9 ms·
Cars in cities, let alone designing cities around cars, is one of the greatest tragedies of modern life.
by grg0 2y ago
Cars in cities, let alone designing cities around cars, is one of the greatest tragedies of modern life.
- jfengel 2y agoIt is, though the problem predates the cars. At the time cars were seen as a huge win over the vast piles of horse poop. Cities do need to be reconsidered for more public transit and more opportunities to walk, but other issues (delivery, emergency, disability, etc) have to figure in.
- EA-3167 2y agoNot just horse poop, but dead horses that were quite the chore to remove back in the day, and the danger posed to pedestrians by a bunch of quite large and easily panicked animals.
- 1over137 2y agoWe still have that danger. But the animals are homo sapiens and they are surrounded by 2 tonnes of metal. :)
- EA-3167 2y agoThis is true, but from the perspective of the time, automobiles were far from "2 tons of metal" and quite a bit slower. They were also a rich man's conveyance, even more so than a nice carriage, and I doubt people understood early on just how widely adopted the automobile would become. A lack of foresight is also very human.
- heresie-dabord 2y ago>A lack of foresight is also very human. Let's call it what it really is. The stubborn unwillingness to consider scalability in our designs and planning — even in an era where a machine can do calculation for us.
- Tade0 2y agoOne of the early examples of the Poisson distribution was the rate at which soldiers in the Prussian army would be fatally kicked by horses. Translates to a little over 30 deaths per year per million, so not a lot, though I suspect the number would have been much greater adjusted for distance travelled and even without that it's more than some countries achieve with their traffic.
- oblio 2y agoLet's be real here, a huge chunk of car traffic in cities is purely for convenience. Once that's reduced by say, 50%, everything becomes much better, but nobody gives up convenience voluntarily.
- Saline9515 2y agoThe problem is that, among casualties, you create an environment that is hostile for families and disabled people.
- loloquwowndueo 2y agoOnly if you just remove the cars without replacing them with good public transportation (family friendly, accessible, with special modes for disabled people).
- Saline9515 2y agoWhich doesn't exist and is hardly possible in Paris.
- chadd 2y agoi'm not sure this is true, for instance NYC ranks as the second most disabled-friendly city https://www.amny.com/lifestyle/new-york-city-ranks-2nd-in-a-study-revealing-the-worlds-most-disability-friendly-cities/#:~:text=New%20York%20City%20ranks%202nd,world's%20most%20disability%2Dfriendly%20cities https://www.amny.com/lifestyle/new-york-city-ranks-2nd-in-a-...
- Saline9515 2y agoIn Paris, 90% of the metro transportation system isn't accessible to wheelchairs and strollers. Buses are overcrowded and slow. Who doesn't enjoy to see someone cough on their newborn while fighting for a space for their stoller ?
- 2y ago
- SequoiaHope 2y agoThere was a time in between, where electric streetcars (trains) were a common mode of transport. But those got torn up for cars. That’s a real tragedy in hindsight.
- flomo 2y agoThat's the myth. Streetcars were actually torn up because busses were much cheaper, there was no conspiracy. The streetcars were also old and cold and ppl hated them. (I lived in a streetcar part of SF, and loved it, fwiw. But the only reason it's still there is a tunnel.)
- oblio 2y agoMany other places just... upgraded the trams. You know, the less radical solution.
- flomo 2y agoA bus is the least radical thing IMO, but yeah it took too long in most of USA to get some mass transit better than streetcars.
- jmward01 2y agoThat is a statement that really needs citation and qualification to back it up. I'd argue that 'cheaper' is used in a vacuum here. By that I mean that the point of mass transit isn't how much it costs, but how much value it provides. By that measure the bus services that replaced streetcars and other mass transit really doesn't stack up. Busses have led to much lower ridership which has led to a massive amount of bad secondary effects. Looking at how congestion pricing in NYC has increased mass transit use AND economic activity it is pretty clear that 'cheaper' has led to secondary effects that far outweigh any narrow operational gains from switching to busses.
- flomo 2y agoThe citation is every American transit system in the 1950s. Even SF only kept the streetcars where they couldn't replace with a bus line. I think you're making a different argument, where trains attract a more well-heeled commuter. Which is why many cities have brought back LRT as part of a redevelopment plan.
