7 ms·

Light pollution is relatively easily solved, there's just not much will to do so. Noise pollution is best solved by reducing car-dependency which is a non-start

Light pollution is relatively easily solved, there's just not much will to do so. Noise pollution is best solved by reducing car-dependency which is a non-starter in most North American cities; I can't speak for Europe but I understand Paris to have undertaken a serious revolution in purging cars within the past decade.

andrepd 3y ago
Both the fight against car dependency and the housing policy in TFA have been spearheaded by the current mayor, Anne Hidalgo
- verisimi 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bedobi 3y ago
    yeah, make sure you move out of the city and go run hiding in the countryside somewhere if you stay in the city, the globalists WILL come for you, they WILL put you in 15 minute cities where everything you need is easily available within walking, bicycling or high quality transit distance (oh no!)
    - verisimi 3y ago
      Lol. I'm not worried. I just it's funny think it's funny how people live to line up on the side of the unelected global governance system and think that voting matters and believe everything they were taught in school/on TV etc. "I'm choosing to give up my car, and you will choose that too!"
      - bedobi 3y ago
        yeah, the default mode of human transportation is to drive a single occupancy private automobile, for every trip, everywhere, including in dense urban environments, and anyone who thinks otherwise is brainwashed by the globalists if you prefer walking, riding a bike or transit you're so brainwashed! wake up and listen to the truth the automobile and fossil fuel industries are trying to get out there!
        verisimi 3y ago
        But I didn't say any of that. Walk or ride - do whatever you like. But in the new world, one option will have been removed - driving. I'm not cheering the loss of that. I'm for free choice. You seem to be arguing in favour of removing other peoples' choices. And you think that's right! Who made you (or the Paris mayor) king/queen of the world? I'm also saying, artificially creating issues by removing roads, making them one way etc, in order to create terrible traffic, in order to then justify removing cars completely, is a form of manipulative abuse, being inflicted on people by government. I'm not going to cheer abusive behaviour.
        bedobi 3y ago
        I fundamentally disagree with every single word and every thought that led you there > Walk or ride - do whatever you like. But in the new world, one option will have been removed - driving. I'm not cheering the loss of that. I'm for free choice. You seem to be arguing in favour of removing other peoples' choices. And you think that's right! Who made you (or the Paris mayor) king/queen of the world? Akshully it's all other modes of transportation that have been exterminated by the private single occupancy automobile. Cities levelled and the entire planet polluted to make way for it, and walking, cycling and transit made not just unsafe and unpleasant but literally impossible and illegal, and everyone forced to pay insane amounts to subsidize roads that don't make any profit. Thankfully, in Paris and a handful of other cities, leaders are recognizing this and working on making walking, riding a bike and transit legal, safe and enjoyable again. So if you and other ardent motorists want to continue to exercise your free choice to drive, you will no longer be able to do so at the expense of everyone else, you will have to pay your fair share for roads and parking and accept that all space no longer belongs to you by default. > I'm also saying, artificially creating issues by removing roads, making them one way etc, in order to create terrible traffic, in order to then justify removing cars completely, is a form of manipulative abuse, being inflicted on people by government. I'm not going to cheer abusive behaviour. Roads create traffic and viable alternatives to driving reduces it. Any child, idiot or PhD urban planner and traffic engineer can tell you this.
vladvasiliu 3y ago
> I understand Paris to have undertaken a serious revolution in purging cars within the past decade. The issue is that they have mainly increased the friction of using cars in the city (reducing lanes, restricting parking, converting avenues to one-way) all the while the public transit enhancements are running late, and whatever lines were already there saw a drop in service quality. So increasing density would require a major improvement in public transit. Note, however, that the city of Paris proper already has one of the highest densities in the world.
- digging 3y ago
  That is unfortunate but realistically there's never going to be a political overhaul of that scale where all moves are perfectly synced. As long as they're actually working on the transit enhancements it seems completely acceptable to me (in the abstract; I'm not a Parisian)
  - testingParisGPE 3y ago
    Paris is building a lot of transit enhancements right now.
- Aromasin 3y ago
  The same is happening in the UK. They've made car travel harder without making public transport any better (outside of London), which has just lowered the average person's productivity rather than making any headway into tackling the core issue of people getting from A to B quicker, cheaper, with less pollution. They put in some heavy traffic restrictions in my local city of Oxford by closing off residential roads, forcing all traffic down "arterial" roads instead and putting parking restrictions all over the place. A year later, there are no fewer cars on the road or increased public transport usage; some local studies by the university confirmed that. People just spend more time stuck in traffic travelling longer distances. It's like having a person with an injured leg and a missing one. Instead of giving the person a prosthesis to remove the load, they've just lopped the other off altogether, leaving them to crawl from place to place instead of hobble.
marsRoverDev 3y ago
The purging has really picked up pace in the last couple of years, and I think a major highlight will be the upcoming cleansing of Place de la Concorde.
the_gastropod 3y ago
Hear hear! Anytime someone argues something like "I could never give up my car and live in a city! They're so noisy!" I feel like a version of that Goose meme. "NOISY FROM WHAT?"
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > "NOISY FROM WHAT?" Sirens, people yelling, loud music, construction, etc.
  - the_gastropod 3y ago
    Credentials: Lived in NYC for 10+ years Sirens: valid. But those suckers are usually attached to vehicles People yelling: not often in my experience. And the usual offender when someone is yelling, it's some doofus in a car yelling at some other doofus in a car. Loud music: not often in my experience. And the usual offender when there is loud music, it's some doofus playing loud music in their car. Construction: valid But the single most frequent / annoying loud sound: car horns. Constantly.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      It varies by area; I remember staying in Brooklyn with a friend and being a few floors up the traffic noise was minimal (constant), few horns, but it seemed an emergency vehicle went by every few minutes. Most of what I remember of European cities, too, when anywhere near the denser parts. Part of "city noise" is dependent where you're living, and how new it is. Close, cramped, older building with people arguing above and below and beside you? Not fun. Newer building with excellent soundproofing? Nowhere near as bad.
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      > Sirens: valid. But those suckers are usually attached to vehicles But they're attached to emergency vehicles. The fire department is not going to wait for the bus when responding to a fire, so you can't actually get rid of this by installing mass transit, and then its prevalence is proportional to density. > People yelling: not often in my experience. And the usual offender when someone is yelling, it's some doofus in a car yelling at some other doofus in a car. > Loud music: not often in my experience. And the usual offender when there is loud music, it's some doofus playing loud music in their car. If people are usually in cars then the people making noise will usually be in cars. But it's not as if they're going to stop having business disputes or lovers' quarrels or whatever it is this time just because they're on foot. And whether loud music is a problem depends primarily on who your neighbors are. In a city you'll have a lot of them and you don't get to choose who they are. > car horns Ironically this doesn't happen in the suburbs because there are more roads and parking per car, and thereby fewer traffic disputes and no need to summon someone from a building immediately instead of parking and going inside. So you're now equally making the case for cities to have wider roads and more parking.

