have physically been designed around driving
- JAlexoid 3y ago
  Have you seen pictures of Atlanta from 1930ies and now? There are two major interstates cutting thought the city. TWO!
  - smileysteve 3y ago
    3! And intentionally designed to destroy communities that were experiencing very high economic growth and an easy way to implement redlining and segregation.
deegles 3y ago
I just drove by a new giant highway overpass being built in Texas and I was wondering to myself "how many houses could have been built with all the money and resources sunk into this?" All of Texas (30m) could live in a high density city the size of Tokyo. Which is huge, but not as huge as the rest of Texas.
at_a_remove 3y ago
And for those handi-capable folks, what do we do?
- KleerKut 3y ago
  [dead]
- willio58 3y ago
  For anyone with any type of handicap, we should definitely still build our world with them in mind. Building our world more around walking, micro-mobility, and public transit would surely help those who might be in wheelchairs, scooters, etc.
- mperham 3y ago
  Building for pedestrians helps everyone. https://streets.mn/2023/07/19/if-we-want-a-shift-to-walking-we-need-to-prioritize-dignity/ https://streets.mn/2023/07/19/if-we-want-a-shift-to-walking-...
- SamuelAdams 3y ago
  And what happens when it is freezing or storming outside? Not everyone lives in LA. If you need proof that HN is a bubble, look no further than this thread.
  - willio58 3y ago
    Is your point that all handicapped people need cars to get around in bad weather? I understand not everyone lives somewhere with good weather, but I'll point you to look at cities that get a ton of weather and still manage to have good transportation like Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Tokyo, etc. and many handicapped people make great use of the transportation in those cities. Physical and mental ability exists in a spectrum for all of us. A small portion of people may physically need to be driven around in a vehicle. But a huge portion of those with disabilities are still fully able to get onto a lightrail, metro, etc. to get around.
    - 3y ago
ars 3y ago
I loath walking more than any other activity. Your utopia sounds like hell of earth for me. I don't want any of those things you mentioned. I don't want to waste tons of time just getting places, I want to live in an area that is not so congested that traffic is a problem, I want space to live. I do NOT want to be near other people just to get somewhere, or worse live very close to others.
- willio58 3y ago
  I'm actually on board for this! If you want to live that way you should be able to. But, you should be held responsible for paying your share of the infrastructure required to support such living. As long as that is understood, I don't really think there's anything inherently bad with what you describe. But I doubt people who love living the suburban car-centric life would like to see their taxes for infrastructure double. Here's an infographic explaining those numbers https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-public-more-than-twice-as-much-as-compact-development https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...
  - ars 3y ago
    Those costs aren't really all that high, and are easily outweighed by the dramatically lower costs in the suburbs. Everything is cheaper there, land, buildings, repairs, goods and services. Cities might look good in this narrow measure, but costs are higher and wages are higher, which means cities consume far more goods. Suburbs also tend to produce more thing in real (i.e. not monetary) terms. They have far more manufacturing, more farms, more backyard experimenters who go on to invent things. You can't learn, on your own, to be a mechanic in a city, in a suburb you can simply get an old car and mess with it. Same with tons of other fields, in a suburb you can just try it out, in a city you don't have room for that. Without suburbs cities would fall apart - but the cities don't really realize that. Cities have higher income so they suck in everything suburbs produce, but cities don't really produce anything of their own, it's all internal services.
    - topaz0 3y ago
      I think you might be using a very narrow definition of "city". There are tons of small cities around the country where you can choose between a downtown apartment, a townhome in a development, separate small house on a half lot in a canopied neighborhood, or a big house with a half acre of land, all within easy biking distance of the city center. And even those 1000 sq ft houses on half lots can and do hold the old car that you want to be able to wrench on.
