Banning cars from cities

[JB400]

Can a modern city still function properly and prosper if it bans all cars from its roads?  One city in Germany thinks it can.

https://autos.yahoo.com/news/european-city-wants-eliminate-cars-2034-140023025.html

[Baldwinvette77]

Glad i don't live there 

[Ghoste]

It might work there but that's much different I think than in North America.

[myk]

Come and get 'em...

[RallyeMike]

I wonder how long it will take the fire department to arrive on site with buckets and step ladders via bicycle?

[JB400]

I doubt that it can be done.  They'd have to have Corner stores and bazaars so that people can acquire their necessary goods.  Major retailers would go under in that area, unless it was them having the corner stores.  It'd be a step back 100+ years.

[XH29N0G]

Hamburg is a big city, so this looks ambitious to me.  Then again, it would seem European cities are better set up for this than those on this side of the Atlantic with shops etc... to make a local existence more possible.   

I cannot imagine they will do away with the roads (but I'm not tapped into this), I imagine they would need those for things like fire and supplies to markets, presumably so people could move in/out, but it might not be that bad.  I lived in smaller ones (order 200,000-600,000) and with public transport, bikes, and bike trailers and it worked fine.   

Would be a bummer for my charger though.

[Mike DC]

  

I doubt that it can be done.  They'd have to have Corner stores and bazaars so that people can acquire their necessary goods.  Major retailers would go under in that area, unless it was them having the corner stores.  It'd be a step back 100+ years.

Maybe they never moved away from being a pedestrian city in the first place.  Most of Europe never did.  They kept their gasoline expensive and kept the brakes on urban sprawl.  


Not only that, who says that change (towards cars) was ever a step forward?  After a few generations it's looking like an idiotic move on our part.  It only works with cheap resources which are quickly dwindling.  Many would argue that it has been terrible for our physical health & quality of life.  Not to mention our cities & countryside. 

[Ghoste]

Yes, it was so much better when it took weeks and weeks to cross the ocean and at least day just to ride your horse to the next town.  Striking out for another state meant likely never seeing friends and family again.  Of course in spite of the fact that city streets were clogged with horse turds we should also remember that 90% of urban dwellers didn't even have a horse, that privilege was reserved for farmers and anyone wealthy enough to have property for a stable or be able to board their personal transportation.  Life was really so much better then I think we should go back to candles for lighting too.  Hell, lets all move into caves and really make society better.

[wingcar]

So the question is...can a modern city survive and grow without the automobile?   Considering that most, if not all modern cities are built around the automobile...granted major cities such as those on the East coast like New York do rely heavily on mass transit...but, they still have a lot of roads and vehicles to fill them.  (And, what about the delivery of goods by truck?  Or, Fire trucks and other emergency vehicles...how do they get around a city not designed for them?)

I feel "Green Belts" within a city are a good idea....but to try and eliminate cars altogether might be asking too much.... 

[Mike DC]

Yes, it was so much better when it took weeks and weeks to cross the ocean and at least day just to ride your horse to the next town.  Striking out for another state meant likely never seeing friends and family again.  Of course in spite of the fact that city streets were clogged with horse turds we should also remember that 90% of urban dwellers didn't even have a horse, that privilege was reserved for farmers and anyone wealthy enough to have property for a stable or be able to board their personal transportation.  Life was really so much better then I think we should go back to candles for lighting too.  Hell, lets all move into caves and really make society better.

New York is a pretty advanced city by most people's reckoning these days.  Less than half of the residents own a car and maybe 1/4th of them actually commute to work.  

Are NYC residents all poorer than all the car-driving people in every small town & suburb in the country?  No, they just live in a place that has remained more structured around foot traffic.  Cars are less practical there than the suburban/rural areas.  It's not a coincidence, the two different needs are often competing with each other.  

NYC isn't backward about this, it's just different.

[Cooter]

Ain't nobody goin back to horse and buggy. Plain and simple. Imo, We have enough fuel for at least another 100 plus years. The motor car is king.

[Ghoste]

At least the New Yorkers have a choice,  start banning cars in cities and force everyone to walk and you don't find that a step backwards?

[Mike DC]

I would never vote to BAN cars.  I would prefer to control it with fuel prices if I was emperor of the USA.  The public would scream bloody murder but that doesn't mean it's a bad policy.  (If gas had been 25 cents a gallon our whole lives then the public would be screaming bloody murder today if it went up to 50 cents.)


As for controlling the amount of traffic just in the cities, that is a more difficult thing to do.  I'm not sure how I would want to deal with that one.  It's tempting to use tech to track all the cars in the city (mileage restrictions or taxation, etc) but I don't like the Big Brother aspect of that.  Seems like there should be some better method.  I'm okay with using money/taxation/etc to control it but I'm not sure how to enforce that right.


Any kind of shift away from cars in cities should be gradual IMO.  It's a dramatic change in lifestyle for any place that is car-centric.  

[JB400]

   

I doubt that it can be done.  They'd have to have Corner stores and bazaars so that people can acquire their necessary goods.  Major retailers would go under in that area, unless it was them having the corner stores.  It'd be a step back 100+ years.

Maybe they never moved away from being a pedestrian city in the first place.  Most of Europe never did.  They kept their gasoline expensive and kept the brakes on urban sprawl. 


Not only that, who says that change (towards cars) was ever a step forward?  After a few generations it's looking like an idiotic move on our part.  It only works with cheap resources which are quickly dwindling.  Many would argue that it has been terrible for our physical health & quality of life.  Not to mention our cities & countryside. 

After doing a little research, I'd have to agree with you on the first part.  Hamburg did keep its pedestrian lifestyle.  Probably after being destroyed in WW2 and under control of the Soviets during the Cold War would encourage that way of living. 