andrepd 3y ago

Both the fight against car dependency and the housing policy in TFA have been spearheaded by the current mayor, Anne Hidalgo

verisimi 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- bedobi 3y ago
  yeah, make sure you move out of the city and go run hiding in the countryside somewhere if you stay in the city, the globalists WILL come for you, they WILL put you in 15 minute cities where everything you need is easily available within walking, bicycling or high quality transit distance (oh no!)
  - verisimi 3y ago
    Lol. I'm not worried. I just it's funny think it's funny how people live to line up on the side of the unelected global governance system and think that voting matters and believe everything they were taught in school/on TV etc. "I'm choosing to give up my car, and you will choose that too!"
    - bedobi 3y ago
      yeah, the default mode of human transportation is to drive a single occupancy private automobile, for every trip, everywhere, including in dense urban environments, and anyone who thinks otherwise is brainwashed by the globalists if you prefer walking, riding a bike or transit you're so brainwashed! wake up and listen to the truth the automobile and fossil fuel industries are trying to get out there!
      - verisimi 3y ago
        But I didn't say any of that. Walk or ride - do whatever you like. But in the new world, one option will have been removed - driving. I'm not cheering the loss of that. I'm for free choice. You seem to be arguing in favour of removing other peoples' choices. And you think that's right! Who made you (or the Paris mayor) king/queen of the world? I'm also saying, artificially creating issues by removing roads, making them one way etc, in order to create terrible traffic, in order to then justify removing cars completely, is a form of manipulative abuse, being inflicted on people by government. I'm not going to cheer abusive behaviour.
        bedobi 3y ago
        I fundamentally disagree with every single word and every thought that led you there > Walk or ride - do whatever you like. But in the new world, one option will have been removed - driving. I'm not cheering the loss of that. I'm for free choice. You seem to be arguing in favour of removing other peoples' choices. And you think that's right! Who made you (or the Paris mayor) king/queen of the world? Akshully it's all other modes of transportation that have been exterminated by the private single occupancy automobile. Cities levelled and the entire planet polluted to make way for it, and walking, cycling and transit made not just unsafe and unpleasant but literally impossible and illegal, and everyone forced to pay insane amounts to subsidize roads that don't make any profit. Thankfully, in Paris and a handful of other cities, leaders are recognizing this and working on making walking, riding a bike and transit legal, safe and enjoyable again. So if you and other ardent motorists want to continue to exercise your free choice to drive, you will no longer be able to do so at the expense of everyone else, you will have to pay your fair share for roads and parking and accept that all space no longer belongs to you by default. > I'm also saying, artificially creating issues by removing roads, making them one way etc, in order to create terrible traffic, in order to then justify removing cars completely, is a form of manipulative abuse, being inflicted on people by government. I'm not going to cheer abusive behaviour. Roads create traffic and viable alternatives to driving reduces it. Any child, idiot or PhD urban planner and traffic engineer can tell you this.

