I'm from Pontevedra. It has been the major's long-term project (~ 20 years) to make the city for the pedestrians: and he's done it. This works mainly because of two things: 1) the city is small and it takes aprox 30 min to walk it entirely from end to end, and 2) it is mostly flat. Only a smooth hill from "orillamar" to "alameda/peregrina". Unfortunately, the major obsessed with getting rid of cars (which I am highly grateful) but forgot to provide reliable public transport to close-by villages (max 5km,i.e., Poio/Marin/Salcedo). This means tha people from these villages commute by car to the city, which has really poor parking capacity. And the most important thing: there are zero specialized jobs in Pontevedra. Either you are a public state worker, for which you need to pass an exam to lock a lifelong job with no possibility of being fired regardless of how incompetent you are, or you work in hospitality. My partner works in Santiago and I work in the UK. There is no future for us in our city unless we want to study and compete for a position with thousands of other Spaniards. I firmly believe the major should also prioritise quality jobs. It is pretty nice for tourists to experience a city with no cars, but the reality of most locals is that they either leave or settle to accept precarious jobs.
There are a lot of places with crappy job markets and plenty of cars. I'm thinking of southern Italy for instance. At least they put the city on the map for something positive. Better than being just another anonymous place with poor job prospects and, who knows, maybe getting some attention helps with the economy.
This is really amazing to see trending on HN. I spent a couple days in Pontevedra this summer while walking the Camino de Santiago. It was absolutely delightful and what I experienced aligns with the article. The old town was filled with wide streets almost exclusively for walking, cafes and restaurants that sprawled into plazas, and people young and old enjoying the car free public space. It was one of the first stops on our trip through Spain and as an American it was stunning.
In America the contrast is stark. Most of our public spaces prioritize cars instead of people. I’m lucky to live near the beltline in Atlanta. It’s incredible to see how people flock to the beltline for a car free experience. It’s such a rare thing in America. Where it exists you can see that there is tremendous demand for it. Supply on the other hand is unfortunately very difficult to deliver.
>Where it exists you can see that there is tremendous demand for it.
Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time, or they witness (or experience) violence, or some other anti-social behavior sours the whole thing.
I spent some time in NYC during the Giuliani years, after the city did a lot of work cleaning it all up: stopping turnstile jumpers, removing graffiti, more police, etc. It was great. You'd get the occasional guy that jumps on, makes a speech about how he's raising money for something or other, and walks around trying to sell chocolate bars. And there was the occasional dangerous person, insisting on getting up in your face.
So long as this sort of behavior remains at a very low level, something like maybe once every couple of weeks, that's probably okay. But public transit loses all appeal if it happens often. If it rises to the level of violence, everybody starts thinking about the suburbs.
Public transit requires a certain level of unspoken agreement. "We will all behave in this manner." If this unspoken agreement is broken often enough, then it must be enforced. If it is not, and other options present themselves, people will choose the other options.
This happened en masse many decades ago in America. Those that could decamped for other places where their social expectations were met.
I'm a big supporter of urbanism. I loathe the time I spend in my car, and I don't even have that far of a commute, but I have zero other options if I want to live where crime is low and the schools aren't dysfunctional. Until this is addressed, there is no argument about commuter density or efficiency of movement or anything else the proponents of public transit like to talk about that will make a lick of difference.
The worst argument anybody can make is "but that's just life in the big city!" If so, then I'm not going to live and raise my family in the big city. Airy-fairy principles of efficiency or an arguable notion of convenience will not take precedence over safety and quality.
All this applies to cars as well. Drivers are wild and driving is absurdly dangerous. I hate driving because other drives act like they are the car in the world - particularly post covid. Here in Toronto turn signals feel like they have been uninstalled. We have a ton of street racers tearing up the roads. I see motorcyclists pop wheelies and rip down major streets weekly.
All of your complaints about lack of pro social behavior applies to drivers too.
> Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time
OP is right. The demand is huge and supply is tiny. Even with those scary panhandlers people are jamming onto public transport (when it actually exists) and going far far out of their way to experience walkable areas.
> zero other options if I want to live where crime is low and the schools aren't dysfunctional
Crime in NYC is exceedingly low and the schools are great. Why don't you simply move to Chelsea or the Upper West Side?
Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time, or they witness (or experience) violence, or some other anti-social behavior sours the whole thing.
These are not issues with public transit. These are issues with municipalities that don't invest in their citizens.
For one example, public transit connects people to jobs. Some people in nicer areas with good jobs fight against public transit because they don't want the working class to have easy access to their neighborhood. So, again, the issue isn't public transit, it's people who don't want to share their municipality's resources. New York today has free kindergarten, universal school lunches and the excelsior scholarship program. Thanks to investments like this, we see crime in NY today is lower than even Giuliani's tenure as mayor...
> Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time
People love driving until they're stuck in traffic, or their kid dies in a fiery car crash after being ran into by a drunk driver, or they get a flat tire, or can't afford their monthly car payment.
To your point about society needing to be better, that applies generally and has nothing to do specifically with transit, walking around outside, or any other daily activities.
You can live in a big city, affordably, with a yard and even a garage and have public transit like a light rail or a bus system, or just damn sidewalks that go to places. These supposed trade-offs are non-existent except in extreme cases like New York City, which isn't what is generally being discussed.
>Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time
As a european I read this comment, its sort of implications, and reckon US must be hell in some areas. TBH London has seen a big drop in health, pan handlers have "lightly" started appearing on public transport, I think I only began noticing it since 2020.
My point is even with the occasionaly pan handler in London, that statement wouldn't make sense, as it is not "obviosuly bad" in that regard.
I lived in Manhattan (Chelsea) and took the subway to work and most other outings (when I could not walk) in the few years before Covid.
It was fine. You would get some people trying to sell stuff or in some kind of distress, but it was not all the time and it was easy to manage.
Americans who don't live in dense cities (and use transit) seem to be obsessed with the idea that these are some intolerable dystopias that must be dismantled.
It was the best place I have ever lived, except for the weather...
>The worst argument anybody can make is "but that's just life in the big city!"
A cousin was visiting us in our nice suburb. We had a slow, not-busy road we walked on when we lived there, and we'd wave to anyone; neighbors, vehicles, etc. Our cousin was sort of uncomfortable, and asked "do you know all these people?" I explained that we knew some of them but were just being polite and friendly. She explained that that were she lived (Boston) you just couldn't safely wave at just anybody you passed.
I don't think this occurred to her at the time, but that means she lives in a pretty awful place. Why exactly would it be _dangerous_ to wave at someone in a friendly way? There's only one answer to that question; because you live around violent or unstable people.
Before anyone says I'm just privileged, I've lived in rough areas before, and I can't fathom why anyone would put up with that sort of daily violence, noise and general degradation of quality of life if they otherwise didn't have to. We ultimately ended up moving out of the city just like you said because the crime was getting worse year by year. Do you want some drunk kid blasting his bass right outside your house at 11pm on a weeknight? (for hours, no less) And if you go and try to get him to turn it down there's a significant chance you'll be met with violence? Or people harassing your wife if she's ever "foolish" enough to walk down the street without you? Or to need to explain to your wife "hey, we can't walk through that group of kids, I can't really defend you against more than two attackers." All of these were regular issues for us. Home invasions on our block started ramping up, we knew people who were attacked, shot, killed, just while walking home.
To your point, this wasn't academic. It can be quite the 3rd rail to try to explain _why_ the violence in the city is bad, what is the cause and what is the solution. But when we're talking about my family's safety, I just don't care. I'm not going to live like that, and would have done almost anything to get my family out of that sort of situation. I really can't even fathom people who would write these things off. "Sure, my wife might be murdered and abused in a home invasion, but there are really cool walk-able restaurants!" It's pathological.
>Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time, or they witness (or experience) violence, or some other anti-social behavior sours the whole thing.
Haven't seen any of that in 30 years of using public transport in several countries. Are you ok in US?
The closest to anarchy I have been in public transport was withnessin a hobo refusing to pay for the ride to trigger the police response and be booked.
Thank you for this. This is precisely my issue with public transport in the US (granted my experience has only been in SF, Oakland, NYC and Chicago).
It’s emotionally taxing when you need to keep your guard up all the time. I can’t even imagine how much worse it would be on someone if they had kids to tow around as well.
You can have walkable neighborhoods and still allow some cars. They can only enter a neighborhood at low speed as a destination, to park there. To get from one neighborhood to another you have normal roads and highways. The Netherlands does this (although they have a lot of public transport as well. And bikes of course)
How is this such a common occurrence? I take the train to work almost every day in Australia and I’ve probably been asked for money twice in the last 3 years, and never seen a violent situation.
In a big American city. School issues as well American due to funding structure. I'm not saying there aren't problems at school in other countries, but not like that: schools in cheap US districts are extremely underfunded.
> Public transit requires a certain level of unspoken agreement. "We will all behave in this manner."
That literally all of society.
The American idea that you live in suburban home that is a quasi gated community, drive into a parking garage, then go up to an office, only interact with workmates and then driving back out with no social interaction other then work is just not how most society worked for all of history. And its not how the US worked until the 1960.
The reality is, violence and death on the roads, is far more common then on public transport. There are tons road rage incidents, an absurdly high number. Those lead to all kinds of problems and quite often shootings. You are in more danger then on public transport generally. And yet I almost never hear about that when Americans talk about transport policy.
But yes, there does need to be rules enforcement. But on the other hand its also true that the US often has very user-hostile design principles in pretty much every aspect of their city design and policing policy. And that often invites or re-enforces bad behavior.
What he suggests is completely besides public transit, it's about spaces in general where cars aren't allowed or catered to. It doesn't just apply to big cities, but mid-sized and small cities have an absolute dearth of pedestrian-focused plazas. Small towns are extremely hostile to basic foot traffic. There's no reason for this to be the case. In Europe the small town equivalent will have a center where most of the commerce and services are, where cars are completely forbidden. You simply drive into town, park somewhere and carry out your business on foot. It's very nice.
Plazas do exist in the US, but they're rare. Very rare, especially outside of New England. That's what OP is talking about, public transit is a 'solution' to a different problem, and one that I don't like either. See, my biggest problem with urbanism is that it's overwhelmingly focused on building huge megacities, which are inherently unwalkable nonsense. Instead, walkability becomes rhetoric for any mode of transit that isn't a car. I hate that. I want walkable living spaces that are actually walkable, not urban environments where I walk to the train station because the city is too large for its own good.
I don't want to replace the personal car with public transit. It misses the point entirely. I don't want to have to use anything more intensive than an e-scooter to get around the place I live at all. Walking to the train station and riding that for 10-20 minutes to get to the other side of the city sucks. The social problems endemic to public transit in the US are just icing on the cake. Tokyo is a hellish nightmare compared to an Italian commune.
> This happened en masse many decades ago in America.
There was a name for this trend - White flight.
I grew up in southern suburbia and in walkable southern towns - they do exist, in pockets.
I learned two things from my experiences. First is that anywhere there is foot traffic, you will get homelessness, panhandling, crime, and just generally people you don't recognize. It's not because big cities aren't being policed adequately or anything policymakers are doing, it's just something that naturally comes with the territory.
The second lesson I took away is that we as a society often can't tell the difference between "This place makes me feel uncomfortable" and "This place isn't safe." Despite all of those issues I outlined above, I felt very safe and comfortable living day to day in urbanist spaces.
>
Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time
Everyone loves driving until they have to:
* Pay through the nose for parking.
* Pay through the nose for tolls.
* Pay through the nose for gas, maintenance, insurance.
* Replace a car that they can't afford to keep running.
* Are stuck in endless traffic hell that them and all the other drivers on the road have created.
* Are seriously injured or killed by a reckless/drunk/idiot/inattentive/unlucky driver.
----
The first bullet point in particular drives people into a frothing rage. Drivers, as a group, are incredibly and irrationally entitled to free storage of their cars on public/private space.
The last bullet point is far more likely to happen to you in a car, than you are to be assaulted on a bus or train. Across my immediate family, I can count three serious crashes (Only one of which the family member in question was at fault for). None of us have ever been assaulted on public transit, and we've taken a lot of it.
If my direct connection bus came back - or at least bus frequency were increased - (Thanks, budget cuts, for adding a 10-25 minute transfer to my downtown to downtown commute), my car would once again be collecting dust in the garage.
People take transit when its relatively fast and gets them to where they need to go. That's the primary driver for ridership.
> Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time, or they witness (or experience) violence, or some other anti-social behavior sours the whole thing.
Maybe this is just another "American version" of something - in Czechia, public transportation is truly safe (incidents happen, of course, but it's like one per year that makes it to the news), even at night.
This all comes down to "We can't have nice things in America because of our toxic mix of individualism and capitalism."
Because we insist on trying to privatize everything, refuse to provide a safe floor for people, and make poverty and mental health challenges moral issues (meaning we degrade people who experience them and leave them to fend for themselves) we create an environment where true community is impossible.
Unless, of course, we apply authoritarian and abusive policing controls against those we've left behind, rounding them up and sending them somewhere else. Which of course achieves a temporary "peace" at the cost of a deep insecurity and fear, because we all know the moment we slip or step out of line, we're gone.
It really is toxic and has led directly to society breaking down to the point where we're now falling into full scale fascism.
This is not a problem with public transport but with utter lack of urban planning and convoluted social dynamics in the USA.
Dense cities and lack of urban sprawl reults in awesome places to live and you don't need to even use public transport in those as everything is just close by.
Also - IMHO the problem with the USA is more focus on competition (you have to "win") instead of cooperation hence more fracutred society that yields more povery and "not-nice" public spaces...
> The worst argument anybody can make is "but that's just life in the big city!" If so, then I'm not going to live and raise my family in the big city. Airy-fairy principles of efficiency or an arguable notion of convenience will not take precedence over safety and quality.
I hate public transit because it takes 2x+ the time to get anywhere since it’s such an afterthought. The routes are horrible and the vehicles too infrequent.
When I lived in Berlin I could get anywhere in the city within 15-30 mins, it was insane.
I ride my bike or e-bike everywhere I can. Cars are the worst.
Well, it leads to the behavior that you mentioned. It's unavoidable and it'll keep getting worse as the price of housing in dense cities continues to soar.
Your only choice? Move to suburbs and wait for self-driving cars. I get downvoted every time I say this, but that's the simple truth.
My daily bicycle commute takes me right through the heart of my city's homeless district, and like with many cities things have gotten a lot worse since COVID.
Cars are far and away the biggest threat to my safety, and the source of all the harrassment I receive while out in public. I mean, every now and then some guttersnipe blurts out incoherencies at me, but that's not something to be afraid of.
I regard driving, in cities, to be an inherently anti-social activity. If you want a healthy community with safe and lively streets you got to be out in it, not sealed off in a protective cage.
In my experience cars are much more dangerous than public transport.
I've taken public transport my whole life, in numerous countries, and only bought a car for the first time 7 years ago when moving back to the US. Never had any incident on public transport or felt unsafe. Was it always as comfortable and convenient as my car? No, but that's a separate issue.
I'm a weekend road cyclist and I've had a number of very close calls with cars -- invariably big pick up trucks, sometimes flying an American flag (you know the type) -- purposely rev up and buzz by me as close as possible on small country roads, sometimes honking as well or flipping the bird out the window. Any little stumble or twitch at that point and there were a couple of times I would have been in the hospital or dead.
Yeah, there are sometimes strange people on public transport, as well as homeless, etc. But I've encountered more *holes driving cars than on the bus or subway.
I've spent a lot of time in Singapore, with literally the worlds lowest crime rates, highest trust in society, and best mass transit in the world.
It costs 100K USD to get a SHITTY car, like a Toyota Prius.
Everyone in Singapore is desperate to make lots of money, is desperate to buy a cool car, and is desperate to never step one foot onto the transit system again.
Mass Transit is a cope for being poor, even in a society with no crime and the highest trust in society. Using it is admitting that "I failed to make enough money to get out of here"
We have car culture because everyone wants it. Americans can literally buy a C8 corvette factory order at 20% off MSRP right now. The world salivates at such deals and is extremely jealous of our way of life.