However, I can't see how the automobile could be a step back.  Unless you are lucky enough to have a horse, or a boat next to a body of water, a person is pretty much well stuck in a 40 mile radius around their current location. That's about how far an average person can go in a day on foot.   An automobile traveling at highway speed can achieve that distance in 30 minutes.  In that 40 miles, your resources are limited, and a person is limited by how much resources they can carry. An automobile can carry multiple times as many resources, multiple times, and faster than a person.  Where as a person would spend all day (or multiple days)  gathering resources to accomplish a task, on foot,  the same person can spend less than 1 day with an automobile, gather the resources to do a task, do the task, and then have plenty of time to accomplish the next task.  How can the ability to accomplish something with the aid of automobile in less time be a step back when compared to how long it takes to do the same thing on foot?

[LaOtto70Charger]

How is a person limited to a 40 mile radius when they have 200 mph trains?  Plus bicycles and local stores for groceries.  Oh and people like UPS deliver to your down things you buy off this odd site like Amazon. Europe is an ideal place for not having a car.  Heck in some cities they had bicycle storage units at the train station.  People buy multiple crap bikes and leave them in different cities.

[Ghoste]

All true, my point however is that the invention of the personal automobile was a great step forward for people.  It brought some negatives, yes but the advancements it made for our society are enormous.

[MaximRecoil]

It is hard to believe that there are Earth-worshiping, tree-hugging members of the environmentalist cult posting on this forum; a forum dedicated to classic Dodge Chargers, the most desirable of which get 10 MPG or less.

[JB400]

How is a person limited to a 40 mile radius when they have 200 mph trains?  Plus bicycles and local stores for groceries.  Oh and people like UPS deliver to your down things you buy off this odd site like Amazon. Europe is an ideal place for not having a car.  Heck in some cities they had bicycle storage units at the train station.  People buy multiple crap bikes and leave them in different cities.

My 40 miles was on foot.  However, since you want to add in trains, not everyone has a train that pulls into their front drive, and not everyone has access to 200 mph trains either.  You still have to gather your resources and bring them to the train, which means you're still limited to 40 miles around the train.  With an automobile, a person can take it within feet of their resources in most cases, gather them, and continue on to their next location and task.

Having an automobile just opens up more possibilities for a person than if they were on foot.  A person on foot spends more time and energy just traveling whereas a person with an automobile can spend more time doing something and less time traveling.

[JB400]

It is hard to believe that there are Earth-worshiping, tree-hugging members of the environmentalist cult posting on this forum; a forum dedicated to classic Dodge Chargers, the most desirable of which get 10 MPG or less.

Even these people have a good taste in automobiles, and you'll find that most of them don't use them for everyday driving, but instead drive something a little bit more economical.

[XH29N0G]

It is hard to believe that there are Earth-worshiping, tree-hugging members of the environmentalist cult posting on this forum; a forum dedicated to classic Dodge Chargers, the most desirable of which get 10 MPG or less.

That's me.  Daily driver is a bike.  The charger keeps me sane. 

[Mike DC]

It is hard to believe that there are Earth-worshiping, tree-hugging members of the environmentalist cult posting on this forum; a forum dedicated to classic Dodge Chargers, the most desirable of which get 10 MPG or less.

I like guns.  I'm fine with me/friends/relatives shooting them in my yard.
And yet I don't want people shooting guns inside my house.

 
I like cars too.  
But I don't like them crowding up the dense cities, displacing the pedestrians, and causing urban sprawl. 

Cars in cities are fine in moderation IMO.  But it's trouble to let a city grow while cars are cheap & totally unrestricted.

[Ghoste]

I don't want people shooting guns inside my house either.  Nor do I wnt them driving cars inside of it though.  I also wouldn't want guests to have to park in some designated planet haters lot at the edge of town and have to rent bicycles or something to come in and see me if I lived in the city.  Maybe the problem isn't cars, maybe its too many people?  Maybe we should encourage urban sprawl and place and pedestrian congestive tax on anyone who enters the heart of the city?  It's just a thought.

[XH29N0G]

......I also wouldn't want guests to have to park in some designated planet haters lot at the edge of town and have to rent bicycles or something to come in and see me if I lived in the city....

Wow, that brings back a memory....When I was a kid, we went to visit a family friend who had a house on the far side of Venice....I remember wondering why we were leaving the car ....

[Mike DC]

I don't want people shooting guns inside my house either.  Nor do I wnt them driving cars inside of it though.  I also wouldn't want guests to have to park in some designated planet haters lot at the edge of town and have to rent bicycles or something to come in and see me if I lived in the city.  Maybe the problem isn't cars, maybe its too many people?  Maybe we should encourage urban sprawl and place and pedestrian congestive tax on anyone who enters the heart of the city?  It's just a thought.

Maybe the guests could take public transportation to get within a few blocks of your place.  

Most of the USA has a dim view of public transportation because of circumstances.  Of course PT sucks when there are a few infrequent lines, stretched over an unfeasibly large area, and its mostly used by people too poor for a car.  That's a recipe for a bad experience with it.  

It gets much better when the population/area gets compacted enough to make the service fast & frequent.  And when middle & upper class people are using it as much as the poor, the whole experience gets much less dangerous & better maintained - these sort of problems actually get fixed when they start affecting wealthy people.

[LaOtto70Charger]

Venice would be cool to see.  How far spread out is it?

[XH29N0G]

Venice would be cool to see.  How far spread out is it?

I remember Venice as being quite compact and designed in some pre auto time with some very contorted alleyways.  It is  1 mile by 1 (plus a little) miles, and they have lots of boats and water taxi's so it is not without transportation.   

[Mike DC]

 
Better go see Venice now.  Rising sea levels are probably gonna hit that place hard in the next few generations.