Eliminating car use in cities

[SS-18 ICBM]

The benefits of removing cars from cities are obvious, such as eliminating gridlock which frays people's nerves and causes needless pollution. I'd like to know what possible reasons there are for people to still need* cars and thus not rely 100% on public transport in urban areas. I wonder if there are ways to upgrade transport systems and other ones (e.g. online purchasing and distribution to take care of retail travel) in order to make a city only reliable on mass transit. Might there also be a need for more stringent urban planning and regulations to facilitate this plan?

*Yes, need. Walking a few city blocks is not hazardous to your health**
**Actually, it might be, but where did that smog come from?

 

[BenitoChavez]

I'd like to know what possible reasons there are for people to still need* cars and thus not rely 100% on public transport in urban areas

If you live in a city but ever need to travel outside the city and vice versa you pretty much need a car

 

[bhsup]

Not all urban areas have mass transit that effectively covers them.

 

[Zelig]

I don't need a car, but it makes my life more convenient for commuting to work (15 minutes vs 90 minutes), snowboarding (can drive instead of getting rides from other people with cars), groceries (carrying groceries on the bus is kind of sucky), etc. I'll get rid of it once robotaxis become ubiquitous.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The benefits of removing cars from cities are obvious, such as eliminating gridlock which frays people's nerves and causes needless pollution. I'd like to know what possible reasons there are for people to still need* cars and thus not rely 100% on public transport in urban areas. I wonder if there are ways to upgrade transport systems and other ones (e.g. online purchasing and distribution to take care of retail travel) in order to make a city only reliable on mass transit. Might there also be a need for more stringent urban planning and regulations to facilitate this plan?

*Yes, need. Walking a few city blocks is not hazardous to your health**
**Actually, it might be, but where did that smog come from?

The problem is that your solution has to be retroactive.

Urban planning for the last century has revolved around cars, and it has worked. You can talk about how people could live where they could get to work and back without a car, but the fact is that that is not where they currently live. Trying to design public transportation around where people currently live makes public transit not work, because people's choice of location was originally based on cars.

The solution is displacement of cars. Add light rail lines, specifically by turning every eleventh street into a light rail track. Add bus capacity and convenience, by turning the street centered between the rail lines into a bus only road with traffic light priority. Now people can light rail into the city and easily catch an uncrowded local bus from the rail station to a stop very close to their destination. And driving a car has become an order of magnitude more unpleasant, at least. As light rail traffic increases, knock lanes out of the freeways to accommodate it.

 

[downtown]

There are tons of reasons why somebody would need a car. In the US, there are probably only five or six cities were one can live in an urban core and rely JUST on public transit, and maybe only 2-3 where you could do it comfortably.

Cars are great for grocery shopping, buying anything larger than one bag, city to city (or suburb to suburb transit, which is neglected in basically all US public transit networks), or for traveling late at night when public transit doesn't run.

Solution? Denser developments, building light rail systems, ending incentives to move corporate job centers to outer suburbs, lots of buses. All of which = very expensive, with little political will.

I don't have a car, btw. But my life would be a hell of a lot easier if I did.

 

[Borachio]

Disabled people really do need cars. Public transport can be a real pain to use for them.

Why not use electric cars in cities? Seems ideal to me. With a range of... whatever. I'll go look it up.

Those Tesla cars have a range of 200 miles and can do 90 mph. But at £100,000 they're a bit expensive at the moment.

The Toyota Twingo, is it? What range has that got?

Not that electric cars don't have problems of course. But pollution in cities is reaching catastrophic levels mainly due to diesel NOx, I think. Can't remember.

And using public transport for a family's weekly grocery shop would be a total nightmare. I don't know how some people manage without a car. But they surely must. They always used to. Before widespread car ownership. Which isn't that long ago.

No doubt involving a lot of visits to the local shop(s).


Link to video.

 

[warpus]

Ideally you'd want a car to go on road trips and to visit people in other cities, and use public transit to move around the city you live in.. OR you rent one of those zip cars for a couple hours. That's what a lot of people in cities like Toronto do - it'd be a stupid idea to live downtown and have a car. It'd be hell.

Some European cities have already banned the use of cars downtown. We're headed in this direction for sure, but North America is going to be slow to adapt.

Isn't the Tesla supposed to be a sports car btw?

 

[luiz]

Also note that even in countries where mass transit is great, most people who can afford it will still own a car. They use it for shopping, commuting to suburban or rural areas, getting to work on a rainy day...