Reason077 3y ago
> ”Cars our LOUD. Even electric cars unfortunately” While it might be true that there isn’t a huge difference at highway speeds, EVs can make a massive difference to noise levels on city streets! When cars are crawling along in city traffic, engine noise dominates. As electric vehicles have started to become dominant on central London streets, this has been really noticeable. Sometimes I’ll see queues of cars waiting at intersections but notice how remarkably quiet it is - because they’re all EVs or hybrids! Other times, there’ll be one or two old diesel taxis in the mix and it really stands out how noisy they are in comparison.
- rglullis 3y ago
  Electric cars are loud as well. Most of the car noise is due to tire friction. Start at 11m10s mark on https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8 https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8
  - Reason077 3y ago
    Not at city speeds they’re not. City streets with EVs are much, much quieter than ones filled with roaring combustion engines. There’s a reason why regulations require EVs to have noise emitters when moving at low speeds (but they’re still much quieter than combustion cars!) Not to mention the benefits of cleaner air, and far less waste heat being emitted.
    - rglullis 3y ago
      Did you see the video I linked or are you just playing a game of repeating your beliefs? Even electric cars at city speeds are above 75dbA, which may be of course less than a loud combustion motorcycle, but nonetheless already into "loud" territory.
      - Reason077 3y ago
        Let me rephrase: in a real-world city environment, electric cars are very quiet compared to combustion cars. For one thing, unlike combustion cars, they are absolutely silent when stopped at intersections or in traffic! Of course they do still emit some noise when moving, and this noise increases with speed. But not enough to annoy you when you’re trying to sleep at night, or have a conversation with a friend. It is always combustion vehicles which do that! This isn’t my “beliefs”, but actual real-world experience of living in a busy, noisy city where there are large numbers of EVs.
admax88qqq 3y ago
How do we address the people who live in areas where the grocery store is not within walking/biking distance. Living car free in a city built for it can be bliss. But tons of people do not live in cities built for it. Do we rebuild those cities? Force them to move?
- Muromec 3y ago
  I’m not a architect, but I suspect building a bakery in a place people want to buy bread is more energy-efficient compared to driving 5 miles (uphill both ways) for every bread-enjoyer in a personal cars.
- marssaxman 3y ago
  We change the zoning code so that it becomes legal to build a grocery store in those areas, then let the market do its work. Yes, we rebuild those cities: but that need not be done by force. We can simply relax the draconian Euclidean zoning rules which prohibit traditional mixed-use city building.
lovepronmostly 3y ago
This will go over like a lead brick in car infested suburbia. I love a carless life in Berlin, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Seoul, but a carless life in Santa Clarita California? Carless like in Silicon Valley? Not gonna happen. LA, maybe a few can get buy without a car but they'd need to add Tokyo level of trains (40+ lines with express trains) before I could function without a car in a city like LA. I have friends I can generally see in 40-60 minutes that with current public transportation would take 3hrs one way. I'm not saying we shouldn't start adding the public transportation back to LA. Of course we should. But it will be 100 years before it's anywhere close to where it needs to be for people to give up their cars. And for suburbia, you'd have to get everyone to sell their 2-3 car tract houses so you can rebuild the cities to be more dense, and get all the stores to give up their parking lots, It's just not going to happen. :(
MrFantastic 3y ago
I agree and live in an area where I only have to use my car a few times a week and walk/bike most of the time. The problem is most people own homes in areas where it's not practical to create a 15 minute city. Plus a lot of people are lazy. My neighbor drove his car 600 yards to pick up a pizza.