Liberals who try to kill car culture are exactly why Trump got elected and why he's so popular right now.
I was in Spain last month and what stood out is that walkability requires mom and pop stores as well as more integrated neighborhoods with small commercial shops mixed into residential. Small shops seemed to be the majority in the city centers. The only large store I saw was a Lidl. They have largeish indoor markets that are more like a mini mall of individual shops like a butcher, produce, baker, cheese, even restaurants and bars. And these are located in a neighborhood center serving the surrounding community.
The thing that kills walkability in the USA are the hyper scale stores and malls where everyone wants a mega store that has everything - one stop shops. They are too big to fit in small neighborhoods so they have to be built in a commercial district or large strip mall. And since they are big and house many shoppers at once they need big parking lots. Then they need big streets to feed those big parking lots. These big ass stores DEMAND cars and are very much a part of the problem.
If you want more walkability then incentivize lots of small shops over single giant shops. I would also argue that neighborhoods that are all residential for blocks and blocks are another problem so zoning should force a minimal commercial allotment to ensure walkable neighborhoods.
I think big box stores are popular largely because it would be inconvenient to drive between many smaller shops just to find the same variety of goods. It’s the same dynamic we see with car-dependent shopping malls, where the main advantage is being able to park once and visit multiple stores. If instead you had to re-park at each individual store, the experience would be far less convenient.
But if a town is designed to be fully walkable so that people can easily walk from store to store (similar to the experience of shopping inside a indoor mall), then I think the appeal of large one-stop-shop stores is greatly reduced.
I would say that the causality goes in the other direction. We have big stores Carrefour and even some Coscos, but not in the middle of walkable cities.
Mixed use zoning and some rules on what businesses can open would go a long way. Where I live I can walk to a small downtown that spans a few blocks with a train station. Unfortunately there is no where to buy groceries. There's like 3 ice cream shops, 3 pizza joints, and 9 salons though.
> They have largeish indoor markets that are more like a mini mall of individual shops like a butcher, produce, baker, cheese, even restaurants and bars.
It's very common all over Europe, they are simply called "markets".
I also know Pontevedra from walking the Camino and I suspect its reliance on Camino tourism is probably a big driver for this move. You will know as well as I do that the only parts of the Camino that suck are when you are walking for miles alongside a busy highway. A bit grim but thankfully not very common.
There is another practical reality that separates the US from Europe specifically with respect to walkability. The US has much more extreme weather in many places. What would be called severe heat or cold in much of Europe, which I've suffered through for the week if need be, is normal weather in many parts of the US for several months on end. You need alternative transportation for those extended periods.
Few people enjoy being outside in a tropical swamp with a double-digit UV index. Same with the extreme cold that you get in the central US far from the ocean.
I live in Seattle, where many people walk everywhere all year (myself included), no car needed. But that is because the weather is perfect for that kind of thing, being 5-25°C with limited precipitation virtually the entire year. If I lived in Houston, for example, I would be driving in the summer regardless of how walkable the city is.
> Most of our public spaces prioritize cars instead of people.
Maybe most but there's plenty of public space that doesn't. People choose to live around the public spaces that do. Some even try to change that instead of moving somewhere that doesn't. The great thing about America is that there's plenty of everything for everyone, but it's not just going to come to you.
That's factually incorrect. Most of America has outlawed proper mixed-use zoning, which means those nice walkable neighborhoods are literally illegal to build.
Even if you don't want to live in a detached home deep in suburbia, there often isn't an affordable alternative.
There really aren't all that many options for people-centric urban spaces in the US. A handful of small districts in various cities, but nothing approaching the scale of such things in the thriving Spanish cities.
While the current Paris administration has its detractors, its policies, removing surface parking, expanding bike lanes, and lowering speed limits, have done tremendous good for air quality (see the Airparif study for details in [0]).
Paris may not yet be at Amsterdam’s scale, but only 5 % of daily trips in the city are made by car. It’s staggering that roughly 50 % of public space is allocated to cars [1], despite their minimal share of actual mobility. And I'm all in favor in further reducing car lanes, parking spots...
I was in Paris this year, for the first time in 10 years, and frankly, I didn't notice less traffic. All streets are full. There are certainly more electric cars, and fewer old ones. However, the streets are now crowded with Uber and taxi cabs. I didn't notice fewer cars.
It's a reason among others, but this bike-centric policy (pedestrians nor public transport are the priority) led to an exodus of families [0]. I am among them, as I realized pretty quickly that it's a real pain to move around, buy groceries, go to the doctor, and so on with very young children in Paris, especially if you don't own a car. And now you have to deal with the uncivil behavior of the cyclists, moreover.
It's the same everywhere, as most European cities are dominated by 20-35yo people. They vote for green parties and then move out when they have children, as they realize that the policies they supported are not child- or family-friendly at all. The extreme example is Seoul, with its zones where kids are forbidden. It's a shame, as families require more public services and infrastructure (hospitals, schools, playgrounds, swimming pools, and so on), but they are being pushed away by childless youngsters who hate cars. Unfortunately, no middle ground seems acceptable for this crowd, so I'm unconvinced that it will change.
Another negative aspect is that cyclists do not use public transportation, so they lead municipalities to decrease investment in this sector, which is, however, the most inclusive, safe and efficient way to move people around. This is also seen in Paris, where the bus speed has never been so slow, the fleet is aging,, while the city hall spends like a teenager on a weekend trip with daddy's credit card on new bike lanes.
In the EU at least, the next nail in the coffin will be the low-emissions zones that will make it prohibitively expensive to enter/leave the center, forcing families to leave metropolises altogether.
I think you are totally off. Never lived in Paris but I lived in Barcelona for many years, during the transformation to be more car-hostile and bikes and pedestrians friendly. I spent there my 20s-30s and left when I had a family but due to (public) school scarcity in our neighborhood and rent prices. But mobility was not the issue at all. It was actually a pleasure bring my daughter to her kindergarten by bike and then go to the office.
And I think Paris and Barcelona share a lot in that respect (the mayors - Hidalgo and Colau - met a lot to discuss exactly those topics and share experiences).
It really depends on the city/quarter where you live. I live in the center of Barcelona and had no problems with two small kids at all. Supermarkets, real farmer's markets, hospitals, pharmacies, schools, etc are all within 10min walking distance. I work from home, but I could walk to the office it I wanted to. I don't have to leave the city at all.
Eventually I gave in and bought a car, not because it was necessary but rather to leave the city on weekends and get closer to nature.
What you’re describing is perfectly possible without a car.
I live in Amsterdam and have a young family. We own an electric cargo bike that we use for groceries and to cart around our daughter. You can use it with an infant car seat and for larger kids.
When we need a car we use a car sharing app. There are around 10 cars within walking distance of our flat.
Many people in cities _want_ a car but don’t need one.
The article says that families are leaving because of high rent.
I personally love it when my kids have freedom of movement. Every family we know is the same way. Carting them around all day and then sitting and waiting at various activities just plain sucks.
I'm seeing a similar trend in my country where even the culture in city centres is not conducive to having a large family, or a family at all even.
All the parents of 3+ children that I know live in the suburbs or even in the middle of nowhere in the case of one family totalling 7 at the moment, as their firstborn already moved out.
Personally I was priced out of the city where I grew up, so I moved to one that's half the size and live on the outskirts with my family, but in the 13 apartments connected to our staircase we're one of three families and the only ones not renting.
As someone with a family and a car, can't you use public transport for that? You can walk to local parks and have a doctor that is relatively nearby, but Paris has very extensive transport network and it is perfectly fine to move around without a car.
No one is arguing you should take your sick kid on a bike for one hour ride.
There are loads of factors at play, to lay the blame of this demographic trend solely on bike-centric policy is, if I’m being very very generous, lazy. Since it’s the telegraph, about a foreign city, I would assume it’s disingenuous.
The article doesn’t even call out bike centric policies:
> “It is the result of a quarter-century of policies that have made life harder for families and the middle class. Construction work, difficult access to nurseries, skyrocketing rents, and social housing shortages have pushed Parisians to the suburbs or provinces.”
The “worst” callout in the article is triple parking fees for SUVs.
Oh.
Anyway.
It looks like there are loads of factors at play and I wouldn’t trust assigning blame to just one, especially when your supporting article only kinda sorta touches on that factor.
You do realize that (i) "zones" are just restaurants / cafes / museums that have minimum age requirements and not some demarcated city blocks where children are banned and young adults party all day and (ii) this occurs semi-frequently in the west as well.
Not Paris, but I lived in an even larger metropolis (Beijing) for 6 years, with two young children, without a car. We took public transport and/or rode bikes most of the time, and took taxis when neither of those were possible/convenient. Even with the taxi fares it was much cheaper than owning a car.
> Another negative aspect is that cyclists do not use public transportation,
For short trips maybe, but as a cyclist myself, I'd say cyclists are among those most likely to use public transportation for any trips that are beyond their cycling radius, or where cycling isn't feasible, instead of a car.
North Americans visiting Europe often grapple with why they enjoy European cities more than North American ones. It's often perceived as an architecture issue ("Europe has historical buildings that we don't have") but very few notice that the main difference is the urban scale and the resulting walkability. The Netherlands has plenty of modernist and even brutalist architecture yet every city there is a pretty nice place to be. This is because they know how to scale cities to human centric proportions. The layout of buildings together with the connective tissue of tram lines, bike lanes and sidewalks is what makes their cities alive and safe, not elaborate building facades (although they have some of that as well).
Important to note is how most cities have two (or more) zones; the old inner city for leisure, tourism, shopping and going out, the suburban areas around it where most people live, and industrial / office building estates where most people work.
Amsterdam is a great example [0] and well-known for a lot of tourists, with the city center being the tourism hub, the zones around it for living, west/northwest for industry/shopping, south for highrise offices and football stadiums, etc. Most tourists won't go that far out though.
I disagree that this is the norm and I don't think it's a goal to aspire to.
The nicest places for humans to exist in have a mixed-use basis. Yes some areas are purely industrial and some areas are dominated by retail or offices, that's fine. But fully segregated residential zones are depressing and nonsensical.
I spent two weeks in Amsterdam South where I rented an apartment. Commuting to the centre on a tram or even cycling there was no problem. Even though the centre is where most tourists hang out, the surrounding neighbourhoods are just as walkable and bikeable as the inner city.
That's pretty much only an Amsterdam thing, and it is limited to a relatively small tourist-centered area. Even inside the Grachtengordel the majority of buildings are homes or offices.
Also, those "suburban" areas in Amsterdam aren't suburban: they are still built with a bicycle-, pedestrian-, and transit-first mindset. Those office buildings in Zuid are built right next to one of the busiest railway stations in the country, and the highly-paid lawyers will arrive at the office by bike from their nearby homes.
If you want Amsterdam's suburbs, you'll have to go to Almere: it was literally built as a commuter city for Amsterdam. And even there you'll have trouble finding areas which don't meet the definition of a 15-minute city.
Cities always have many areas. And of course the outer areas are not as good as the tourist focused inner city, but they are generally still pretty good urbanism.
Even European subburbs are generally better, smaller roads, more mixed use, more trees, more dynamics, more commercial and building times mixed in. The extreme separation between building types that became the standard in US zoning-codes simple never happened to the same extent in Europe.
> It's often perceived as an architecture issue ("Europe has historical buildings […]") but very few notice that the main difference is […] the […] walkability.
I'd say both. We do have the history on show both because we have more of it, and sometimes the stuff from eras when the US as we think of it¹ existed tends to be better preserved despite the effects of WWI and WWII. But we also have it easy to get to, often safely on foot, in our cities².
> This is because they know how to scale cities to human centric proportions.
Not wishing to put us down, but I'd say a fair chunk of that is historical accident. A lot of cities started out as smaller settlements that grew and merged, meaning there is a spread of housing, shows, workplaces, etc around the whole city because it used to be in each individual part before they merged over time. America's cities on average started at, or at least very quickly gained, a larger scale, and grew from the inside out rather than by several insides growing until their outsides merged.
Some European cities made the mistake of doing away with some of that and converting to a state closer to that of US cities, and many current efforts are more about returning to their roots than being newly person friendly.
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[1] essentially from the point the founding fathers went to find somewhere they could be prescriptivist about people's, lives because they weren't getting away with that as they wanted to over here, and perhaps a little before that
[2] though there is a fair amount of it that isn't as easy to get to unless you drive
The “Founding Fathers” generally refers to the politicians who were around during the revolutionary war (starting 1775). What you are describing in your [1] seems to be more a reference to the Pilgrims and Puritians (the early North American colonists who showed up around 1620).
The Founding Fathers also did a lot of controlling of some people’s lives (in that they enslaved a lot of people), but they didn’t have to go anywhere to do that.
Anyway, if you want to walk around some history in the US, you can do that in Boston. As you mentioned, a huge factor in the walkability of a city is just having the right population density before cars were invented. The oldest European areas in the mainland US (Spanish areas, in Florida) aren’t super walkable as far as I know.
Maybe it is a Northeast US thing or something, but it this mystery could also be resolved by visiting a college town, observing that it is quite nice and walkable without too many historical buildings…
There are (at least) two Youtube channels, Ray Delahanty | CityNerd and Not Just Bikes, that really drive home the point in their videos that car-centric cities really stink.
The Not Just Bikes channel really makes clear the benefits of living in an environment that isn't designed around cars, but also the challenge of designing such an environment. You can't just plop in some busses and bike lanes and expect immediate improvement, you really need to think about transportation holistically. This means considering how cars, trucks, busses, bikes, pedestrians and everything will interact.
The Netherlands is lauded as a model, but it took them decades to get where they are today. This isn't to say that we can't do it in the US or Asia or anywhere else, but that we should be clear-eyed about the magnitude of the challenge.
The problem that car solved years ago, is the following: you can develop a city without cars up to a point where the distance that you have to move to get to your work, or the supermarket, the hospital, etc is at max some km, let's say not more than 10/20.
That has the consequence that all people wants to live in the city center, and not in peripherals areas. This has the consequence of making the cost of an house (or rent) go up to a point where most people can't even afford it, while the salary that you get in the city rests more or less the same. Having a lot of people concentrated living in a small place produces also other unwanted effects, that lower the quality of living.
Cars allow us to develop our society not in big cities, but in rather small towns, without ugly skyscrapers of 20 floors but with nice houses where everyone can afford, for example, to have its own property, with its own garden, its own peace, without having being forced to share its living space with people he didn't choose.
To me cars, and now also remote work, are a benefit because they allow us to live in a more sustainable way. Thanks to car we can think of reclaiming villages where all the population migrated to the cities in the past years.
Example in Italy, where I live, why should I go to live in Milan, where houses cost 10 times the rest of the country, while having a car and a job that allows me to remote work at least half the week I can live in a small village near Milan and reach it by car when needed?
To me a society without cars is a less free society, in fact the development of the USA to me is to take as an example, while where they didn't have cars is the Soviet Union, and look at it...
If you haven't discovered the problems with this model, then it's only because not enough of your neighbours have had the same idea.
Look around at places with very high car use (especially in North America) and you'll discover that this solution simply does not scale. Cars take up a gigantic amount of room on roads, and even gigantic highways like Onatrio's 401 [1] just have not been able to keep up with the level of sprawl that occurs when people move out of the city to surrounding suburbs and commute into the city by car.
Adding lanes to the highway does not help and just induces more traffic on it, and it also causes all the surrounding villages to sprawl outwards until they become indistinct blobs that merge into the nearby metropolitan city.
Trains are a much better solution to this problem because they have way better throughput, don't destroy cities with massive highways and parking garages, and encourage denser development that lets nearby villages retain their character and size.
