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Oh it is. You get traffic jams and that’s not exactly car-friendly. But still people drive. On top of that, walking on a sidewalk when a bus pass close by is mu

by mantas 1y ago

Oh it is. You get traffic jams and that’s not exactly car-friendly. But still people drive. On top of that, walking on a sidewalk when a bus pass close by is much more interesting than a car passing. And then there’s all the commercial traffic that is necessary to serve a dense city. And many cities, especially here in Europe, are dense enough to need some mode of transit. Especially with workplaces concentrated either in office parks or industrial districts by the city. But not multi million megapolies that warrant a sweet metro system. And that’s where cars shine. Although after living in one of the largest cities on earth with a very nice train system… there’s still plenty of traffic. And people still drive. Especially those who can’t afford living in city core and end up in cheaper more remote locations.

Dylan16807 1y ago
If traffic in a city was mostly busses and trucks you'd only need two lanes for them and the walking experience could get a lot nicer.
- mantas 1y ago
  You’d still have massive metal boxes passing you. On top of that, that’d likely mean highways torn up and replaced by narrow streets. Which would mean more traffic closer to people on sidewalks. The reverse of this happened here in backwaters of Eastern Europe. Before there was no city bypasses and in-city highways. Traffic was tenfold smaller because there were much much fewer private vehicles. But most of it was busses, lorries and so on. Long distance driving was done through downtowns. Nowadays there’s much more private traffic. But there’re bypasses routing away a lot of long distance traffic. A lot of city traffic is on isolated motor-only streets. Of course they waste space. But at the same time people don’t walk along those streets so big portion of traffic is not passing by anybody’s shoulder.
  - Dylan16807 1y ago
    > You’d still have massive metal boxes passing you. With more distance. > On top of that, that’d likely mean highways torn up and replaced by narrow streets. Which would mean more traffic closer to people on sidewalks. I'm not suggesting that. You can leave the limited access roads alone for now.
    - mantas 1y ago
      Why more distance? Streets wouldn’t get wider. Rather if you try to dense-up the city, streets will go narrower. Besides complete hellholes like 80s US from the famous parking lot pictures, when trying to dense up the city, wide major streets would go first being built up. At least here there massive parking lots to just build on exist mostly on the outskirts. There’s no point in building on them. Going closer to downtown, lots of underground parking with private property on top. Some multi-floor private garages that cost a lot of money to build and unlikely to get torn down any time soon, especially if street parking was gone making it even bigger deficit. If you remove street parking, there won’t be space to fit in anything meaningful without rebuilding stuff around it. Which is not gonna happen in meaningful scale in sane timespan.
      - Dylan16807 1y ago
        > Why more distance? Streets wouldn’t get wider. Rather if you try to dense-up the city, streets will go narrower. ......yes? You make the paved street narrower, allowing more distance between the lanes and the sidewalk. And I didn't say anything about changing the density of the overall city. I'm talking about places where people are already walking but they're next to tons of cars. > If you remove street parking, there won’t be space to fit in anything meaningful without rebuilding stuff around it. The original complaint was people being within arms length of high speed cars. The meaningful thing you do is make that stop being the case.
        mantas 1y ago
        Here paved part, besides the major isolated streets, is already quite as narrow as standard buses and lorries allow. Also, where streets were seen as too wide, when rebuilding, sometimes sidewalks got even narrower. The used space was either used for greenery (which is nice), dedicated bike paths (also good) or on-street commerce (which IMO sucks since I prefer wider sidewalks). Usually getting rid of traffic ideas involve densing up the cities by building more. The idea is that once you remove cars, people will want to live closer to PoIs. And more housing is needed. Hoping that people will just switch to public transit, from what I see, just doesn’t work - business and entertainment moves to car-OK parts of the city. There needs to be cheap housing and strict regulations preventing sprawl too. And I’m saying that „just“ solving cars at high speed passing by is very complex.

by mantas 1y ago

Dylan16807 1y ago

If traffic in a city was mostly busses and trucks you'd only need two lanes for them and the walking experience could get a lot nicer.

mantas 1y ago
You’d still have massive metal boxes passing you. On top of that, that’d likely mean highways torn up and replaced by narrow streets. Which would mean more traffic closer to people on sidewalks. The reverse of this happened here in backwaters of Eastern Europe. Before there was no city bypasses and in-city highways. Traffic was tenfold smaller because there were much much fewer private vehicles. But most of it was busses, lorries and so on. Long distance driving was done through downtowns. Nowadays there’s much more private traffic. But there’re bypasses routing away a lot of long distance traffic. A lot of city traffic is on isolated motor-only streets. Of course they waste space. But at the same time people don’t walk along those streets so big portion of traffic is not passing by anybody’s shoulder.
- Dylan16807 1y ago
  > You’d still have massive metal boxes passing you. With more distance. > On top of that, that’d likely mean highways torn up and replaced by narrow streets. Which would mean more traffic closer to people on sidewalks. I'm not suggesting that. You can leave the limited access roads alone for now.
  - mantas 1y ago
    Why more distance? Streets wouldn’t get wider. Rather if you try to dense-up the city, streets will go narrower. Besides complete hellholes like 80s US from the famous parking lot pictures, when trying to dense up the city, wide major streets would go first being built up. At least here there massive parking lots to just build on exist mostly on the outskirts. There’s no point in building on them. Going closer to downtown, lots of underground parking with private property on top. Some multi-floor private garages that cost a lot of money to build and unlikely to get torn down any time soon, especially if street parking was gone making it even bigger deficit. If you remove street parking, there won’t be space to fit in anything meaningful without rebuilding stuff around it. Which is not gonna happen in meaningful scale in sane timespan.
    - Dylan16807 1y ago
      > Why more distance? Streets wouldn’t get wider. Rather if you try to dense-up the city, streets will go narrower. ......yes? You make the paved street narrower, allowing more distance between the lanes and the sidewalk. And I didn't say anything about changing the density of the overall city. I'm talking about places where people are already walking but they're next to tons of cars. > If you remove street parking, there won’t be space to fit in anything meaningful without rebuilding stuff around it. The original complaint was people being within arms length of high speed cars. The meaningful thing you do is make that stop being the case.
      - mantas 1y ago
        Here paved part, besides the major isolated streets, is already quite as narrow as standard buses and lorries allow. Also, where streets were seen as too wide, when rebuilding, sometimes sidewalks got even narrower. The used space was either used for greenery (which is nice), dedicated bike paths (also good) or on-street commerce (which IMO sucks since I prefer wider sidewalks). Usually getting rid of traffic ideas involve densing up the cities by building more. The idea is that once you remove cars, people will want to live closer to PoIs. And more housing is needed. Hoping that people will just switch to public transit, from what I see, just doesn’t work - business and entertainment moves to car-OK parts of the city. There needs to be cheap housing and strict regulations preventing sprawl too. And I’m saying that „just“ solving cars at high speed passing by is very complex.