uneekname 3y ago

I totally agree about the noise and health benefits, but to me it's more a matter of respect and safety. In the U.S., we see too many pedestrians die each year. Our roads are built for cars only, with everything else as an afterthought. When I cross the street, drivers act like it's my responsibility to stay out of their way. If some people need to use cars for mobility or business reasons, that is fine with me. But they need to have the utmost respect for me as a pedestrian/bicyclist. And the way to accomplish that is to make streets that force cars to slow down and watch out. If we make our cities safe for walking and biking, more people will do so!

willio58 3y ago
> If some people need to use cars for mobility or business reasons, that is fine with me. Definitely. For stuff like that, emergency services, delivery, trash collection, etc. larger vehicles on streets are totally fine and I think most would agree. I don't even necessarily think we should ban all cars, but we should definitely stop incentivizing them by heavily subsidizing car infrastructure with city budgets funded by taxpayers. I think if we stop the incentives that were heavily lobbied for by car companies we'll find the _true_ most efficient ways to build cities which will most likely be heavily geared toward walkability and bike-ability, public transport, etc.
- galangalalgol 3y ago
  On another HN thread it was discussed that because road wear and tire wear and hence micro plastics, scale to the fourth with vehicle weight, a few large delivery vehicles are far worse than many lighter ones. It is better for us all to use the lightest vehicle we can to go get groceries and take our garbage to the recycling facility (or landfill) than to have trahs trucks, delivery trucks, or busses move us about. Trains or other steel wheeled things are the best.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    At the same time larger vehicles generally have a better engine size to capacity ratio, so if you don’t want to pillage the earth for raw earths, lithium, cobalt etc. then large vehicles are still good.
  - teemur 3y ago
    > road wear and tire wear and hence micro plastics, scale to the fourth with vehicle weight, (Emphasis mine) Do you have a source for this? I do not see how this specific claim could be true, and I am not sure how exactly that needs to be modified to make it true. I mean, if you take a vehicle that weights one ton and double the number of wheels, that specific claim says that the road/tire wear would not change, as the vehicle weight stays the same. Further, doubling the wheels can't easily be distinguished from splitting the load to two vehicles with half the weight, which should reduce wear & tear of each vehicle to one sixteenth, totaling to one eighth. So there is kind of a contradiction. And as a sanity check, a passenger car weights ~10^3 kg. A large truck weights ~10^4. So a truck would wear the road something like as much as 10 000 passenger cars. That's a bit hard to believe. So the actual law might be something like tear & wear scales to the fourth of the weight on a single wheel. But even that leaves something to hope, as I think you need to assume similar wheels. So maybe the actual law has something to do with pressure on the road?
    - galangalalgol 3y ago
      The original fourth power law relates to axle loads, which as you point out is not the same as what I said. So we should get rivian to add a lot more wheels on those amazon trucks. But even if they put as many on as they could fit, the capacity and load is so much higher than what each person getting a delivery would use, you are still in the hole vs a normal ev not to mention a trike just big enough to pop over to the warehouse at the train station to pick up your packages. Edit: forgot to paste link https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law
hnlmorg 3y ago
A lot of that can be solved by law too. I know a lot of Americans would see this as an infringement of their freedoms but it’s quite common in other countries to place the order of responsibility to the most vulnerable to least vulnerable. What I mean by this is that cyclists need to give way to pedestrians, and cars need to give way to cyclists and pedestrians. I’ve never quite understood the logic behind jaywalking laws because it penalises the vulnerable rather than places greater responsibility on those who are least vulnerable.
- andrepd 3y ago
  It's useless to build a straight road, 4 wide lanes, then stick a sign on the side going "pls no speederino". The roads and the streets themselves need to be designed so that they do not allow unsafe use. Meaning any road/street shared by pedestrians needs to have narrow lanes, few lanes, sidewalks separated by e.g. a row of trees, speed bumps and raised crosswalks, bollards separating lanes, chicanes, etc.
  - hnlmorg 3y ago
    That's already the norm in the UK. To be honest I'd forgotten many residential roads in the US were dual cartridge ways. That does make things more tricky.
lambdasquirrel 3y ago
In some Canadian cities, they build the residential streets with only one lane (there’s still traffic in two directions), and it solves both the speed problem and helps with the density problem. I hated it at first, but once I’ve parked my car (probably to take the bus, no less), I’ve thought, gee this is nice.
kwhitefoot 3y ago
US pedestrians die at a higher rate than elsewhere but not because you have a lot more vehicle miles, it's down to the appalling quality of the roads (design construction, and maintenance), the shockingly casual attitude to drinking and driving, and the fact that so many US vehicles are pedestrian hostile. But all of those things seem to be an expression of the US majority way of thinking. That is what needs changing; if you don't pedestrians will still be run over by drunk drivers, etc.
mikrotikker 3y ago
I would personally give way to vehicles of any kind when walking, rather than expect them to give way to me. I have better visibility and awareness, I am easily manueverable and I can stop faster. I will not put my life in the hands of someone and just hope they see me in order to give way to me. I will take the initiative and be responsible for myself, not require others to be responsible for me... That is called "being a burden".

dv_dt 3y ago

This is such an interesting comment to me because it gets so much right on how to motivate ditching cars. If you were funding a campaign to eliminate cars to reduce carbon emissions I think you would meet with widespread resistance. If you promote an idea of a higher quality life that is possible w/o cars and explore that - in the end I think you'd end up removing many more cars than the first approach.