vladvasiliu 3y ago

> I understand Paris to have undertaken a serious revolution in purging cars within the past decade. The issue is that they have mainly increased the friction of using cars in the city (reducing lanes, restricting parking, converting avenues to one-way) all the while the public transit enhancements are running late, and whatever lines were already there saw a drop in service quality. So increasing density would require a major improvement in public transit. Note, however, that the city of Paris proper already has one of the highest densities in the world.

digging 3y ago
That is unfortunate but realistically there's never going to be a political overhaul of that scale where all moves are perfectly synced. As long as they're actually working on the transit enhancements it seems completely acceptable to me (in the abstract; I'm not a Parisian)
- testingParisGPE 3y ago
  Paris is building a lot of transit enhancements right now.
Aromasin 3y ago
The same is happening in the UK. They've made car travel harder without making public transport any better (outside of London), which has just lowered the average person's productivity rather than making any headway into tackling the core issue of people getting from A to B quicker, cheaper, with less pollution. They put in some heavy traffic restrictions in my local city of Oxford by closing off residential roads, forcing all traffic down "arterial" roads instead and putting parking restrictions all over the place. A year later, there are no fewer cars on the road or increased public transport usage; some local studies by the university confirmed that. People just spend more time stuck in traffic travelling longer distances. It's like having a person with an injured leg and a missing one. Instead of giving the person a prosthesis to remove the load, they've just lopped the other off altogether, leaving them to crawl from place to place instead of hobble.

marsRoverDev 3y ago

The purging has really picked up pace in the last couple of years, and I think a major highlight will be the upcoming cleansing of Place de la Concorde.

the_gastropod 3y ago

Hear hear! Anytime someone argues something like "I could never give up my car and live in a city! They're so noisy!" I feel like a version of that Goose meme. "NOISY FROM WHAT?"

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
> "NOISY FROM WHAT?" Sirens, people yelling, loud music, construction, etc.
- the_gastropod 3y ago
  Credentials: Lived in NYC for 10+ years Sirens: valid. But those suckers are usually attached to vehicles People yelling: not often in my experience. And the usual offender when someone is yelling, it's some doofus in a car yelling at some other doofus in a car. Loud music: not often in my experience. And the usual offender when there is loud music, it's some doofus playing loud music in their car. Construction: valid But the single most frequent / annoying loud sound: car horns. Constantly.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    It varies by area; I remember staying in Brooklyn with a friend and being a few floors up the traffic noise was minimal (constant), few horns, but it seemed an emergency vehicle went by every few minutes. Most of what I remember of European cities, too, when anywhere near the denser parts. Part of "city noise" is dependent where you're living, and how new it is. Close, cramped, older building with people arguing above and below and beside you? Not fun. Newer building with excellent soundproofing? Nowhere near as bad.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > Sirens: valid. But those suckers are usually attached to vehicles But they're attached to emergency vehicles. The fire department is not going to wait for the bus when responding to a fire, so you can't actually get rid of this by installing mass transit, and then its prevalence is proportional to density. > People yelling: not often in my experience. And the usual offender when someone is yelling, it's some doofus in a car yelling at some other doofus in a car. > Loud music: not often in my experience. And the usual offender when there is loud music, it's some doofus playing loud music in their car. If people are usually in cars then the people making noise will usually be in cars. But it's not as if they're going to stop having business disputes or lovers' quarrels or whatever it is this time just because they're on foot. And whether loud music is a problem depends primarily on who your neighbors are. In a city you'll have a lot of them and you don't get to choose who they are. > car horns Ironically this doesn't happen in the suburbs because there are more roads and parking per car, and thereby fewer traffic disputes and no need to summon someone from a building immediately instead of parking and going inside. So you're now equally making the case for cities to have wider roads and more parking.