As the other user said, it doesn't scale. I'll give you my personal experience. I have been living in the greater Toronto area for 23 years, having moved here when I was 9. I live in one of the "cities" surrounding Toronto. This city was initially just a suburb of Toronto, that people moved to because houses were bigger and cheaper. Now it is a "city" of more than 700,000 people, in part because everyone moved here from Toronto, and in part due to high immigration in recent years. I put city in quotes because it's not really built like a city, it's still developed like a suburb with a large dependence on cars and poor public transport. All the good jobs are still in Toronto, so people still commute to Toronto for work. Before COVID and wfh, it used to take me 1.5 hours to commute to Toronto (one way), and I still had to drive to the train station. Forget driving to Toronto, it would take you just as long, if not longer, and parking costs are ridiculous. As this city grew, everyone wanted to move here for the same reason as you, bigger and cheaper houses. Now the houses are still bigger, but definitely not cheaper, and it takes forever to get anywhere. There are also less things to do because everything depends on cars.
I am writing this comment from a Italo Treno train, having been in Paris, Switzerland, Milan and Venice over the past week and half, so I have now seen the other side of this conversation.
The only freedom that cars bring is when travelling out of the city to remote places. Switzerland's inter-city rail service is so good I would never want to drive between cities if I lived there.
There's simply not enough space in a city to accommodate everyone's car. Houston is 70% roads+parking lots and they're still congested
Live remotely in low density villages in italy if you want, you can accommodate everybody's car just fine there - but when you need to visit Milan, don't complain that it won't let you bring a car in with you and they kindly ask you to leave it outside & take public transit to reach the center.
Nobody is seriously advocating for a society with zero cars. The goal is simply to have a more balanced system. It's about creating towns and cities where you have the freedom to walk, bike, or take reliable public transport, so you're not forced to use a car for every single trip.
In America this concept is taken to the absolute extreme. Everywhere I go there are entire forests being razed to build developments of huge single-family homes and nothing else.
There is nowhere to go without driving. Kids who grow up in the suburbs are pretty much trapped on an island. There’s nowhere to explore because the surrounding 5 mile radius might be nothing but more developments
Not the best counterpoint to the argument IMHO, especially considering there are tens/hundred of thousand of people that do the same as you, and that has only driven rent cost up in the extended Milan metropolitan area, even 30-40 km further away from the city, and with roads that are not nearly capable enough to carry commuters' traffic, it just transforms the underlying issues into massive, daily traffic jams anywhere in the immediate area
That's fine. If you don't care about life and culture in a city, and are satisfied with your townhouse in some arbitrary quiet town, then that's fine? Just don't expect that you can just go into the city with a car whenever you feel like it.
While you are not totally wrong, it's very true that car centric society has enabled the sprawling suburbs iconic of America (a large home and yard for everyone), from a sustainability standpoint, freely developed heavily packed cities win hands down. It's so much easier and more efficient to take care of everyone in one spot rather than sprawled out all over the place.
Sustainability and efficiency, sure - you're definitely right on that. I'm going to take a bit of a devil's advocate role here though:
There are negative impacts to dense packing of humans too, though. Think about the local ecosystem of plants and animals that was irreparably destroyed and will never be recovered in the construction of X densely packed city you can think of. Think about the huge scale of resource shifting in the geographic region (water, food, electricity generation) that has to occur in the surrounding area which negatively impacts not only the city but the environments it pulls those resources out of.
Sprawl leaves room to interweave humans with the rest of the natural world in a way in which densely packed cities do not. It leaves room for trees to grow, critters to roam, rain water to be reclaimed into aquifers. It also spreads the strain of resource extraction and reduces the impact from hot spots at the most granular level.
You can live in the small suburban village and reach the downtown by rail or bike. And people will always want to live and congregate in the city center, because that's the most productive part of the city. But unless your city center literally looks like Manhattan, it can still fit plenty more people.
Funny enough the USSR and tons of the developed western Europe (Barcelona) had and still have "superblocks" which are far better than car polutting everywhere. Yours, sustainable? Keep dreaming.
> This has the consequence of making the cost of an house (or rent) go up to a point where most people can't even afford it
Except that in some of the largest cities in the world rents aren't that high.
> Cars allow us to develop our society not in big cities, but in rather small towns, without ugly skyscrapers
Go to Switzerland, it look like that before cars and still does. You can get affordable houses and apartments on rail lines where you can be in the city in 15min.
You don't need to own a car to live in a house with a garden if you have proper public transport.
And you can live in the city and have plenty of access to nature as well. And cites don't need to be ugly and ful of skyscrapers.
> To me cars, and now also remote work, are a benefit because they allow us to live in a more sustainable way.
People living remotely with cars are the opposite of sustainable, in fact, literally every study on the subject shows the opposite. Not communing makes it better, but its still nowhere near as good as a city.
I love walking - both in places as a tourist, in NYC where I lived most of my life, and in my small north shore Long Island town today.
But similar to any other "product" the evaluation depends on the user's needs. As a single guy I loved that NYC was dense and walkable - because that meant (among other things) literally millions of date-able women within a 30 minute walk radius of my house. Great! Now as a dad of 3 I don't care about that at all - and the lower density suburb let's me have a backyard for my kids and makes shopping easy, or taking the kids to activities (yes you can do all those things without a car but people chose not to when they have choice)
There should be some sort of mom-friendliness factor in these conversations. If my whole town is old people, terminally single younger people and migrants (as seems to be the case for the city in question) then high density walk ability is perfect. What's the density and transportation situation in places people actually have kids?
I share this sentiment as well, but while living in a relatively small city with only around 150k people in northern Europe. I moved out to the "suburbs" after having my first kid and find enormous quality of life in being able to have a car and a house. The city center is getting increasingly more "hostile" to car traffic but there's nothing to be had there anyway. A side from restaurants and coffee shops you can get anything you need from the shopping areas on the city outskirts. In a sense I feel this is the best of both worlds: cities for city people, suburbs for suburbians.
As a fellow parent I find dense cities are worse. My kids are not welcome in most of the restaurants, bars, or shops - which is just as well because I couldn't afford to pay for regular family meals at any of them anyway. Even the parks are more art orientation - great for adults but no playground that my kids would enjoy. Not that it matters as 3 bedroom apartments are rare, and more than that impossible to find. They are often food deserts - it is easier for a farmer to get to a grocery store (they expect to drive but the uncontested roads are fast), you often need to drive to a grocery store as there is no option, of if there is one it is the expensive high end store not the discount supermarkets.
Note that most dense cities have within the same city limits less dense areas that look like suburbs. These are often called "inner city" they are generally affordable but because the schools are bad are not places I'd want to live. For this discussion I'm going to count them as suburbs...
It doesn't have to be like the above. I've seen dense cities around the world that are very family friendly. However not in the US.
There is also a gradient of density and walk/bike-ability between NYC, one of the densest cities in the country, and super spread-out car-dependent cul-de-sac suburbs, but the US often skips those middle steps.
Small towns where your kids can get to their friend's house by walking or biking a couple of blocks over can be great for raising a family, as opposed to all of their friends' houses being in a different gated communities up and down a 4-lane 45mph highway and where the line of cars picking up kids from school each day backs out onto the road and blocks traffic.
They exist, but in New Jersey -- most of the "cities" (with the exception of downtown Jersey City and downtown Newark) would be called streetcar suburbs in an earlier time. I live in one of them, and it's great: I have a small, private backyard, but I'm also <15 minutes on foot from multiple public parks, restaurants, shops, etc.
Sadly, it's illegal to build streetcar suburbs in most of the US today, because outfitting every house with a private driveway, setbacks, etc., would move everything far apart enough to significantly hurt walkability.
One factor here is the perception of safety. To choose public transit over a car, you have to feel safe walking to/from the station and you have to feel safe riding the train. This is especially true if you are at a physical disadvantage because of gender, disability, age, whatever. Because it's a perception thing, this is not just about statistics. A dirty, chaotic subway station just feels threatening to passengers.
I've ridden public transit in a bunch of cities, and this makes a huge difference to how welcoming the experience is. Hong Kong is #1 for me. The trains and stations are clean enough to eat off of - probably cleaner than my car. On/off boarding is fast and orderly even during peak travelling hours. This is not a universal, and there are definitely cities where I would hesitate to take public transit if I had some other choice - which is the root of the problem when you're trying to convince a population to fund and use such a system instead of bringing their cars.
> It's not an either-or. You can have streets which are car-friendly, bike-friendly, and pedestrian-friendly at the same time. Just look at the Dutch, they've been doing it for years. That is until recently in some big cities, though, where some less knowledgeable politicians have also adopted this false populist either-car-or-bike concept. Though the traditional principle still applies to about 99% of the country's roadworks, and it works really well.
Adding onto that, sentences like "made for people, not cars" absolutely validate my point that this is nothing but populist activism. I'm hoping that we can all have a honest, intellectual discussion on how to make infrastructure better for everyone. Just make sure to always remember in every discussion about this topic: it is never either-or, not even in the densely populated Netherlands.
You can have streets which are car-friendly (for exceptional or emergency purposes where you need the car) by getting rid of all frivolous car use. There's no feasible alternative, because congestion always destroys car-friendliness except in very sparsely populated areas. And you can only eliminate that congestion by promoting more scalable alternatives to the use of private motor vehicles.
I understand where it's coming from, but I have to disagree about the populist activism part. I don't think that pedestrians should worry about how to fit cars in their proposed solutions. That's something for the car proposers to do. It's not like the other way around is different. Just take a walk in any big city and you will see how pedestrians are a second thought in most of the roads.
I'd argue that the design of public infrastructure should be a discussion which every citizen is equally involved in, with the goal of finding a solution that works for all. Chanting an us-versus-them narrative does nothing but stifle this discussion, and accepting it as legitimate results in decisions being made by special interest groups (team-car or team-pedestrian) rather than the residents whom actually make use of the infrastructure in question.
To me, whether there's enough space for cars and walkability are both part of how dense a city is. Leaving room for cars must make a city less dense and usually less pleasant for pedestrians as well; in the same way, a suburban area with single family homes and limited low-rise apartments needs car infrastructure because public transport gets worse the longer each trip is and the fewer riders there are.
You can accommodate both regions within one city, but they can't overlap without compromising one or the other (edit: although this compromise is a desirable middle ground for some people). Note that Pontevedra built huge free parking areas on the outskirts of its urban area. For their whole city it's not either-or, but in any given place they've had to make a decision.
I think the thing that really struck a chord with me about car-centric development, as someone who lives in a city with fairly poor public transport (by certain standards, it would actually be quite good if it were in the US) and where driving is the norm for getting around -
Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers. We spend many tens of billions of dollars a year on roads in my state and traffic in the cities (and the highways between the biggest population centres in the south east corner where most of the people live) just keeps getting worse. When you give people real alternatives (convenient, frequent public transport, more cycling infrastructure, better planned cities so you can walk and cycle to things you need nearby) that actually gets people off the road and that is the one thing that can reduce traffic (apart from somewhere having a dwindling population).
Focusing all out infrastructure spend and making cars the primary mode continues to make car driving worse, but people get angry when too much money is spent on public and active transport, because “not enough” is being spent on road infrastructure. So politicians spruik their “congestion busting” road spending, and it keeps getting worse. It’s wild.
As someone for whom driving was just the default, I came around full circle.
Car oriented people seriously underestimate how many people that can be transported in a subway train and how much highway space it would take to transport the same number of people in cars.
One subway line can transport more people than even the widest existing highway.
From an efficiency point of view public transportation makes a lot of sense.
From a quality of life point of view, I have never been comfortable being crammed into a sardine can with that many other people. I've done it. I've never enjoyed it. I do look forward to travelling to the Netherlands one day and I will enthusiastically use public transit there just as a personal experiment to see if my experience differs enough from the subway transit in Montreal or Toronto that gave me nightmares and has me thinking every time I travel there: "Even if it takes me 4x as long to get to my destination, driving is still better than this."
The parent poster made an interesting point that resonates a lot with me. Better public transportation will get people off the roads which will make quality of life better for drivers. I don't see myself ever not being a driver. I need that little bubble that separates me from other people. I don't even like walking on sidewalks in busy metropolitan areas because of the amount of other people and the "over stimulation". And yeah, that's a me problem. Do what you like, just don't take away my means of being able to achieve a little bit of solitude.
It's not pro- public transit and better urban planning that bothers me. It's the anti-car "lobby".
Then again, big city living isn't for me anyway (obviously). I will always choose smaller to mid sized cities, and possibly even rural at some point in the future, for the personal reasons outlined above.
I've seen many times how some people react to a single bus lane or even a tiny bicycle lane as though cars are getting the raw end of the deal when 90%+ of infrastructure is for cars.
People don’t pick their mode of transportation based on space efficiency.
They pick their mode of transportation based on their needs and priorities. Taking the subway works when there’s a stop near your home, a stop near your destination, and you have all of the time necessary to wait for it. If these conditions aren’t met then you need additional transport to and from one or both ends of the subway journey.
There’s also the matter of weather, which is less obvious to people who don’t live in locations that see extreme weather or deep snow. Safety and cleanliness is another issue depending on the location. There are cities where I’m just not going to take my kids on the subway if I can avoid it.
People who hold up numeric metrics like number of people transported per unit area don’t understand why people prefer to hop in their car and go to their destination rather than spend potentially far more time navigating a crowded subway system.
I don’t think it’s the number of people transported that is hard to get one’s head around—it’s imagining using a subway to get to all of their destinations which are spread all over and separated by at least a quarter mile of parking lots and 8 lane highways. In their mind, this would require an absurd amount of subway or bus lines and tons of transitions and it would take an eternity to get to their destination and they might interact with lower class people and so on. The thing they don’t understand is that without cars you can build all of those destinations much closer together in a single walkable place that you just need transit to get to/from. When you take away the cars, you don’t need gargantuan parking lots or 8 lane highways.
Train oriented people always forget that trains don't transport people from the origin to the destination. You still need to get to and from a train station. With all your groceries, gear, children's things, etc. Oh and you might be odor sensitive, but there's a lady next to you on the train that covered herself in perfume.
How about if cities were built in such a way that you would just have buildings and podium being pedestrian and bike friendly with all transportation network being 1 level underground (or 2 levels) all as self driving EV pods. This may increase the no of possible 'roads' and does not sound as far fetched in terms of overall costs. Emergency vehicles can be given an exemption to operate on the podium
People who primarily drive cars? People who primarily drive cars when competitive options exist? People who argue for cars in areas where its not very feasible? People who prefer car oriented cities?
I think most people who primarily drive arent estimating subways at all.
I am with you. It is not only about lanes but also parking. My in laws live in a very car centric city and it is crazy the way all distances are multiplied when everything need a dedicated parking space. There is almost nothing left at walking distance and every time I visit I have the feeling I spend all my day in a car instead of ... doing stuff.
This was one of the things I realized living in a very car friendly city without a car. SO SO MUCH of my walking was just walking past/through GIANT parking lots.
It's pretty amazing how much time you can save by being able to park in front of whatever you want to get into. Starting at the same point I've beaten cars that should have gotten there 20 minutes faster according to google maps.
The Power Broker by Robert Caro, a biography of Robert Moses that's particularly focused on his long career in the government of New York, is, quite aside from a fascinating psychological portrait and a parable about how bad it is when someone has untrammeled power in a bureaucracy, an absolutely fantastic case study in how building more roads makes traffic worse. And it was published in 1974! For anyone that cares to find out we've know this for decades and have absolutely failed to do anything about it - pretty depressing.
Caro has a way with words; one of my favorite turns was when Moses declared traffic a problem "solved for a generation", only for Caro to begin the next paragraph with a description of the traffic jams that began to develop a few weeks after that particular road (I believe the Bronx River Parkway) opened.
But a car with no traffic is the overall best form of transportation.
Anything that reduces traffic, just makes driving a car more palatable.
So we are stuck forever at an equilibrium of tolerable traffic. More people taking the bus, train, bikes, and walking? Great! I'll zip down the highway and get a parking spot right in front.
Urban planning has a term for this - the Downs Thomson paradox. Over time, traffic tends to increase up to a point at which equivalent journeys on transit/bike/foot are quicker.
What this means of course is that an effective way of reducing traffic is by speeding up the alternatives.
> But a car with no traffic is the overall best form of transportation.
I hate driving even when I'm alone on the road. I'm forced to stare at the road when I want to be doing something else. I can't even take a break, since a simple 5 minute nap has high odds of killing me even if I'm the only car on the road.