Glide 3y ago
It's a positive vision of where society can go rather than having to sacrifice and buckle down. Do people not remember riding bikes as kids? Riding a bike is _still_ fun. It never stopped being fun. Now you can do that and get to work.
- jfim 3y ago
  It was fun until I got hit by a car when biking back from work. Now I just drive to work due to the risk of injury from distracted drivers and getting doored in bike lanes. It's really unfortunate because I'd rather bike, but the infrastructure in the US even in relatively bike friendly cities here is dangerous.
  - webdood90 3y ago
    if you're not already, you should advocate for the infrastructure in your city. these things do not happen on their own, we must push for the future we desire.
    - jfim 3y ago
      That's a good idea. What do you think is a good starting point for this?
      - webdood90 3y ago
        Look to join neighborhood associations that influence city policy. Reach out to your council person or the mayor, depending on how big your city is. Talk to neighbors.

j45 3y ago

Too many cities have physically been designed around driving

JAlexoid 3y ago
Have you seen pictures of Atlanta from 1930ies and now? There are two major interstates cutting thought the city. TWO!
- smileysteve 3y ago
  3! And intentionally designed to destroy communities that were experiencing very high economic growth and an easy way to implement redlining and segregation.

deegles 3y ago

I just drove by a new giant highway overpass being built in Texas and I was wondering to myself "how many houses could have been built with all the money and resources sunk into this?" All of Texas (30m) could live in a high density city the size of Tokyo. Which is huge, but not as huge as the rest of Texas.

at_a_remove 3y ago

And for those handi-capable folks, what do we do?

KleerKut 3y ago
[dead]
willio58 3y ago
For anyone with any type of handicap, we should definitely still build our world with them in mind. Building our world more around walking, micro-mobility, and public transit would surely help those who might be in wheelchairs, scooters, etc.
mperham 3y ago
Building for pedestrians helps everyone. https://streets.mn/2023/07/19/if-we-want-a-shift-to-walking-we-need-to-prioritize-dignity/ https://streets.mn/2023/07/19/if-we-want-a-shift-to-walking-...
SamuelAdams 3y ago
And what happens when it is freezing or storming outside? Not everyone lives in LA. If you need proof that HN is a bubble, look no further than this thread.
- willio58 3y ago
  Is your point that all handicapped people need cars to get around in bad weather? I understand not everyone lives somewhere with good weather, but I'll point you to look at cities that get a ton of weather and still manage to have good transportation like Montreal, Toronto, Chicago, Tokyo, etc. and many handicapped people make great use of the transportation in those cities. Physical and mental ability exists in a spectrum for all of us. A small portion of people may physically need to be driven around in a vehicle. But a huge portion of those with disabilities are still fully able to get onto a lightrail, metro, etc. to get around.
  - 3y ago

ars 3y ago

I loath walking more than any other activity. Your utopia sounds like hell of earth for me. I don't want any of those things you mentioned. I don't want to waste tons of time just getting places, I want to live in an area that is not so congested that traffic is a problem, I want space to live. I do NOT want to be near other people just to get somewhere, or worse live very close to others.

willio58 3y ago
I'm actually on board for this! If you want to live that way you should be able to. But, you should be held responsible for paying your share of the infrastructure required to support such living. As long as that is understood, I don't really think there's anything inherently bad with what you describe. But I doubt people who love living the suburban car-centric life would like to see their taxes for infrastructure double. Here's an infographic explaining those numbers https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-public-more-than-twice-as-much-as-compact-development https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...
- ars 3y ago
  Those costs aren't really all that high, and are easily outweighed by the dramatically lower costs in the suburbs. Everything is cheaper there, land, buildings, repairs, goods and services. Cities might look good in this narrow measure, but costs are higher and wages are higher, which means cities consume far more goods. Suburbs also tend to produce more thing in real (i.e. not monetary) terms. They have far more manufacturing, more farms, more backyard experimenters who go on to invent things. You can't learn, on your own, to be a mechanic in a city, in a suburb you can simply get an old car and mess with it. Same with tons of other fields, in a suburb you can just try it out, in a city you don't have room for that. Without suburbs cities would fall apart - but the cities don't really realize that. Cities have higher income so they suck in everything suburbs produce, but cities don't really produce anything of their own, it's all internal services.
  - topaz0 3y ago
    I think you might be using a very narrow definition of "city". There are tons of small cities around the country where you can choose between a downtown apartment, a townhome in a development, separate small house on a half lot in a canopied neighborhood, or a big house with a half acre of land, all within easy biking distance of the city center. And even those 1000 sq ft houses on half lots can and do hold the old car that you want to be able to wrench on.