- ximeng 2y agoJust like the promise of EVs to replace the exhaust from ICE cars is seen as a win.
- Mawr 2y agoThose "other issues" are all worse with private cars than without.
- tzs 2y agoThey were also seen as a safety win [1][2]. Horses and horse drawn carts were a lot more dangerous than most people here probably think they were. From the second link: > It is easy to imagine that a hundred years ago, when cars were first appearing on our roads, they replaced previously peaceful, gentle and safe forms of travel. In fact, motor vehicles were welcomed as the answer to a desperate state of affairs. In 1900 it was calculated that in England and Wales there were around 100,000 horse drawn public passenger vehicles, half a million trade vehicles and about half a million private carriages. Towns in England had to cope with over 100 million tons of horse droppings a year (much of it was dumped at night in the slums) and countless gallons of urine. Men wore spats and women favoured outdoor ankle-length coats not out of a sense of fashion but because of the splash of liquified manure; and it was so noisy that straw had to be put down outside hospitals to muffle the clatter of horses’ hooves. Worst of all, with horses and carriages locked in immovable traffic jams, transport was grinding to a halt in London and other cities. > Moreover, horse-drawn transport was not safe. Road traffic deaths from horse-drawn vehicles in England and Wales between 1901 and 1905 were about 2,500 a year. This works out as about 70 road traffic deaths per million population per year which is close to the annual rate of 80 to 100 deaths per million for road traffic accidents in the 1980s and 1990s, although we must not forget that many people who died from injuries sustained in road accidents in 1900 would probably have survived today thanks to our A&E departments. > Motor vehicles were welcomed because they were faster, safer, unlikely to swerve or bolt, better able brake in an emergency, and took up less room: a single large lorry could pull a load that would take several teams of horses and wagons – and do so without producing any dung. By World War One industry had become dependent on lorries, traffic cruised freely down Oxford Street and Piccadilly, specialists parked their expensive cars ouside their houses in Harley and Wimpole Street, and the lives of general practitioners were transformed. By using even the cheapest of cars doctors no longer had to wake the stable lad and harness the horse to attend a night call. Instead it was ‘one pull of the handle and they were off’. Further, general practitioners could visit nearly twice as many patients in a day than they could in the days of the horse and trap. [1] https://legallysociable.com/2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-per-capita-in-horse-accidents-in-nyc-in-1900-than-in-auto-accidents-today/ https://legallysociable.com/2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-p... [2]https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/31/cars-and-horses https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/31/cars-and-horse...
- Sloowms 2y agoEmergency response times go down in almost any case where car use is restricted. In the Netherlands emergency vehicles take bike lane shortcuts because people on bikes can move out of the way more easily. In New York, congestion pricing reduced the response times of emergency services. Disability needs an annotations for only specific disabilities that don't inhibit driving. Which is a small subset of disabilities. Delivery of most things can be done with small cars/trucks.
- epolanski 2y agoAnd it's one of the biggest promoters of inequality. I am an European who studied at OSU in Columbus for a semester and it was absurd to me how on one side there was lots of work downtown, yet you could live 20 miles of it and it would take you two hours by public transport to get there, an odyssey. People without a car, insurance, poorer parts of the society were cut off from the job market for not having a way to connect. Suburbs are cute, but they are a tragedy of city planning, let alone the tragedy they are on a social level, where people will put everything in their houses including movie rooms, entertainment rooms, anything to avoid having to go out and socialize. Terrible.
- bslalwn 2y ago[flagged]
- const_cast 2y agoThe prices of cars have “skyrocketed” because the price is now closer to what they actually cost. Meaning, less is being externalized. Cars are inequality-creators because the drivers offload the cost to everyone, including those who don’t drive. Car centric decisions, air pollution, interstates and freeways, parking lots. It’s very much akin to tobacco. Tobacco used to be cheap - when the tobacco wouldn’t pay for your addiction, or your COPD, or your eventual death. Now they do - a tiny bit - and tobacco is expensive.