Plus cars are slower than trains or airplanes. Even on the autobahn with unlimited speed allowed, most people are not going nearly as fast as a high speed train, much less an airplane.
There is a reason everyone zips around in them on Wall-e. Wait until we have full self driving and drone delivery. Then even when you are in traffic you can get your burger, soda and TV in without wasting any time!
This is level one understanding of public transport systems. “We should build metros and then everything will be better”
There’s cities that are not setup for efficient public transportation or walkable living. Redesign it from ground up and put a metro smack bang through the middle. Until then, it’s just not going to work.
People, and especially people who like the idea of walkable cities that reside in council chairs, often miss this fundamental step.
“Build it and they will come” won’t get you housing density, small local retailers, geographic compression of services, suitable climate, a different way of living. All key ingredients for walkable cities with well served public transport.
I think you are being unnecessarily defeatist. Cities can’t be redesigned from the ground up, but at the same time we’ve seen that investment into roads can’t fix traffic in cities once they reach a certain population and density.
The first thing we should do is target development. For example, planning laws should require new development (suburbs etc.) to be built around some kind of transit (ideally rail). Zoning should always be mixed - for example it should always be permissible to have at least small apartment blocks, groups of townhouses (like row houses), and small shops and cafes in suburbs. The idea of mandating areas be dedicated to only detached single family dwellings should be consigned to the dustbin of history.
There’s just so much like that that can be started right now. But we don’t - we just keep making the same mistakes and things get worse.
Most British cities predate cars. They have had tramlines put in, taken out, and put in again. They have had roads widened, then bus and cycle lanes added. Train underground lines have been built.
> “Build it and they will come” won’t get you housing density, small local retailers, geographic compression of services, suitable climate, a different way of living.
You can build and change housing. We have lots of what used to be big houses that are now blocks of flats. You can encourage small retailers in many ways. Services can be reorganised or public transport routes designed to ensure access to them
Not sure what you mean about climate - there are cities you can manage without cars from the tropics to very cold places.
You can pedestrianise roads in existing existing towns and cities.
People centric infrastructure didn't fall out of the sky, we recognised bad ideas and reworked cities over decades to make them liveable. And it worked!
Car infrastructure takes so much space that you can repurpose parts of it in place. Just turn one of the lanes into a tram line, make dedicated bus lanes. On huge parking lots you can just split parts of and build housing or more smaller stores there.
Of course there are limits to this, but cities are often grown historically over centuries and city planning usually takes place in such constraints rather than planning cities from scratch. Don't let the perfect be the enemie of the good.
> “Build it and they will come” won’t get you housing density, small local retailers, geographic compression of services, suitable climate, a different way of living. All key ingredients for walkable cities with well served public transport.
Yes it does. It will take 20 years, but if you don't start now you will never get there. Are you willing to invest in a better future or just accept the status quo?
People always say stuff like this, but plenty of European cities like Utrecht have shown that it's very much possible to turn the tide. A few years ago Utrecht replaced an entire highway and turned it (back) into a canal and the area is indescribably nicer in every way, it's called the Catharijnesingel.
This canal was, in fact, always there, they just turned it into a highway at some point in the 70s. So the reverse is more than possible, it's a question of will to do so and convincing the, frankly, selfish car drivers. Having lived in the US myself for a stint, there's plenty of cities that could easily have work done similar to what happened in Utrecht, it's just that there's a lack of a will to do so to make things much better.
Sure, you won't have a direct train from NYC to Dallas (although, seeing China's high speed rail I don't see why that couldn't be on the table), but we're talking about individual cities making these changes a bit at a time.
I grew up in London where it is almost always preferable to take public transport anywhere central (cars work fine in suburbs).
I prefer to walk and take public transport, but where I live now (small town) busses are infrequent, and fairly short journeys can require changing. It can take two hours on the bus to get somewhere that is less than half an hour by car.
I think people here would be delighted with more public transport. The main complaint I hear about roads is not repairing potholes which is not hugely expensive. The problem is that the political push is to use a stick (make cars more expensive and inconvenient) rather than a carrot (provide better public transport).
There is always some private company benefiting when a town/city rejects public transport. I remember reading an article about a town that rejected public transport, there was intense door-to-door lobbying by some Koch brothers funded group. It was a small town, I suppose they were just testing their lobbying efforts before deploying the same in large cities.
All this to say, if the public is sufficiently informed, they are not going to reject public transport. We've been brainwashed that car centric transport is the best.
Even driver-centric is less anti-human than car-centric.
Maybe we need a “People First” movement in this world. I know the climatists and PETA won’t like that, but it’s worth considering as some sort of competing, balancing force in the world vs everything else we have today.
'Climatists' is a strange way of putting this because pulling everything we do back to human scale will be a huge boon to solving the climate crisis. As someone who's worried about threats to the future of the species in the form of climate change I'd be all for a human centric movement.
> Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers.
I 100% agree. I live in Newcastle, a city that is fairly car centric, but we have a Metro line and have had pushes to increase bus and bicycle transport (though Labour are generally bad for active travel).
My brother moved to Leeds, one of the largest cities in Europe without a Metro or tram. Driving anywhere in the city is fucking awful. The planners clearly kept trying to add one more lane and the result is congestion everywhere, even at quiet times.
I've also driven round Liverpool and Manchester and found, though they're better as they have Metro lines, the car-centric roads are still really awful to drive on.
I completely agree. You've hit on the central, infuriating paradox of car-centric cities. We're told that building more roads will bust congestion, but the exact opposite happens. It's a self-destructive cycle and a betrayal of drivers. We're sold a promise of freedom and speed, but what we get is a constant, grinding battle. We spend our lives in traffic and our wallets on fuel/tax, and the very infrastructure meant to liberate us ends up imprisoning us.
The starkest example of this for me is comparing Orlando, Florida with Malmö, Sweden. Orlando is the end game of car-centric planning. The city feels bigger than its population suggests because you spend half an hour in a car just to get anywhere. The eight-lane highways and endless parking lots are supposed to make driving easier, but they create the very congestion that makes driving miserable. This architecture of disconnection means fewer spontaneous encounters and more social isolation. The city is designed for a machine, not for people.
In contrast, Malmö's population is actually larger than Orlando's, yet a 30-minute bike ride can get you literally anywhere. The largest road through the city center is a quiet, two-lane street that prioritises people over cars; as there are large crossings and lights. This isn't an accident, it's a choice. The city's excellent public transportation and extensive bike lanes make the car a choice, not a necessity and because it's penalised: the only drivers are the ones who need to be driving, for which now there are open roads (as long as you're patient).
The truth is, every person on a bus, a train, or a bike is one less car in front of you. Giving people real alternatives is the only thing that can truly reduce traffic. This isn't an attack on cars. It's a demand for sanity, a call to build cities that work for everyone, including those who choose to drive.
I suppose it is because Florida has a lot of modern development, but the number of disconnected subdivisions there is relatively extreme. In much of the US you can easily walk to the thing you can see.
> You've hit on the central, infuriating paradox of car-centric cities. We're told that building more roads will bust congestion, but the exact opposite happens
That is a bad reading. If there is more congestion it is because you made some trips that were impossible before possible and so people are better using your city. The point of a city is all the things you can do - otherwise people would live in a rural area with less options but not traffic - so limiting the things people can do means you are a bad city. You need to build enough to get out of this, eventually people will no longer find new/better opportunties opened up by building and congestion will no longer increase (if you don't believe me explain why there is no congestion west of Jamestown ND - an area where few people live that has a 4 lane freeway which by your logic should have congestion anyway).
Note that I'm not advocating you build a road to get ahead of congestion. Generally it is much more cost effective to build a good public transit system. However system is the key here, roads only where because you can get anywhere on them anytime you want to go, if your transit system isn't the same people won't use it.
There's also the "south east Qld option" (which I'm certain is the region you're describing in your comment) where the government is so roadbrained that all public transport solutions inevitably end up as some form of bus, further adding to congestion and making it worse for everyone, drivers, public transport users and active transport users.
The other problem is that city councils historically have run busses, whereas the State Government runs the rail, so a lot of our bus network competes with the rail instead of working together as an integrated network. At least the ticketing is integrated, but the network still has never felt like it’s designed to work together as an integrated transit network.
This is just a factor of car driving being wildly more inefficient at "people-carrying" than public transport. That is why "improving things" for cars just makes things worse-you're spending your sparse resources (money, land, manpower) more and more inefficiently.
Public transit needs a lot of money and time so I'm not sure it's even doable for many NA cities.
One middle point I think might be more reachable is to build good transit for the busiest part of the city (downtown) and build large parking lots around the terminals, so people can still drive to the terminal and then switch to bus.
I live in a suburb on the Montreal island and this is the model the city is trying to build IMO.
Most of the time aspect comes from excessive regulations and approvals and always, always giving jobs to the lowest bidding contractor. The lowest bidder is always the most expensive, and they always waste time far beyond schedule to burn more money, yet North America as a whole just won't learn from the past 70 years and keeps doing the same thing.
I visit China sometimes and it's seriously just wild seeing a town suddenly have a metro system go from not existing to being fully functional and world-class compared to anything in the west within the span of a few years. And that's not even starting on their high speed rail system, which went from not existing to connecting basically every major city across the country within 20 years, and connecting the biggest cities within 10.
Every construction site in America is endless thumb twiddling, guys holding signs, senseless traffic for sham work, and zero results after decades. One highway near me was under constant construction for one segment for 5 years and still didn't get finished. Every single day, it was the same construction vehicles parked in the same spots and some dudes holding signs while absolutely no progress was made. In Asia, it's a job that'd be done in a few days.
Car infrastructure also takes a lot of money and time. Remember how long it took to reconfigure the Turcot Interchange - a few years later you still (already?) have bumper to bumper traffic during rush hours there anyway.
Public transport gives much better ROI for more people - you don’t need the added expense of the car to benefit from it.
If you look at pictures of cities from the early 1900s, one of things you realize is that even small towns of only ~20k people managed to fairly reliably have a streetcar line or two in them. (Actually, a lot of these systems still exist, the streetcars have just been replaced with buses.)
What happened to most NA cities is that they fully embraced the car by tearing down the city to make room for parking lots; there's a few cities where every other block in the city center is a surface parking lot. Combine this with systematic underinvestment in public transit (because it's seen as for people who are too poor to own a car), and you can see how we ended up where we did.
The main obstacle to fixing this isn't really money, it's in getting people to accept public transit as something that could be a viable mode of transit for them. There are far too many people who think that public transit is inherently unsafe and that by riding it they are at extreme risk of getting shanked (which includes the current Secretary of Transportation).
Public transport is far, far more cost effective than car infrastructure. And that's just direct costs - not even including the cost of sprawl (which makes all other infrastructure more expensive), road deaths and injuries, noise, pollution, storage costs for vehicles, the health costs of inactivity and social isolation, etc etc.
> build good transit for the busiest part of the city (downtown) and build large parking lots around the terminals
This is a terrible idea because the numbers simply do not stack up. A typical metro train can carry roughly 1000 people. A large car park might fill half of a single train. At a station with good frequency, a train will leave the station roughly every 5 minutes.
A much better idea is to run good regular public transport to the station, build bike paths to the station and quality bike parking at the station, and build more housing at/near the station instead of a big parking lot.
> Public transit needs a lot of money and time so I'm not sure it's even doable for many NA cities.
Is this a joke? I grew up in Poland, a relatively poor country (and used to be a lot poorer) and in most cities it has public infrastructure that flagship North American cities can barely dream of. It's not a question of money but of societal priorities.
This. The quickest & most pleasant places to drive a car are the places with the fewest large single-mode roads & - importantly - even fewer cars on them.
Cars seem to live in a special category in peoples minds where the costs simply do not exist, and thus the problems can be solved by simply throwing infinitely more resources and space at the problems.
Cars are inherently spatially inefficient, which makes them a terrible form of transport for cities. That is the hard mathematical reality that so many people avoid reckoning with.
Think of the space taken up by 1000 people on a single metro train, vs 1000 people in nearly 1000 cars. Think of 1000 people on bikes vs 1000 people in cars.
It's so obvious that this is a terrible way of moving people about, and we see this in congestion, in longer commutes in spite of cars traveling at higher speeds, sprawling patterns of urban development, road deaths (the biggest cause of death of children in most western countries), noise, pollution, sprawl, inactivity and social isolation.
Only ideology (car brain) prevents people from seeing it as the problem it is.
Simply & beautifully satirized by the "bro just one more lane bro, bro I swear just one more lane and it'll fix the traffic bro," meme from a few years ago.
If it's an average of 1.2 persons per car (which is the typical average) and counting roughly 1,200 cars on those images (in aggregate) it would take roughly 28-29 rail cars to transport this number of people.
That's 3-5 trains worth. All that traffic could have been saved (in theory) by 3-5 trains.
I don't imagine a train would serve all those people, but imagine the massive dent it would make to have good train systems between large population centers.
I really wish the US could get more of this. I know here in Boston this has been a hot issue with the summer shutdown of Newberry on Sunday.
Drivers will come out of nowhere and complain, will start suddenly caring about people with disabilities (of course in no car areas we will figure out how emergency vehicles, deliveries, and people with disabilities will get around).
Sure our public transit system needs a lot of work, but that is not an argument for keeping the current car centric system we have in place now.
Cars obviously have their use cases and I can also understand why most of the US will never do this. But the car culture within cities is insane.
The drivers in my country emigrated to Switzerland.
I jest, but it's true that my city of 650k souls is in a dire need of around 100 bus/tram drivers and that many emigrated to rich countries which provide an overall better standard of work/living.
Personally for minor errands I cycle because I can't rely on public transport and neither can anyone else, so there's traffic congestion everywhere. I'm not happy with this, but I don't really have other options.
Public transport usually requires a medium-to-high density to be sustainable. However, it can get saturated - in Paris, the subway and the trams are full for long periods during the day, even at midnight! It makes the experience really unpleasant when you have no alternative.
I'm not really arguing that the world adopts the Paris metro system. First of all, there are turn stills everywhere which is nowhere to be found in Zürich. Why not create choke points and erect this annoying block everywhere in front of people who wish to reach their destination as quickly as possible. Great idea.
In Luxembourg, public transport is for free. Also great.
My favourite thing about living in the Netherlands is that kids have freedom. They can bike to school, their friends’ houses, sports, town etc and parents aren’t their taxi.
Growing up in suburban California I was basically in an outdoor prison until I could drive.
> Growing up in suburban California I was basically in an outdoor prison until I could drive.
Having grown up in the Netherlands and having a decision to make where we want our kids to grow up (US spouse), this feels painful to read. I suppose the SWE salaries aren't worth it.
Another problem is that they very seldom make walking pathways between cul de sacs.
These 2 houses are 100 meters from each other but you have to walk 1700 meters and most of the distance is without any sidewalk, only "Odell Cir" has it. The small amount of sidewalk is so narrow and close to the cars that it is hardly a sidewalk.
Shout out to @NotJustBikes in general. Infrastructure should be built for humans first. This benefits cars as well: more accessible for walking / cycling / public transport = less congested for when you do need a car.
Money is great for a lot of things, but money alone would definitely not be enough to get me to live in the USA, especially now that I'm preparing to have kids.
Hah, I had a feeling that was a NJB video. It is generally surreal to me that even smaller settlements in Europe have more, shall we say, evolvability than North American ones, and (at least in some cases owing to their antiquity) prioritize the needs of pedestrians.
> Growing up in suburban California I was basically in an outdoor prison until I could drive.
Just as a counter point, I grew up in suburban Massachusetts and this wasn't the case for me. My friends and I rode all over town on our bikes. Bike lanes weren't a thing back then at all, and this was in the 90s when violent crime was at its peak in the US. We just tried to stick to streets with less traffic, rode on sidewalks where available, and took alternate routes through the woods, the cemetery, private property, etc. to avoid busy areas. This is anecdotal, of course, but no kid from my town ever got hit by a car when I was growing up (one kid did die chasing a ball into the street, though).