Reason077 3y ago

> ”Cars our LOUD. Even electric cars unfortunately” While it might be true that there isn’t a huge difference at highway speeds, EVs can make a massive difference to noise levels on city streets! When cars are crawling along in city traffic, engine noise dominates. As electric vehicles have started to become dominant on central London streets, this has been really noticeable. Sometimes I’ll see queues of cars waiting at intersections but notice how remarkably quiet it is - because they’re all EVs or hybrids! Other times, there’ll be one or two old diesel taxis in the mix and it really stands out how noisy they are in comparison.

rglullis 3y ago
Electric cars are loud as well. Most of the car noise is due to tire friction. Start at 11m10s mark on https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8 https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8
- Reason077 3y ago
  Not at city speeds they’re not. City streets with EVs are much, much quieter than ones filled with roaring combustion engines. There’s a reason why regulations require EVs to have noise emitters when moving at low speeds (but they’re still much quieter than combustion cars!) Not to mention the benefits of cleaner air, and far less waste heat being emitted.
  - rglullis 3y ago
    Did you see the video I linked or are you just playing a game of repeating your beliefs? Even electric cars at city speeds are above 75dbA, which may be of course less than a loud combustion motorcycle, but nonetheless already into "loud" territory.
    - Reason077 3y ago
      Let me rephrase: in a real-world city environment, electric cars are very quiet compared to combustion cars. For one thing, unlike combustion cars, they are absolutely silent when stopped at intersections or in traffic! Of course they do still emit some noise when moving, and this noise increases with speed. But not enough to annoy you when you’re trying to sleep at night, or have a conversation with a friend. It is always combustion vehicles which do that! This isn’t my “beliefs”, but actual real-world experience of living in a busy, noisy city where there are large numbers of EVs.

admax88qqq 3y ago

How do we address the people who live in areas where the grocery store is not within walking/biking distance. Living car free in a city built for it can be bliss. But tons of people do not live in cities built for it. Do we rebuild those cities? Force them to move?

Muromec 3y ago
I’m not a architect, but I suspect building a bakery in a place people want to buy bread is more energy-efficient compared to driving 5 miles (uphill both ways) for every bread-enjoyer in a personal cars.
marssaxman 3y ago
We change the zoning code so that it becomes legal to build a grocery store in those areas, then let the market do its work. Yes, we rebuild those cities: but that need not be done by force. We can simply relax the draconian Euclidean zoning rules which prohibit traditional mixed-use city building.

lovepronmostly 3y ago

This will go over like a lead brick in car infested suburbia. I love a carless life in Berlin, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Seoul, but a carless life in Santa Clarita California? Carless like in Silicon Valley? Not gonna happen. LA, maybe a few can get buy without a car but they'd need to add Tokyo level of trains (40+ lines with express trains) before I could function without a car in a city like LA. I have friends I can generally see in 40-60 minutes that with current public transportation would take 3hrs one way. I'm not saying we shouldn't start adding the public transportation back to LA. Of course we should. But it will be 100 years before it's anywhere close to where it needs to be for people to give up their cars. And for suburbia, you'd have to get everyone to sell their 2-3 car tract houses so you can rebuild the cities to be more dense, and get all the stores to give up their parking lots, It's just not going to happen. :(

MrFantastic 3y ago

I agree and live in an area where I only have to use my car a few times a week and walk/bike most of the time. The problem is most people own homes in areas where it's not practical to create a 15 minute city. Plus a lot of people are lazy. My neighbor drove his car 600 yards to pick up a pizza.