4 ms·
In European cities it's often the opposite: - A train will take you right into the city center, sometimes even where cars are not allowed. OTOH entering the ci
by pornel 2y ago
In European cities it's often the opposite:
- A train will take you right into the city center, sometimes even where cars are not allowed. OTOH entering the city from suburbia can take an hour of being stuck in traffic.
- metro and trams can skip traffic. Bus lanes are common. There are no "stroads". Average car speed in London is 12mph. That's slower than a bike.
- Finding a parking place can easily take longer than waiting for public transport, and it will probably be an underground garage, far away from your destination. Bus stops are much denser than parking garages, so they usually involve less walking.
The US experience of driving on an 8-lane highway and arriving at a mandatory-parking-quota asphalt desert in front of your destination is rare in Europe. The closest we get is a 3-lane motorway to an IKEA on the city outskirts.
- ArtTimeInvestor 2y agoWith self-driving cars, there is no "finding a parking place". You just exit and the car drives on to the next customer. And without parking cars, streets become wider. Single lane becomes double lane.
- marcinzm 2y agoSo basically make the urban environment a sea of constant fast driving cars filling all available space. There's a reason a lot of cities are converting roads and urban centers into non-car area. Parking and car lanes replaced with bike paths and green areas. It's a much better quality of life. Which, oddly, some people prefer to a 1800s style corporate dystopia where most people's miserable lives are nothing but a means to drive ever more wealth to an elite minority.
- pornel 2y agoDouble lanes are still orders of magnitude less efficient than trains. In some dense European cities there's physically not enough road surface to put every traveller in a car, self-driving or not. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity#/media/File%3APassenger_Capacity_of_different_Transport_Modes.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Route_capacity#/media/File%3...
- zihotki 2y agoThis is EU, it would rather become a cycling path or some sort of park/recreational zone.