I'm all for building bike lanes and public transport. And also not all suburban areas are equal - I've definitely seen areas of the US where I would not feel safe riding a bike even as an adult. But I think whatever is keeping kids confined to their homes is just as much a cultural change as it is a lack of infrastructure.
New england's suburbs & small towns are the outlier in the US. I grew up in the south and my experience exactly mirrors that of the CA resident you're responding to.
No amount of cultural change is going to make suburban charlotte a good place for 8 year olds to bike alone.
I was fortunate to raise my kids in an exurb that's popular for scenic and uncongested roads. We get a lot of road bikers on the weekends. That means it's relatively safe for kids to ride their bikes all over town. This gave my kids a lot of independence at a younger age than most.
I'm always wondering how Americans feel traveling to Europe and being able to walk in cities. It must be so surreal that they either have to move, or they can't fathom that these cities are practical to live in.
> traveling to Europe and being able to walk in cities
All of Greece is car oriented. Of course if you stay near Acropolis you get the impression of walk-ability. Spain outside of the historic city centers is car oriented. Average mileage traveled by car per person in Germany is about the same as is in Canada.
I can continue your generalization about my home city - Montreal. Which is walk-able .. but not really, see the second part here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yDtLv-7xZ4
To me, it's a big reason why Americans love Disney World: you can drive to your local airport, fly to Florida, take a shuttle bus to your resort (that handles your luggage for you), and then rely on Disney's private network of bus routes, monorails, gondolas, boats, etc., instead of having to drive yourself.
In fact, if you use their transportation network, you actually get somewhat better treatment: in all of the parks, there's a shorter walk to/from the transit terminal than to your car, and in one of them (Magic Kingdom), you are required to park a distance from the park and take a connecting ferry.
It's not surreal at all, and most Americans marvel at how tiny and unliveable the houses are.
Europeans must marvel at being able the size of living accommodations in the US. They can not even fathom in their brains what it's like not to be crammed into a tiny 20sqm flat.
I completely understand dedicating space to public transport instead of cars. But dedicating space to cars seems entirely reasonable in isolation, because the city has an interest in making it possible to get there. Parking spaces store cars - but is that their entire function? Or is that just an aspect of enabling people to drive into the city?
Consider the fact that you cannot in fact store a freezer in a public parking space. Nor even a car, actually, beyond a certain period of time, precisely because it's all about enabling movement.
Many places have on street parking that is used by residents (e.g. you get the "have to move my car twice a month because of street sweepers" effect). It's possible that's what the quote is referring to.
Compare Brookline MA, which allows on-street parking, but only during the day to neighborhoods in Boston proper which has free on-street parking permits for residents.
Unfortunately, there is a lot of ideology in the issue of restricting car traffic in cities, for example, the Netherlands is often cited as an example, but they forget that it is one of the most motorized countries in the world (80% of families have a car, and 33% have two), and has one of the densest networks of motorways in the world, and 78% of trips in the Netherlands are made by car, and the average distance of a bicycle trip is only 5 kilometers. I do not argue that local restrictions or a ban on cars, especially in the center, make life more comfortable, but this does not mean that it is necessary to restrict it everywhere.
I often ride a bike, but it is generally surprising that after a century of development of the car, the creation of comfortable climate control systems, noise insulation and multimedia, I am seriously asked to take children to school in the rain, wind or snow on a bike. For me, this sounds like regression
In my city (Tampere, Finland, pop. ~260,000) the annual number of traffic accidents leading to injury has halved since 2010. A big driver has been the decision in 2015 to lower the speed limits on all local streets from 40km/h (25 mi/h) to 30 km/h (~20 mi/h), with appropriate traffic calming measures implemented where necessary. (Industrial zones are exempt.)
Well, there are a couple of those. But mainly we’re talking about the basic things: narrowing lanes, speed bumps, raised zebra crossings, preventing through traffic, rebuilding intersections as roundabouts and so on. The key points to preventing speeding are
* reducing drivers' perceived safety, and
* making it more uncomfortable for the drivers to speed.
I was walking in a narrow street in Granada, Spain yesterday and two guys on their scooters where going at 40mph, on a street meant mostly for pedestrians. They pollute like cars (the stink is the same, even if smaller engine.) When people talk about cars ruining cities designed for walking, they should include scooters. They look cute in movies but they are not so pleasant to have around in practice. I don't mind the electric scooters the type you stand on because if you're going really fast on a narrow pedestrian and you hit someone it won't be so fatal, and you will get hurt probably equally, so people generally don't ride them at maximum speed. Also, they're essential for take-away food delivery.
I feel like this common conversation is missing a dimension. Car vs. public transport is too flat.
I prefer that cities are walkable and have good inter and intra public transport. So I'm with the anti-car crowd on that.
However, I do not prefer cities in general. So I'm with the pro-car people on this one. I enjoy the trend of spacious car-friendly suburbs and rural areas. I value the space and freedom over the conveniences of the city.
I'm hoping for a self driving taxi + trains combo to maybe solve the problem.
For one a self driving taxi fleet could take up vastly less space - you'd no longer need one car per person, you'd need far fewer parking spots, most cars could be single or double seaters again taking less space and running more efficiently.
The space savings could be used to boost rail-based public transit options, which would see more adoption as self driving taxis make last-mile transport cheaper and easier. A bunch of positive feedback loops driving public transit adoption and improvements.
Result is cleaner and more efficient transport for all, and vast amounts of space returned from serving cars to serving people.
To me, it's more than just reduce traffic, but a sign that government is investing in its people. In order for a traffic free/minimal zone to thrive, you need policies that promote affordable housing, policing policy that reduces crime without being "brutal". The population also must accept certain civil responsibilities as trust and respect must go both ways.
These threads always turn into fights between car vs. non-car people. But the answer should just be more of everything. More bike lanes, car lanes, buses, trains, parking, etc. Close a street or two off to car traffic, maybe just on weekends initially, to create a nice walkable downtown area.
People always seem to talk about these things like it's one size fits all, when needs vary massively from one city to another. And even from one neighborhood to another.
Bike lanes and public transport will reduce traffic congestion as long as they are well-designed and people actually use them. And being able to get into a car and drive somewhere is incredibly convenient when traffic is light and parking is plentiful.
I'm not very familiar with Houston, but a quick google search shows that there is a big project underway right now to add more lanes in Houston [1]. So it would seem that civil engineers there have found a place to put more car lanes that they think will help with traffic congestion.
> At which point do you have enough car lanes?
As long as Houston is growing (currently it is the second fastest growing city in the US), I don't think there will ever be enough. They need to continuously improve their transportation infrastucture to keep up with a growing population. As I said above, I think this should include bike lanes and public transportation too. But if engineers identify a solution to alleviate traffic congestion by building more roads, then I think that is worth considering, too.
Look at Greater Tokyo. 37 million people - and they have everything. Pedestrians, cyclists, cars, taxies, buses, surface roads, expressways, trains, subways, monorails, high speed rail, ferries, etc. All interconnected, and all being used to capacity at rush hour every day. It's absolutely insane, but every time I visit I'm in awe at how easy it is to get around (albeit unpleasant at times).
This is nice and all for tourists and people that live in the city center. But then if you don't live in the actual city and need to drive for half an hour to reach the city, spend half an hour searching for parking, then take a half an hour bus, then it's not so funny.
This linked article and the comment section remind me how I admire American maximalism. No half-measures - want to be able to drive everywhere? Let's bulldoze whole cities to make them car-oriented. Tired of the concept after a few generations? FUCK CARS, let's have Pontevedra everywhere.
Meanwhile there are places in the US that managed to preserve a more balanced approach. Take for example the borough of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania:
At first glance it looks like a typical car-oriented landscape, but note the presence of sidewalks. There's on-street parking, but hardly any driveway visible, because they're at the back, connected to one-way alleys.
That is brilliant. On one hand the area is fully walkable, on the other everyone gets to live in their detached house with a garage and whatnot. You can drive, but you can also walk. Hell, you could probably even cycle through those alleys as cars use them only to park, so they won't be speeding through there.
Prioritizing people is by any means the way to go, but it's not hassle-free.
It has an impact on businesses and delivery operators that end up being obstructed.
Ideally I think one should move towards layered cities, pedestrians on the ground while beneath them roads, parkings and especially train and train carts thrive.
In Norway the public transportation in Oslo has become so bad that it's essentially no longer reliable. If I want to get somewhere in time, I have to use a car or a bicycle.
Also, the violence and sexual assaults on public transport is getting worse, the times that it does work it's completely overloaded, and the prices are insanely high and quite frankly becoming unaffordable with the insanely high inflation and interest rates.
A city that was altered greatly to accommodate pedestrians has become a city that does not accommodate anyone. This is likely to be the outcome in other cities that take similar measures, governments always fail eventually, once it becomes impractical to use cars the country's economy will suffer greatly as a result, because there will come a time when the government just decides they don't care about public transport anymore and it can be as horrible as possible because nobody has any choices anymore.
Not to be a doomer but I think public transport has peaked in many places in Europe except the big famous standouts like Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg etc
The UK government for example is reducing subsidies for the railway and raising prices sometimes even 12-14% per year. This would be unimaginable 10 years ago. We have many railway workers who feel underpaid and some that feel they deserve the same pay as speciality doctors. This gets directly paid for by price rises. It is strike again /again/ for the railways.
I think the time is now that governments don't care about public transport
This would lead to literally murder in my part of upstate New York. Heck, my neighbor will even park on his own lawn to avoid the ten foot walk from the pavement.
Imagine a city without personal cars in its inner limits. Residents who decide to own a personal car can park it in a Park&Ride which also includes unlimited transit access for the duration of the parking.
Deliveries, you say? Those aren't personal cars, but I'll comply. Businesses will be able to drive in the cities, within the permitted times/routes.
Emergency vehicles? Those aren't personal cars, either. They're also allowed.
A lot of people in the US seems to have a candy colored version of the EU in their heads that mainly consists of an idealized version of these cities and free shit.
Ofc, things look great if you spend a few days in expensive hotel or furbished AirBnB ruining things for locals. And in that time visit a few local places for food or get groceries for a few meals. But this is vastly different from living such places for years and trying to pay for it with local wages...
Pontevedra has around 80K inhabitants, so it's practical to design it this way. But when cities are much bigger, problems start to arise. Not everyone can afford to live in the center (nor is there space for them, and building taller than a certain number of meters or floors is often forbidden for various reasons), so people begin moving farther out.
Sure, there's public transport... but only until it takes six times longer than driving a car - and that's not even counting all the issues public transport has in many places, which some people deny even exist, although doesn't matter to me because I just experienced them first hand way too many times (I have never owned a car until recently).
At that point, you might as well move farther out to a nicer house, less expenses and just drive a bit longer.
I would argue that a public transportation network is a requirement, maybe even a prerequisite, for high density. Manhattan simply could not work without the various public transportation methods -- if everyone commuting in from CT, LI, NJ, upstate NY, etc., had to drive in, would there even be enough space for all those cars on the island?
> But when cities are much bigger, problems start to arise.
Actually, the bigger the city, the more efficient public transportation is. Just look at LA with it's 16 lanes of car traffic, and compare it to London - the fundamental difference being that LA has no real public transport and London has an extensive tube and train network. Oh, and London has about twice as many people as LA... which one would you rather be a commuter in?
Just an example: a colleague of mine was commuting from Reading to Canary Wharf (before the Elizabeth line even), this is now an hour long train ride, if you tried to take it by car it would be double that - and then you'd have to find parking for your car in Canary Wharf, which is not easy and very expensive.
It's not about being bigger, but having high population density.
Obviously in larger cities it will take longer to travel from one extreme to the other, but that is a similar problem as trying to travel to another city. Trips that are 20km long need to be treated as such, no matter if they're in the same city or not.
Some suburbs in Barcelona and Madrid have more than 20K hab/km2. And they are expected to have as low car transit as other European cities with around 3K to 6K hab/km2.
It is obvious that even though lots of people might be able to switch to alternative ways of transportation car is still extremely useful for many use cases.
The solution is the right city design: more populated areas in the district centers, and less densely populated areas towards the outskirts. Spain is terrible at this, as they design high density areas everywhere. Americans do the opposite, it's mostly all low density.
A balanced solution is how dutch cities are designed. You can live in your own garden house, while having access to commerce, offices in higher density areas, just by 5-20minutes by bike (up to 5-6km).
Cities can scale far further than that and cars make the situation worse, not better. The Amsterdam metropolitan area houses in the ballpark of two and a half million people, most of them not living in the city center.
TL;DR: «Only “necessary traffic” is allowed in Pontevedra: vehicles used for emergency and public safety, public services (including garbage and water trucks, etc.), transportation of people with reduced mobility, and accessing private garages are permitted 24/7. However, loading and unloading for commercial supplies, home delivery, transporting bulky objects, and house moving and related activities, are permitted only during certain hours.»
I did. The person had bags all around them, things rolling out of them, and at one point dropped a box of coke cans on me that thankfully didn’t explode. The situation looked terrible and completely impractical. But people helped him gather his things.
I feel like a bit of a failure when it comes to transport. I tried for many years to cycle to work in Dublin covering 25km on an ebike, but gave up after several nasty incidents that almost resulted in serious injury (for example my head almost going under the wheel of a van). I've experienced so much hatred, verbal and physical violence from drivers — and I'm the kind of cyclist that is fully lit, clad in high-vis and stopping at all traffic lights.
About a year ago I started to take the bus. My commute went from an hour on the bike to over two hours. Spending four hours a day on a bus to travel such a short distance is not a fun experience. The bus meanders through a city choked with traffic. It's often faster if I get off and walk that part of the journey (I've checked). I enjoyed cycling for the most part. It was great for fitness and clearing my head. The parts of my commute away from cars were beautiful but there was a significant risk of death or serious injury every time I got on the bike. More and more drivers are buried in their phones. Cycle or bus and you'll see this.
The bus was slowly killing me. It was hard to work as the crowded bus wobbled around narrow Dublin streets along with various degrees of anti-social behaviour. I got off the bus angry and frustrated and groggy.
I've just bought a small little electric car and I can get to work in around 40 minutes. I don't have to listen to other people's loud voice calls or TikToks that are so loud they penetrate through ANC. I don't have to ask someone to make space on the seat they are occupying all by themselves and their bag and endure the dirty looks for it. I don't have to wait and wait for buses that never show up. I hate the bus. I hate that I hate the bus. I feel like a failure for having to buy a second car but I fucking tried!
I'm happy in my car. It's fun to drive and it makes me happy and guilty. I feel like I have so much more freedom. I'm not tied to the bus schedule which placed very tight limits on my time, and the bus frequently didn't show. Otherwise it would take much longer to get home. I can stop by somewhere on the way home and pick something up. Like the bike, I am by myself in the car and I can decompress. I can sing if I want.
It makes no sense for a 25km commute to take two hours. Its madness. By travelling from one suburb to another via the city centre the bus becomes wholly impractical. A public transport system has to work so that people leave their car at home. London worked for me, I got the tube everywhere. Valencia has an amazing public transport system. Dublin is completely broken.
This is a problem when the public transport system isn't built with these exact issues in mind. You're right, it shouldn't take 2 hours for that commute, and all the other issues you pointed out are legitimate. The problem is that the infrastructure hasn't been adapted to make things better for the people using public transport.
As a comparison to the Netherlands, public transport always has right of way vs regular traffic, they have their own dedicated lanes that traffic isn't allowed into (this includes taxis! They can use the public transport lanes) and even their traffic signals treat them preferentially. I take a bus very often, and quite often it won't stop at a single red light because the traffic lights are programmed to help the flow of public transport, despite the street it travels on having 5 or 6 different traffic lights. In many cities, only public transport is allowed in some of the denser streets too, so they don't have to compete with other drivers on the road.
Trams, metros and trains are pretty obvious as to why they work so well.
Same with bike lanes. First of all, whenever they can be they are wholly separated from the main traffic and live in their own independent lanes. If a bike has to join regular streets, they have the right of way and these situations are kept at an absolute minimum. The streets and intersections themselves are also designed so that drivers are forced into driving safely via traffic easing measures and low speed limits. Plus, everyone here bikes, so there isn't the same type of animosity or stigma you see elsewhere because drivers understand what it's like to be a cyclist and view it as a normal thing.