- bslalwn 2y ago>The prices of cars have “skyrocketed” because the price is now closer to what they actually cost. Meaning, less is being externalized. This is false. There are no “externalities” that are now getting paid. You don’t pay for the right to drive upfront, you already have a permit for that, and that permit is what pays for road maintenance, etc. Maybe the current price is not fair, but that permit hasn’t increased in price. The reality is that Europe let all manufacturers buy one another so they don't have to compete anymore. So they can do whatever they want with prices. >Cars are inequality-creators because the drivers offload the cost to everyone, including those who don’t drive. Which wasn't a problem when everybody could afford to drive before Europe ruined everything.
- Saline9515 2y agoParis didn't improve its public transportation system, as it made it impossible to own a car. It ends up as pure sadism for the inhabitants who are not childless, affluent 20/30 years old, and who have no alternative than having to take the piss-smelling cattle trains with no access the disabled people, or strollers.
- TulliusCicero 2y ago> A city improved the air quality "Pure sadism!!!" Yeah I'm sure everyone is real miserable, which is why they just voted in a referendum for more car-free streets. Amazing how out of touch with reality the car-dominance types are.
- Saline9515 2y agoYou clearly have a non-existent knowledge of French political life. This referendum had a participation rate of 4%, and only 62% of the voters voted yes. So around 2% of the total voters. By the way, the French metro's air is highly polluted, due to tire degradation and brake dust, making it unfit for children or pregnant women. So yeah, it's manageable for young people. But when a baby arrives, it's hell. Same if you are old. Or disabled.
- anigbrowl 2y agoFrench metro's air is highly polluted, due to tire degradation and brake dust, making it unfit for children or pregnant women These sound like...car problems.
- Saline9515 2y agoTrue, but the metro space is closed, so pollution can attain a very high level there.
- rangestransform 2y agoI can insulate myself from these problems in a car with a hepa air filter
- timewizard 2y agoThere are cities not designed around cars. We just call them "rural." You could not have had your urban city without cars. There is absolutely nothing "tragic" about this. Meanwhile you live in a world where petty wars are fought over resources to enhance the wealth of an extreme minority of the population. That's an actual tragedy.
- freen 2y agoIt seems we have very different definitions of “city”. I am very curious to hear yours.
- timewizard 2y agoIt seems you want to ignore half the problem.
- alistairSH 2y agoI’m still not sure what point you’re trying to make… you claimed cities can’t exist without cars. Yet London and Paris and Rome and damn near every big city in Europe did predate cars by centuries.
- masklinn 2y agoNot just Europe either. Tokyo was not named after the Tokyo Motor Vehicles Ltd.
- masklinn 2y ago> There are cities not designed around cars. We just call them "rural." You could not have had your urban city without cars. That is literally the opposite of reality.
- oblio 2y agoThe first "urban city" predates the car by about 5000 years.
- 2y ago
- paulcole 2y agoAt least in the US people absolutely fucking love their cars. They will lie about how much they hate them but ask them to actually change their behavior and you get nothing but a litany of excuses.
- alistairSH 2y agoI walk to work. In the suburbs. My wife rides a bike. In the suburbs. We chose a home that has grocers, schools, and dining within a walk or bike ride. We own cars because there are things beyond ~2 miles and transit options aren’t good. Sadly, doing this usually requires money. Lots of it.
- beastman82 2y agoI love mine and so does everyone else, and I don't feel ashamed at all. They're incredible.
- Vinnl 2y agoThere are probably more reasons for that, but if it's the only thing that allows me to get somewhere, of course I'd love it.
- jmilloy 2y agoI hate cars. Not using my car wouldn't change any of the things I hate about cars or car infrastructure. It's not lying.
- rufus_foreman 2y agoI'm not going to lie about it. I feel safest of all in my car. I can lock my car doors. It's the only way to live. In cars.
- cryptopian 2y agoI think you're getting cause and effect mixed up. Save for a few petrolheads and train enthusiasts, people use whatever happens to be the most convenient method to get around. In North America, most cities prioritise infrastructure for private cars to such an extent that any other mode is almost useless Since private cars scale badly, you want to encourage people to take other modes, but in order to change behaviour, the alternatives need to be attractive - cycle layouts that are safe, buses and trains that are frequent and reliable, city layouts that don't involve a long drive to buy food. You can't convince people out of taking the rational choice. You have to build it
- TacticalCoder 2y ago[dead]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- simonebrunozzi 2y agoThat's one of the reasons why I moved to Venice, Italy. No cars. City is still the same it was 500 years ago, more or less.