What's with all this radical nonsense lately? Banning air traveling? Banning cars? Come on folks.

 

[gay_Aleks]

Because, slowly our planet is, apparently, dying. Soon, the ozone layer will be so big, you could fit a Galactus through it, thus ending our species.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Ideally you'd want a car to go on road trips and to visit people in other cities, and use public transit to move around the city you live in.. OR you rent one of those zip cars for a couple hours.

Yeah, something like a bicycle sharing system but for cars located at the transit hubs at the outskirts of cities is what I'm thinking for that.

What's with all this radical nonsense lately?

Because "it's what I'm used to" isn't much of a discussion point.

 

[luiz]

Because, slowly our planet is, apparently, dying. Soon, the ozone layer will be so big, you could fit a Galactus through it, thus ending our species.

The planet wouldn't die even if we unleashed all of our nukes at once.

Really, enough hyperbole. Global Warming will have some bad effects (and also some good ones, and nobody has ever proven that the bad will outweigh the good), but it certainly will not end life on Earth. Nor make the Earth inhospitable for humans.

Also also, isn't the hole on the Ozone Layer pretty much stagnant?

Because "it's what I'm used to" isn't much of a discussion point.

Do you realize that the carbon emissions resulting from the cost and material expenditure to turn all big and mid-sized cities in the US alone into efficient "car-less" zones would certainly dwarf car emissions?

How many big and mid-sized cities are there in the US? You want to build mass transit in all of them? Covering all the immense suburban sprawls? Or you want to destroy the suburbs and move everyone close to the city core? Do you have any idea of the size of the enterprise you're talking about here? You would need to undo 100 years of urban growth in the US.

 

[Borachio]

How about working from home? And video conferencing.

 

[Mise]

I like Borachio's idea: electric cars with 100% renewable electricity sources. Sounds perfect!

 

[BenitoChavez]

I like Borachio's idea: electric cars with 100% renewable electricity sources. Sounds perfect!

Link to video.

 

[Whomp]

We live in a big urban area and use all the alternatives to cars including car share for our second vehicle.

That said we do use the car for getting kids to their activities which are all over. Often, we have to divide and conquer with that second vehicle.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Do you realize that the carbon emissions resulting from the cost and material expenditure to turn all big and mid-sized cities in the US alone into efficient "car-less" zones would certainly dwarf car emissions?

How many big and mid-sized cities are there in the US? You want to build mass transit in all of them? Covering all the immense suburban sprawls? Or you want to destroy the suburbs and move everyone close to the city core? Do you have any idea of the size of the enterprise you're talking about here? You would need to undo 100 years of urban growth in the US.

How the hell did you get all that from the opening post? I don't even remember mentioning the US in there.

How about working from home? And video conferencing.

That's another solution that can't be discounted.

Also, can we keep any climate change debates out of this thread? Go make your own bloody thread if you want to argue about that.

 

[uppi]

The benefits of removing cars from cities are obvious, such as eliminating gridlock which frays people's nerves and causes needless pollution. I'd like to know what possible reasons there are for people to still need* cars and thus not rely 100% on public transport in urban areas. I wonder if there are ways to upgrade transport systems and other ones (e.g. online purchasing and distribution to take care of retail travel) in order to make a city only reliable on mass transit. Might there also be a need for more stringent urban planning and regulations to facilitate this plan?

*Yes, need. Walking a few city blocks is not hazardous to your health**
**Actually, it might be, but where did that smog come from?

At the moment, there are two situations where I would say I need a car. The first one is transporting bulky and/or heavy things from and to my home. The second would be for driving somewhere rural (There are not that many mountains you can start climbing from a train station). Both of those are infrequent enough that I do not need (and actually do not want) to own a car.

To get around the first issue, I would need an affordable and, most importantly, reliable delivery service that I could tell when exactly to come. Otherwise the chances are to slim to meet me at home to accept the delivery. But even then, the delivery service would come to me by car, so if I go and rent one myself, car usage is not increasing by much.

Restricting the use of cars might be a boon for smaller grocery stores. People would chose the stores they go to by location rather than by price. Small, but close shops would be able to compete against big, but distant malls.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Two words...hand truck.

 

[Tee Kay]

Not all urban areas have mass transit that effectively covers them.

This.

Environmentalists who are anti-car need to actually provide people with a reasonable alternative; otherwise, they should shut up.