So it's not your fault and you shouldn't feel bad, it's the fault of your government for not investing into proper public transport infrastructure. They are trying to squeeze in public transport infra into existing road infra, whereas what they should be doing is redesigning the current infra to make sure public transport is better integrated.
And, guess what, the roads here are still awesome for drivers! Other than the centers of the bigger cities, there isn't much congestion to speak of and the highways are of extremely high quality (to the point we have a billion memes about feeling the bumps of Belgium as soon as you cross the border). It's not like NL is a car-free utopia, something like 65% of people still have cars, the difference is that there are alternate options that are just as good, and often better than driving. That's the secret sauce to good public transport.
What this article doesn't mention is that economically, people are so much more productive then cars.
The land value of your city will be so much better if you have a walkable city. Walkable is always the start, then you map bikes, and public transport on top.
You will have city that is economically productive and vibrant.
So a tax financed site telling how it's great to have more tax and regulations.
Not surprising.
Find it very weird to have government trying to gerrymander things just as we are on the cusp of EV transition and autonomy.
Go take a ride in a Tesla with FSD, the future is here, let it come in, get out of the way.
In a few years with autonomous vehicles the need for vehicle ownership wild radically decrease and with that a huge need for parking space will simply vanish.
What I suggest instead:
make electricity super cheap use all the ways possible
create space for charger system but let brands compete( don't over regulate)
Allow autonomous system to operate, be a trailblazer in the field.
The car-centric alternative requires more expensive infrastructure and more aggressive zoning regulations
Your EV argument does not address the main issue of urban sprawl in car-centric design and how the ever-increasing infrastructure costs (and decreased revenue: parking lots dont create wealth) are bankrupting cities.
I am going to be downvoted for this but I am not wrong.
The thing most mass transportation advocates need to understand when it comes to the US is that we don't want cars necessarily for convenience, we want them to be able to avoid other people. We don't want to have to endure the constant micro aggressions of other passengers. We certainly don't want to have to endure the assaults, murders and rapes that happen. We don't want to be forced to mix with the most violent of society while unarmed and packed liked sardines.
Every argument you make about cars being more dangerous are 100% valid, we just don't care. We would rather die 10 times due to an accident than a violent murder. Its just our nature. Until you can get crime to essentially zero or ensure either an armed officer in every train car or allow citizens to carry mass transportation will not be a thing in the US. Especially not in Red states. I'm talking complete removal of all inconveniences, including things as minor as someone playing their music loudly on a blue tooth speaker. This murder of the Ukrainian woman combined with the treatment of Penny essentially killed any hope of mass transit being popular in Red states for the next 100 years. I am not arguing for or against Penny's actions I am simply stating the effect that it had on most people that support what he did, the same people that would need to support mass transit for it to catch on.
Again I am not arguing numbers here, mass transportation is obviously statistically safer than car travel by a massive degree. I am arguing human nature. We will not subject ourselves to criminals and intentional violence when there is an alternative no matter how much more dangerous that alternative ends up being
That's how the EU liberals are losing the last drop of good-will that they have from the general (lumpen) populace. But good for them they all stand behind gentrification.
Taking car transport to the extreme is bad, but the narrative that life in a small flat and commute by public transport is the future is dystopian, too.
The "air pollution" argument is disappearing fast as well with the ongoing transition to EVs.
What we need is a good balance. Pedestrians, bicycles, public transport, and cars.
>The "air pollution" argument is disappearing fast as well with the ongoing transition to EVs.
All that's left is the enormous amount of death, destruction, and injury motor vehicles cause through crashes. The leading cause of death for children!
Sorry, I forgot to think of the children! I was too focussed on drafting a thoughtful and substantive comment, I suppose.
Edit to @Zigurd below: What have all you guys replies to do with air pollution? You don't have to agree with my original comment but please at least try to bring something to the discussion. I feel like I stepped into a meeting of an anti-car cult...
EVs still produce air pollution from tyre, brake, and road surface abrasion. There is also new research that indicates resuspension of particles is a major source of roadway-related pollution.
Or Memphis, which is smack dab in the middle of a permanently Republican supermajority state, yet has three times the murder rate and twice the robbery rate of NYC.
Is there a charitable explanation for why people cherrypick a single homicide in a metro of 8 million people and somehow act like it's proof for the downfall of liberal democracy?
Especially when by most relevant metrics, illiberal democracy performs dramatically worse?
You seem to be living in a distant parallel world.
Here is how it looks like on the actual world: urban centers are dominated by Democrats in almost every state. The leniency regarding criminals comes from Democrats, specially regarding violent criminals.
Because you can gauge how you feel when you walk through the cities and realize something is off with this narrative. I suspect a lot of crimes aren’t tracked or classified properly in the data we see from cities in blue states, to support their policies. Or that victims are exhausted by the lack of prosecution and sentencing, and stop reporting things.
No, people walk, run, shop, sit, use a bike and use a car, cars are just cars. If something is "built for cars" its just built for one of many tings people do. If its "built for people", it should be built for most of the tings people do.
It's all fine and dandy until you realize that economy pays a big buck for faster and more comfortable ways of transporting a body. (And it's been this way since time memorial).
You either transport your body fast, or you are missing out. And the greatest thing to miss out is an opportunity. While programmers can live in one room for years and just use Zoom for everything, others can't.
Sorry to say, but most of my European friends who were much anti-car, have changed their opinion after... buying a car. Being able to move in whatever direction at whatever time and being able to carry some stuff in your trunk makes your life convenient. Add to that the privacy and your personal AC and you won't be able to top it off. In South Africa personal vehicle means security at night.
The only places where this works are the places where:
1. People live for retirement and pleasure.
2. The road infrastructure is just straight hell. (Like Portugal. It's bad in Lisbon. It is terrible in there).
3. Where you are not under any circumstances can be robbed by a random person on a street.
So, the so-called cars problem is not something solvable. You just have to handle other factors to and cars will follow. I've seen cities where improvement in economic and social conditions led to the development of nice pedestrian and bike infrastructure.
You can transport your body faster by walking than by taking a car. But of course, this depends on how you design a city. If I have a supermarket 5 minute walk from home, is going to be faster than taking the car out, and finding a parking lot and finally walking to the supermarket.
And let's not forget, that if you want a more fair society, you cannot assume that just everybody can afford a car. I went to university by bus and it was a horrible experience. I could only dream of the modern cheap electric vehicles. But still, the city I studied has barely any infrastructure for this, and you risk your life every time, even though it would be PERFECT for this.
Car infrastructure isn’t faster though, because it pushes everything apart. Noth America is a vast sea of parking with a building sprinkled here and there, so a five minute bike ride to shops with little parking is replaced by a thirty minute drive to a big box with 12 acres of parking.
> You either transport your body fast, or you are missing out. And the greatest thing to miss out is an opportunity.
This is such a modern take on life, we have to run everywhere to consume as much as possible as fast as possible. The irony is that you're probably missing out more of what makes life "life" by being entirely driven by FOMO and checking boxes of the infinite TODO list.
What's funny is that the faster the means of transportation the more time we spend time in them, commute times are getting longer, you're most likely literally missing opportunities due to cars more than anything else.
In any city the shortest distance in total time spent is by bike.
Even if it is widely dangerous to do so (most american cities i've ever visited)
You can hem and haw - but its pretty bang on
When you then add finding parking at the ends of your trip to it it is crazyly more efficient timewise.
Now even copenhagen denmark has rain causing many more to take a car or public transport (that works).
But it is very clear that the time argument is simply not true.
Now you can argue convenience at the start of the trip vs agony in the end (finding that parking space)
Or for "need to lug an ikea sofa across time"
Or even for "my kids and familiy needs to go as well"
That's super fine, and all true - but 70-80% of ALL trips in cars are by 1 person sitting in 1 car.
So moving just 10% of car users to alternate means free up a tremendous amount of space in the city.
I love my car, my bikes and my public transports and each does something nice for me - but seriously do you think cities like l.a. are even livable on a human scale - people don't even walk if the distance is over 1000meters.
I certainly agree with the idea of "uhm lets try to plan for otherthings than cars going forward"
It's not as straightforward as that. Sure, a car gives you more freedom - if you need to go further out for stuff. But if you live in a dense city, you won't need it - your job is in walking / cycling distance, all shops are, etc.
The other factor I found is that quality and affordability of housing is inversely proportinal to access to services/public transit; that is, in the Netherlands you can live like a king in eastern Groningen for the same amount of money you buy a starter home in the Randstad, but to get to the nearest city you're looking at at least an hour's travel (by car or bus/train).
> You either transport your body fast, or you are missing out. And the greatest thing to miss out is an opportunity.
This is what’s known as "fomo". Arguments driven on fear never sustainable.
Also apparently you have never been stuck in bumper to bumper traffic in the aftermath of a massive event. Or maybe county closes major roadway for repairs. Or a _single_ motor vehicle accident brings an entire highway to a halt for _hours_ (many people rubber necking as well …)
> Where you are not under any circumstances can be robbed by a random person on a street.
I will be very surprised if there's anywhere in the world where the expected loss from being robbed on the street while walking exceeds the expected loss from being in a car accident while driving.
Getting in a car is by far the most dangerous thing most people do routinely.
That’s cute. But if you don’t have the public transportation infrastructure & enough housing it’s totally infeasible. People who drive the cars are not the city residents. They are the ones who cannot afford living in the city and have to commute from far away.
This is a very backwards way of looking at the issue. The public transportation infrastructure and denser housing used to exist throughout north American cities, but was bulldozed to make room for comically wide roads, oversized single family houses (increasinly occupied by empty-nesters not utilizing all the now empty space), parking lots, malls, and big box stores.
Car centric design caused these problems, and moving away from car centric design is how you fix them.
Did they also bulldoze the skyscrapers that we are missing to house all of the suburbs population in the cities ?
It’s nice to believe in fairytales, but what you are proposing is effectively cutting access of poor people to opportunities so that the rich can bike to their cafe safely.
It is timely to publish that the day pretty much all public transportations in London are shut down because of a strike, and it is raining in case you thought cycling would be a good idea. Meanwhile the streets of Paris are blocked by leftists trying to set the city on fire, also disrupting public transportations.
You can cycle in the rain. Just plan and get the needed equipment for it.
Also allow me to point you to Mexico City - you can’t imagine the hell it is for car drivers when all the things you mention happen (rain, protests choking half the city, and the subway shut down due to either failure or a strike). I’m talking literally 4-5 hours to get to your in-the-city destination; I once spent 2 hours driving half a kilometer and it was only raining. Just in case your actual point is “it’s better to drive as you’re less vulnerable to an eventuality with public transport or alternative mobility”.
Yeah man, damn Europe is limiting businesspeople to do business! If they just let go of all these stupid laws that protect the population, a few people might get really rich! Why wouldn't they want that?
Exactly. If France doesn’t want more terrorist attacks, Macron should abide to the terrorists demands and convert to Islam! Perfectly reasonable position.
Overground, National Rail, DLR, the Elizabeth line, trams and buses are all working. And the few parts of the tube network that don't have any nearby heavy rail services (eg. the Hainault loop on the Central line) are mostly still running.
Sure, the non-tube services are (much!) busier than normal but this situation is actually a great demonstration of one of the most important factors in making public transport useful: route redundancy, so that if one is suspended for whatever reason there are reasonable alternative options for most journeys.
i am totally an advocate of the 15 minute city, but the strike thing is a genuine problem, it's total blackmail. yes, they are asking for better working conditions, but then you look into the details and it's because early retirement age has been raised from 56 to 58 and days off have been reduced from 28 to 26. that sort of thing cannot be indulged. i'm getting to an age where i know seniors in my european side of the family that have been retired longer than they have worked, but insist they deserve their yearly vacation. that social contract meme is real.
Taipei has warm temperatures year round that mean everything is dry quickly. It's quite a different situation when your socks get soaked in < 15 degree weather.
I cycled a reasonable distance to work (about 25km a day) here in sunny Scotland and rain wasn't really a problem, or snow - but cycling in really high winds isn't a great idea.
Edit: To explain - I was cycling on a that was on top of an embankment and a strong gust of wind unbalanced me at a bad moment when a lorry was passing - I actually hit the lorry with my shoulder and was knocked back upright again. This was all quite exciting at the time.
Oh no people are exercising the rights their ancestors fought and died for, someone call the police! Daddy Trump please bring the national guard to liberate Paris from the LeFtIst!
I'm from Pontevedra. It has been the major's long-term project (~ 20 years) to make the city for the pedestrians: and he's done it. This works mainly because of two things: 1) the city is small and it takes aprox 30 min to walk it entirely from end to end, and 2) it is mostly flat. Only a smooth hill from "orillamar" to "alameda/peregrina". Unfortunately, the major obsessed with getting rid of cars (which I am highly grateful) but forgot to provide reliable public transport to close-by villages (max 5km,i.e., Poio/Marin/Salcedo). This means tha people from these villages commute by car to the city, which has really poor parking capacity. And the most important thing: there are zero specialized jobs in Pontevedra. Either you are a public state worker, for which you need to pass an exam to lock a lifelong job with no possibility of being fired regardless of how incompetent you are, or you work in hospitality. My partner works in Santiago and I work in the UK. There is no future for us in our city unless we want to study and compete for a position with thousands of other Spaniards. I firmly believe the major should also prioritise quality jobs. It is pretty nice for tourists to experience a city with no cars, but the reality of most locals is that they either leave or settle to accept precarious jobs.
There are a lot of places with crappy job markets and plenty of cars. I'm thinking of southern Italy for instance. At least they put the city on the map for something positive. Better than being just another anonymous place with poor job prospects and, who knows, maybe getting some attention helps with the economy.
This is really amazing to see trending on HN. I spent a couple days in Pontevedra this summer while walking the Camino de Santiago. It was absolutely delightful and what I experienced aligns with the article. The old town was filled with wide streets almost exclusively for walking, cafes and restaurants that sprawled into plazas, and people young and old enjoying the car free public space. It was one of the first stops on our trip through Spain and as an American it was stunning.
In America the contrast is stark. Most of our public spaces prioritize cars instead of people. I’m lucky to live near the beltline in Atlanta. It’s incredible to see how people flock to the beltline for a car free experience. It’s such a rare thing in America. Where it exists you can see that there is tremendous demand for it. Supply on the other hand is unfortunately very difficult to deliver.
>Where it exists you can see that there is tremendous demand for it.
Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time, or they witness (or experience) violence, or some other anti-social behavior sours the whole thing.
I spent some time in NYC during the Giuliani years, after the city did a lot of work cleaning it all up: stopping turnstile jumpers, removing graffiti, more police, etc. It was great. You'd get the occasional guy that jumps on, makes a speech about how he's raising money for something or other, and walks around trying to sell chocolate bars. And there was the occasional dangerous person, insisting on getting up in your face.
So long as this sort of behavior remains at a very low level, something like maybe once every couple of weeks, that's probably okay. But public transit loses all appeal if it happens often. If it rises to the level of violence, everybody starts thinking about the suburbs.
Public transit requires a certain level of unspoken agreement. "We will all behave in this manner." If this unspoken agreement is broken often enough, then it must be enforced. If it is not, and other options present themselves, people will choose the other options.
This happened en masse many decades ago in America. Those that could decamped for other places where their social expectations were met.
I'm a big supporter of urbanism. I loathe the time I spend in my car, and I don't even have that far of a commute, but I have zero other options if I want to live where crime is low and the schools aren't dysfunctional. Until this is addressed, there is no argument about commuter density or efficiency of movement or anything else the proponents of public transit like to talk about that will make a lick of difference.
The worst argument anybody can make is "but that's just life in the big city!" If so, then I'm not going to live and raise my family in the big city. Airy-fairy principles of efficiency or an arguable notion of convenience will not take precedence over safety and quality.
All this applies to cars as well. Drivers are wild and driving is absurdly dangerous. I hate driving because other drives act like they are the car in the world - particularly post covid. Here in Toronto turn signals feel like they have been uninstalled. We have a ton of street racers tearing up the roads. I see motorcyclists pop wheelies and rip down major streets weekly.
All of your complaints about lack of pro social behavior applies to drivers too.
> Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time
OP is right. The demand is huge and supply is tiny. Even with those scary panhandlers people are jamming onto public transport (when it actually exists) and going far far out of their way to experience walkable areas.
> zero other options if I want to live where crime is low and the schools aren't dysfunctional
Crime in NYC is exceedingly low and the schools are great. Why don't you simply move to Chelsea or the Upper West Side?
Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time, or they witness (or experience) violence, or some other anti-social behavior sours the whole thing.
These are not issues with public transit. These are issues with municipalities that don't invest in their citizens.
For one example, public transit connects people to jobs. Some people in nicer areas with good jobs fight against public transit because they don't want the working class to have easy access to their neighborhood. So, again, the issue isn't public transit, it's people who don't want to share their municipality's resources. New York today has free kindergarten, universal school lunches and the excelsior scholarship program. Thanks to investments like this, we see crime in NY today is lower than even Giuliani's tenure as mayor...
> Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time
People love driving until they're stuck in traffic, or their kid dies in a fiery car crash after being ran into by a drunk driver, or they get a flat tire, or can't afford their monthly car payment.
To your point about society needing to be better, that applies generally and has nothing to do specifically with transit, walking around outside, or any other daily activities.
You can live in a big city, affordably, with a yard and even a garage and have public transit like a light rail or a bus system, or just damn sidewalks that go to places. These supposed trade-offs are non-existent except in extreme cases like New York City, which isn't what is generally being discussed.
>Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time
As a european I read this comment, its sort of implications, and reckon US must be hell in some areas. TBH London has seen a big drop in health, pan handlers have "lightly" started appearing on public transport, I think I only began noticing it since 2020.
My point is even with the occasionaly pan handler in London, that statement wouldn't make sense, as it is not "obviosuly bad" in that regard.
I lived in Manhattan (Chelsea) and took the subway to work and most other outings (when I could not walk) in the few years before Covid.
It was fine. You would get some people trying to sell stuff or in some kind of distress, but it was not all the time and it was easy to manage.
Americans who don't live in dense cities (and use transit) seem to be obsessed with the idea that these are some intolerable dystopias that must be dismantled.
It was the best place I have ever lived, except for the weather...
>The worst argument anybody can make is "but that's just life in the big city!"
A cousin was visiting us in our nice suburb. We had a slow, not-busy road we walked on when we lived there, and we'd wave to anyone; neighbors, vehicles, etc. Our cousin was sort of uncomfortable, and asked "do you know all these people?" I explained that we knew some of them but were just being polite and friendly. She explained that that were she lived (Boston) you just couldn't safely wave at just anybody you passed.
I don't think this occurred to her at the time, but that means she lives in a pretty awful place. Why exactly would it be _dangerous_ to wave at someone in a friendly way? There's only one answer to that question; because you live around violent or unstable people.
Before anyone says I'm just privileged, I've lived in rough areas before, and I can't fathom why anyone would put up with that sort of daily violence, noise and general degradation of quality of life if they otherwise didn't have to. We ultimately ended up moving out of the city just like you said because the crime was getting worse year by year. Do you want some drunk kid blasting his bass right outside your house at 11pm on a weeknight? (for hours, no less) And if you go and try to get him to turn it down there's a significant chance you'll be met with violence? Or people harassing your wife if she's ever "foolish" enough to walk down the street without you? Or to need to explain to your wife "hey, we can't walk through that group of kids, I can't really defend you against more than two attackers." All of these were regular issues for us. Home invasions on our block started ramping up, we knew people who were attacked, shot, killed, just while walking home.
To your point, this wasn't academic. It can be quite the 3rd rail to try to explain _why_ the violence in the city is bad, what is the cause and what is the solution. But when we're talking about my family's safety, I just don't care. I'm not going to live like that, and would have done almost anything to get my family out of that sort of situation. I really can't even fathom people who would write these things off. "Sure, my wife might be murdered and abused in a home invasion, but there are really cool walk-able restaurants!" It's pathological.
>Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time, or they witness (or experience) violence, or some other anti-social behavior sours the whole thing.
Haven't seen any of that in 30 years of using public transport in several countries. Are you ok in US?
The closest to anarchy I have been in public transport was withnessin a hobo refusing to pay for the ride to trigger the police response and be booked.
Thank you for this. This is precisely my issue with public transport in the US (granted my experience has only been in SF, Oakland, NYC and Chicago).
It’s emotionally taxing when you need to keep your guard up all the time. I can’t even imagine how much worse it would be on someone if they had kids to tow around as well.
The problems you mentioned are policing and welfare problems, both things that America sucks at.
Pontevedra is at least 100 times smaller then NYC, it's more comparable to the suburbs that you're moving your family to.
You are 1,000,000,000% more likely to die hit by a car as a pedestrian than die from a panhandler asking for a buck
You can have walkable neighborhoods and still allow some cars. They can only enter a neighborhood at low speed as a destination, to park there. To get from one neighborhood to another you have normal roads and highways. The Netherlands does this (although they have a lot of public transport as well. And bikes of course)
How is this such a common occurrence? I take the train to work almost every day in Australia and I’ve probably been asked for money twice in the last 3 years, and never seen a violent situation.
>>but that's just life in the big city!
In a big American city. School issues as well American due to funding structure. I'm not saying there aren't problems at school in other countries, but not like that: schools in cheap US districts are extremely underfunded.
> Public transit requires a certain level of unspoken agreement. "We will all behave in this manner."
That literally all of society.
The American idea that you live in suburban home that is a quasi gated community, drive into a parking garage, then go up to an office, only interact with workmates and then driving back out with no social interaction other then work is just not how most society worked for all of history. And its not how the US worked until the 1960.
The reality is, violence and death on the roads, is far more common then on public transport. There are tons road rage incidents, an absurdly high number. Those lead to all kinds of problems and quite often shootings. You are in more danger then on public transport generally. And yet I almost never hear about that when Americans talk about transport policy.
But yes, there does need to be rules enforcement. But on the other hand its also true that the US often has very user-hostile design principles in pretty much every aspect of their city design and policing policy. And that often invites or re-enforces bad behavior.
What he suggests is completely besides public transit, it's about spaces in general where cars aren't allowed or catered to. It doesn't just apply to big cities, but mid-sized and small cities have an absolute dearth of pedestrian-focused plazas. Small towns are extremely hostile to basic foot traffic. There's no reason for this to be the case. In Europe the small town equivalent will have a center where most of the commerce and services are, where cars are completely forbidden. You simply drive into town, park somewhere and carry out your business on foot. It's very nice.
Plazas do exist in the US, but they're rare. Very rare, especially outside of New England. That's what OP is talking about, public transit is a 'solution' to a different problem, and one that I don't like either. See, my biggest problem with urbanism is that it's overwhelmingly focused on building huge megacities, which are inherently unwalkable nonsense. Instead, walkability becomes rhetoric for any mode of transit that isn't a car. I hate that. I want walkable living spaces that are actually walkable, not urban environments where I walk to the train station because the city is too large for its own good.
I don't want to replace the personal car with public transit. It misses the point entirely. I don't want to have to use anything more intensive than an e-scooter to get around the place I live at all. Walking to the train station and riding that for 10-20 minutes to get to the other side of the city sucks. The social problems endemic to public transit in the US are just icing on the cake. Tokyo is a hellish nightmare compared to an Italian commune.
> This happened en masse many decades ago in America.
There was a name for this trend - White flight.
I grew up in southern suburbia and in walkable southern towns - they do exist, in pockets.
I learned two things from my experiences. First is that anywhere there is foot traffic, you will get homelessness, panhandling, crime, and just generally people you don't recognize. It's not because big cities aren't being policed adequately or anything policymakers are doing, it's just something that naturally comes with the territory.
The second lesson I took away is that we as a society often can't tell the difference between "This place makes me feel uncomfortable" and "This place isn't safe." Despite all of those issues I outlined above, I felt very safe and comfortable living day to day in urbanist spaces.
Funny enough it is the same with the cinema for me, too much impolite behaviour so I prefer to watch at home.
> Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time
Everyone loves driving until they have to:
* Pay through the nose for parking.
* Pay through the nose for tolls.
* Pay through the nose for gas, maintenance, insurance.
* Replace a car that they can't afford to keep running.
* Are stuck in endless traffic hell that them and all the other drivers on the road have created.
* Are seriously injured or killed by a reckless/drunk/idiot/inattentive/unlucky driver.
----
The first bullet point in particular drives people into a frothing rage. Drivers, as a group, are incredibly and irrationally entitled to free storage of their cars on public/private space.
The last bullet point is far more likely to happen to you in a car, than you are to be assaulted on a bus or train. Across my immediate family, I can count three serious crashes (Only one of which the family member in question was at fault for). None of us have ever been assaulted on public transit, and we've taken a lot of it.
If my direct connection bus came back - or at least bus frequency were increased - (Thanks, budget cuts, for adding a 10-25 minute transfer to my downtown to downtown commute), my car would once again be collecting dust in the garage.
People take transit when its relatively fast and gets them to where they need to go. That's the primary driver for ridership.
> Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time, or they witness (or experience) violence, or some other anti-social behavior sours the whole thing.
Maybe this is just another "American version" of something - in Czechia, public transportation is truly safe (incidents happen, of course, but it's like one per year that makes it to the news), even at night.
This all comes down to "We can't have nice things in America because of our toxic mix of individualism and capitalism."
Because we insist on trying to privatize everything, refuse to provide a safe floor for people, and make poverty and mental health challenges moral issues (meaning we degrade people who experience them and leave them to fend for themselves) we create an environment where true community is impossible.
Unless, of course, we apply authoritarian and abusive policing controls against those we've left behind, rounding them up and sending them somewhere else. Which of course achieves a temporary "peace" at the cost of a deep insecurity and fear, because we all know the moment we slip or step out of line, we're gone.
It really is toxic and has led directly to society breaking down to the point where we're now falling into full scale fascism.
This is not a problem with public transport but with utter lack of urban planning and convoluted social dynamics in the USA.
Dense cities and lack of urban sprawl reults in awesome places to live and you don't need to even use public transport in those as everything is just close by.
Also - IMHO the problem with the USA is more focus on competition (you have to "win") instead of cooperation hence more fracutred society that yields more povery and "not-nice" public spaces...
> The worst argument anybody can make is "but that's just life in the big city!" If so, then I'm not going to live and raise my family in the big city. Airy-fairy principles of efficiency or an arguable notion of convenience will not take precedence over safety and quality.
I live in a rather smallish city/town (~45k).
I hate public transit because it takes 2x+ the time to get anywhere since it’s such an afterthought. The routes are horrible and the vehicles too infrequent.
When I lived in Berlin I could get anywhere in the city within 15-30 mins, it was insane.
I ride my bike or e-bike everywhere I can. Cars are the worst.
This may be the US (or NYC) public transport experience but it is generally not the European one.
> I'm a big supporter of urbanism.
Well, it leads to the behavior that you mentioned. It's unavoidable and it'll keep getting worse as the price of housing in dense cities continues to soar.
Your only choice? Move to suburbs and wait for self-driving cars. I get downvoted every time I say this, but that's the simple truth.
My daily bicycle commute takes me right through the heart of my city's homeless district, and like with many cities things have gotten a lot worse since COVID.
Cars are far and away the biggest threat to my safety, and the source of all the harrassment I receive while out in public. I mean, every now and then some guttersnipe blurts out incoherencies at me, but that's not something to be afraid of.
I regard driving, in cities, to be an inherently anti-social activity. If you want a healthy community with safe and lively streets you got to be out in it, not sealed off in a protective cage.
In my experience cars are much more dangerous than public transport.
I've taken public transport my whole life, in numerous countries, and only bought a car for the first time 7 years ago when moving back to the US. Never had any incident on public transport or felt unsafe. Was it always as comfortable and convenient as my car? No, but that's a separate issue.
I'm a weekend road cyclist and I've had a number of very close calls with cars -- invariably big pick up trucks, sometimes flying an American flag (you know the type) -- purposely rev up and buzz by me as close as possible on small country roads, sometimes honking as well or flipping the bird out the window. Any little stumble or twitch at that point and there were a couple of times I would have been in the hospital or dead.
Yeah, there are sometimes strange people on public transport, as well as homeless, etc. But I've encountered more *holes driving cars than on the bus or subway.
I took my kid to school in Downtown Brooklyn on the subway today. It was great.
New York is great and the subway is amazing. I remain mystified by what I see people say on cable news or podcasts.
Or maybe everyone secretly just really loves strip malls, who knows.
Are you kidding? I see antisocial, dangerous, and violent behaviors from other people driving cars every single day...
I can tell if you've never been to the city or you're dishonest? No one I've ever met is afraid of public transit.
No one wants public transit!
I've spent a lot of time in Singapore, with literally the worlds lowest crime rates, highest trust in society, and best mass transit in the world.
It costs 100K USD to get a SHITTY car, like a Toyota Prius.
Everyone in Singapore is desperate to make lots of money, is desperate to buy a cool car, and is desperate to never step one foot onto the transit system again.
Mass Transit is a cope for being poor, even in a society with no crime and the highest trust in society. Using it is admitting that "I failed to make enough money to get out of here"
We have car culture because everyone wants it. Americans can literally buy a C8 corvette factory order at 20% off MSRP right now. The world salivates at such deals and is extremely jealous of our way of life.
Liberals who try to kill car culture are exactly why Trump got elected and why he's so popular right now.
I was in Spain last month and what stood out is that walkability requires mom and pop stores as well as more integrated neighborhoods with small commercial shops mixed into residential. Small shops seemed to be the majority in the city centers. The only large store I saw was a Lidl. They have largeish indoor markets that are more like a mini mall of individual shops like a butcher, produce, baker, cheese, even restaurants and bars. And these are located in a neighborhood center serving the surrounding community.
The thing that kills walkability in the USA are the hyper scale stores and malls where everyone wants a mega store that has everything - one stop shops. They are too big to fit in small neighborhoods so they have to be built in a commercial district or large strip mall. And since they are big and house many shoppers at once they need big parking lots. Then they need big streets to feed those big parking lots. These big ass stores DEMAND cars and are very much a part of the problem.
If you want more walkability then incentivize lots of small shops over single giant shops. I would also argue that neighborhoods that are all residential for blocks and blocks are another problem so zoning should force a minimal commercial allotment to ensure walkable neighborhoods.
I think big box stores are popular largely because it would be inconvenient to drive between many smaller shops just to find the same variety of goods. It’s the same dynamic we see with car-dependent shopping malls, where the main advantage is being able to park once and visit multiple stores. If instead you had to re-park at each individual store, the experience would be far less convenient.
But if a town is designed to be fully walkable so that people can easily walk from store to store (similar to the experience of shopping inside a indoor mall), then I think the appeal of large one-stop-shop stores is greatly reduced.
I would say that the causality goes in the other direction. We have big stores Carrefour and even some Coscos, but not in the middle of walkable cities.
Mixed use zoning and some rules on what businesses can open would go a long way. Where I live I can walk to a small downtown that spans a few blocks with a train station. Unfortunately there is no where to buy groceries. There's like 3 ice cream shops, 3 pizza joints, and 9 salons though.
> They have largeish indoor markets that are more like a mini mall of individual shops like a butcher, produce, baker, cheese, even restaurants and bars.
It's very common all over Europe, they are simply called "markets".
I also know Pontevedra from walking the Camino and I suspect its reliance on Camino tourism is probably a big driver for this move. You will know as well as I do that the only parts of the Camino that suck are when you are walking for miles alongside a busy highway. A bit grim but thankfully not very common.
There is another practical reality that separates the US from Europe specifically with respect to walkability. The US has much more extreme weather in many places. What would be called severe heat or cold in much of Europe, which I've suffered through for the week if need be, is normal weather in many parts of the US for several months on end. You need alternative transportation for those extended periods.
Few people enjoy being outside in a tropical swamp with a double-digit UV index. Same with the extreme cold that you get in the central US far from the ocean.
I live in Seattle, where many people walk everywhere all year (myself included), no car needed. But that is because the weather is perfect for that kind of thing, being 5-25°C with limited precipitation virtually the entire year. If I lived in Houston, for example, I would be driving in the summer regardless of how walkable the city is.
And yet Seattle has very few pedestrianized spaces for the size of the city. It’s as car dominated and sprawling as any major North American city.
> Most of our public spaces prioritize cars instead of people.
Maybe most but there's plenty of public space that doesn't. People choose to live around the public spaces that do. Some even try to change that instead of moving somewhere that doesn't. The great thing about America is that there's plenty of everything for everyone, but it's not just going to come to you.
That's factually incorrect. Most of America has outlawed proper mixed-use zoning, which means those nice walkable neighborhoods are literally illegal to build.
Even if you don't want to live in a detached home deep in suburbia, there often isn't an affordable alternative.
There really aren't all that many options for people-centric urban spaces in the US. A handful of small districts in various cities, but nothing approaching the scale of such things in the thriving Spanish cities.
There's plenty of everything, as long as all you want is cars.
While the current Paris administration has its detractors, its policies, removing surface parking, expanding bike lanes, and lowering speed limits, have done tremendous good for air quality (see the Airparif study for details in [0]).
Paris may not yet be at Amsterdam’s scale, but only 5 % of daily trips in the city are made by car. It’s staggering that roughly 50 % of public space is allocated to cars [1], despite their minimal share of actual mobility. And I'm all in favor in further reducing car lanes, parking spots...
[0] in french - https://www.airparif.fr/actualite/2025/comment-la-qualite-de... [1] https://www.transportshaker-wavestone.com/urban-transports-s...
After moving to the US it was shocking to me how much urban space in many cities is taken up by surface parking lots. A real blight on downtowns.
I was in Paris this year, for the first time in 10 years, and frankly, I didn't notice less traffic. All streets are full. There are certainly more electric cars, and fewer old ones. However, the streets are now crowded with Uber and taxi cabs. I didn't notice fewer cars.
Because the whole point is to stop poor people from driving and lining up the pockets of the car manufacturers.
It's a reason among others, but this bike-centric policy (pedestrians nor public transport are the priority) led to an exodus of families [0]. I am among them, as I realized pretty quickly that it's a real pain to move around, buy groceries, go to the doctor, and so on with very young children in Paris, especially if you don't own a car. And now you have to deal with the uncivil behavior of the cyclists, moreover.
It's the same everywhere, as most European cities are dominated by 20-35yo people. They vote for green parties and then move out when they have children, as they realize that the policies they supported are not child- or family-friendly at all. The extreme example is Seoul, with its zones where kids are forbidden. It's a shame, as families require more public services and infrastructure (hospitals, schools, playgrounds, swimming pools, and so on), but they are being pushed away by childless youngsters who hate cars. Unfortunately, no middle ground seems acceptable for this crowd, so I'm unconvinced that it will change.
Another negative aspect is that cyclists do not use public transportation, so they lead municipalities to decrease investment in this sector, which is, however, the most inclusive, safe and efficient way to move people around. This is also seen in Paris, where the bus speed has never been so slow, the fleet is aging,, while the city hall spends like a teenager on a weekend trip with daddy's credit card on new bike lanes.
In the EU at least, the next nail in the coffin will be the low-emissions zones that will make it prohibitively expensive to enter/leave the center, forcing families to leave metropolises altogether.
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/09/06/why-the-mi...
I think you are totally off. Never lived in Paris but I lived in Barcelona for many years, during the transformation to be more car-hostile and bikes and pedestrians friendly. I spent there my 20s-30s and left when I had a family but due to (public) school scarcity in our neighborhood and rent prices. But mobility was not the issue at all. It was actually a pleasure bring my daughter to her kindergarten by bike and then go to the office.
And I think Paris and Barcelona share a lot in that respect (the mayors - Hidalgo and Colau - met a lot to discuss exactly those topics and share experiences).
It really depends on the city/quarter where you live. I live in the center of Barcelona and had no problems with two small kids at all. Supermarkets, real farmer's markets, hospitals, pharmacies, schools, etc are all within 10min walking distance. I work from home, but I could walk to the office it I wanted to. I don't have to leave the city at all.
Eventually I gave in and bought a car, not because it was necessary but rather to leave the city on weekends and get closer to nature.
What you’re describing is perfectly possible without a car.
I live in Amsterdam and have a young family. We own an electric cargo bike that we use for groceries and to cart around our daughter. You can use it with an infant car seat and for larger kids.
When we need a car we use a car sharing app. There are around 10 cars within walking distance of our flat.
Many people in cities _want_ a car but don’t need one.
The article says that families are leaving because of high rent.
I personally love it when my kids have freedom of movement. Every family we know is the same way. Carting them around all day and then sitting and waiting at various activities just plain sucks.
I'm seeing a similar trend in my country where even the culture in city centres is not conducive to having a large family, or a family at all even.
All the parents of 3+ children that I know live in the suburbs or even in the middle of nowhere in the case of one family totalling 7 at the moment, as their firstborn already moved out.
Personally I was priced out of the city where I grew up, so I moved to one that's half the size and live on the outskirts with my family, but in the 13 apartments connected to our staircase we're one of three families and the only ones not renting.
As someone with a family and a car, can't you use public transport for that? You can walk to local parks and have a doctor that is relatively nearby, but Paris has very extensive transport network and it is perfectly fine to move around without a car.
No one is arguing you should take your sick kid on a bike for one hour ride.
There are loads of factors at play, to lay the blame of this demographic trend solely on bike-centric policy is, if I’m being very very generous, lazy. Since it’s the telegraph, about a foreign city, I would assume it’s disingenuous.
The article doesn’t even call out bike centric policies:
> “It is the result of a quarter-century of policies that have made life harder for families and the middle class. Construction work, difficult access to nurseries, skyrocketing rents, and social housing shortages have pushed Parisians to the suburbs or provinces.”
The “worst” callout in the article is triple parking fees for SUVs.
Oh.
Anyway.
It looks like there are loads of factors at play and I wouldn’t trust assigning blame to just one, especially when your supporting article only kinda sorta touches on that factor.
You do realize that (i) "zones" are just restaurants / cafes / museums that have minimum age requirements and not some demarcated city blocks where children are banned and young adults party all day and (ii) this occurs semi-frequently in the west as well.
Not Paris, but I lived in an even larger metropolis (Beijing) for 6 years, with two young children, without a car. We took public transport and/or rode bikes most of the time, and took taxis when neither of those were possible/convenient. Even with the taxi fares it was much cheaper than owning a car.
> Another negative aspect is that cyclists do not use public transportation,
For short trips maybe, but as a cyclist myself, I'd say cyclists are among those most likely to use public transportation for any trips that are beyond their cycling radius, or where cycling isn't feasible, instead of a car.
North Americans visiting Europe often grapple with why they enjoy European cities more than North American ones. It's often perceived as an architecture issue ("Europe has historical buildings that we don't have") but very few notice that the main difference is the urban scale and the resulting walkability. The Netherlands has plenty of modernist and even brutalist architecture yet every city there is a pretty nice place to be. This is because they know how to scale cities to human centric proportions. The layout of buildings together with the connective tissue of tram lines, bike lanes and sidewalks is what makes their cities alive and safe, not elaborate building facades (although they have some of that as well).
Important to note is how most cities have two (or more) zones; the old inner city for leisure, tourism, shopping and going out, the suburban areas around it where most people live, and industrial / office building estates where most people work.
Amsterdam is a great example [0] and well-known for a lot of tourists, with the city center being the tourism hub, the zones around it for living, west/northwest for industry/shopping, south for highrise offices and football stadiums, etc. Most tourists won't go that far out though.
[0] https://www.amsterdamsights.com/about/neighborhoods.html
I disagree that this is the norm and I don't think it's a goal to aspire to.
The nicest places for humans to exist in have a mixed-use basis. Yes some areas are purely industrial and some areas are dominated by retail or offices, that's fine. But fully segregated residential zones are depressing and nonsensical.
I spent two weeks in Amsterdam South where I rented an apartment. Commuting to the centre on a tram or even cycling there was no problem. Even though the centre is where most tourists hang out, the surrounding neighbourhoods are just as walkable and bikeable as the inner city.
That's pretty much only an Amsterdam thing, and it is limited to a relatively small tourist-centered area. Even inside the Grachtengordel the majority of buildings are homes or offices.
Also, those "suburban" areas in Amsterdam aren't suburban: they are still built with a bicycle-, pedestrian-, and transit-first mindset. Those office buildings in Zuid are built right next to one of the busiest railway stations in the country, and the highly-paid lawyers will arrive at the office by bike from their nearby homes.
If you want Amsterdam's suburbs, you'll have to go to Almere: it was literally built as a commuter city for Amsterdam. And even there you'll have trouble finding areas which don't meet the definition of a 15-minute city.
American cities lack medium density mixed commercial-residential areas.
Cities always have many areas. And of course the outer areas are not as good as the tourist focused inner city, but they are generally still pretty good urbanism.
Even European subburbs are generally better, smaller roads, more mixed use, more trees, more dynamics, more commercial and building times mixed in. The extreme separation between building types that became the standard in US zoning-codes simple never happened to the same extent in Europe.
> It's often perceived as an architecture issue ("Europe has historical buildings […]") but very few notice that the main difference is […] the […] walkability.
I'd say both. We do have the history on show both because we have more of it, and sometimes the stuff from eras when the US as we think of it¹ existed tends to be better preserved despite the effects of WWI and WWII. But we also have it easy to get to, often safely on foot, in our cities².
> This is because they know how to scale cities to human centric proportions.
Not wishing to put us down, but I'd say a fair chunk of that is historical accident. A lot of cities started out as smaller settlements that grew and merged, meaning there is a spread of housing, shows, workplaces, etc around the whole city because it used to be in each individual part before they merged over time. America's cities on average started at, or at least very quickly gained, a larger scale, and grew from the inside out rather than by several insides growing until their outsides merged.
Some European cities made the mistake of doing away with some of that and converting to a state closer to that of US cities, and many current efforts are more about returning to their roots than being newly person friendly.
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[1] essentially from the point the founding fathers went to find somewhere they could be prescriptivist about people's, lives because they weren't getting away with that as they wanted to over here, and perhaps a little before that
[2] though there is a fair amount of it that isn't as easy to get to unless you drive
The “Founding Fathers” generally refers to the politicians who were around during the revolutionary war (starting 1775). What you are describing in your [1] seems to be more a reference to the Pilgrims and Puritians (the early North American colonists who showed up around 1620).
The Founding Fathers also did a lot of controlling of some people’s lives (in that they enslaved a lot of people), but they didn’t have to go anywhere to do that.
Anyway, if you want to walk around some history in the US, you can do that in Boston. As you mentioned, a huge factor in the walkability of a city is just having the right population density before cars were invented. The oldest European areas in the mainland US (Spanish areas, in Florida) aren’t super walkable as far as I know.
Maybe it is a Northeast US thing or something, but it this mystery could also be resolved by visiting a college town, observing that it is quite nice and walkable without too many historical buildings…
Alternatively: go on a cruise. Everything you want, neatly packed into a single easily walkable building.
There are (at least) two Youtube channels, Ray Delahanty | CityNerd and Not Just Bikes, that really drive home the point in their videos that car-centric cities really stink.
https://www.youtube.com/@CityNerd
https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes
The Not Just Bikes channel really makes clear the benefits of living in an environment that isn't designed around cars, but also the challenge of designing such an environment. You can't just plop in some busses and bike lanes and expect immediate improvement, you really need to think about transportation holistically. This means considering how cars, trucks, busses, bikes, pedestrians and everything will interact.
The Netherlands is lauded as a model, but it took them decades to get where they are today. This isn't to say that we can't do it in the US or Asia or anywhere else, but that we should be clear-eyed about the magnitude of the challenge.
The problem that car solved years ago, is the following: you can develop a city without cars up to a point where the distance that you have to move to get to your work, or the supermarket, the hospital, etc is at max some km, let's say not more than 10/20.
That has the consequence that all people wants to live in the city center, and not in peripherals areas. This has the consequence of making the cost of an house (or rent) go up to a point where most people can't even afford it, while the salary that you get in the city rests more or less the same. Having a lot of people concentrated living in a small place produces also other unwanted effects, that lower the quality of living.
Cars allow us to develop our society not in big cities, but in rather small towns, without ugly skyscrapers of 20 floors but with nice houses where everyone can afford, for example, to have its own property, with its own garden, its own peace, without having being forced to share its living space with people he didn't choose.
To me cars, and now also remote work, are a benefit because they allow us to live in a more sustainable way. Thanks to car we can think of reclaiming villages where all the population migrated to the cities in the past years.
Example in Italy, where I live, why should I go to live in Milan, where houses cost 10 times the rest of the country, while having a car and a job that allows me to remote work at least half the week I can live in a small village near Milan and reach it by car when needed?
To me a society without cars is a less free society, in fact the development of the USA to me is to take as an example, while where they didn't have cars is the Soviet Union, and look at it...
If you haven't discovered the problems with this model, then it's only because not enough of your neighbours have had the same idea.
Look around at places with very high car use (especially in North America) and you'll discover that this solution simply does not scale. Cars take up a gigantic amount of room on roads, and even gigantic highways like Onatrio's 401 [1] just have not been able to keep up with the level of sprawl that occurs when people move out of the city to surrounding suburbs and commute into the city by car.
Adding lanes to the highway does not help and just induces more traffic on it, and it also causes all the surrounding villages to sprawl outwards until they become indistinct blobs that merge into the nearby metropolitan city.
Trains are a much better solution to this problem because they have way better throughput, don't destroy cities with massive highways and parking garages, and encourage denser development that lets nearby villages retain their character and size.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Highway_401
As the other user said, it doesn't scale. I'll give you my personal experience. I have been living in the greater Toronto area for 23 years, having moved here when I was 9. I live in one of the "cities" surrounding Toronto. This city was initially just a suburb of Toronto, that people moved to because houses were bigger and cheaper. Now it is a "city" of more than 700,000 people, in part because everyone moved here from Toronto, and in part due to high immigration in recent years. I put city in quotes because it's not really built like a city, it's still developed like a suburb with a large dependence on cars and poor public transport. All the good jobs are still in Toronto, so people still commute to Toronto for work. Before COVID and wfh, it used to take me 1.5 hours to commute to Toronto (one way), and I still had to drive to the train station. Forget driving to Toronto, it would take you just as long, if not longer, and parking costs are ridiculous. As this city grew, everyone wanted to move here for the same reason as you, bigger and cheaper houses. Now the houses are still bigger, but definitely not cheaper, and it takes forever to get anywhere. There are also less things to do because everything depends on cars.
I am writing this comment from a Italo Treno train, having been in Paris, Switzerland, Milan and Venice over the past week and half, so I have now seen the other side of this conversation.
The only freedom that cars bring is when travelling out of the city to remote places. Switzerland's inter-city rail service is so good I would never want to drive between cities if I lived there.
There's simply not enough space in a city to accommodate everyone's car. Houston is 70% roads+parking lots and they're still congested
Live remotely in low density villages in italy if you want, you can accommodate everybody's car just fine there - but when you need to visit Milan, don't complain that it won't let you bring a car in with you and they kindly ask you to leave it outside & take public transit to reach the center.
Nobody is seriously advocating for a society with zero cars. The goal is simply to have a more balanced system. It's about creating towns and cities where you have the freedom to walk, bike, or take reliable public transport, so you're not forced to use a car for every single trip.
Plenty of lunatics advocating zero cars. They are actually damaging less holistic approaches.
In America this concept is taken to the absolute extreme. Everywhere I go there are entire forests being razed to build developments of huge single-family homes and nothing else.
There is nowhere to go without driving. Kids who grow up in the suburbs are pretty much trapped on an island. There’s nowhere to explore because the surrounding 5 mile radius might be nothing but more developments
Not the best counterpoint to the argument IMHO, especially considering there are tens/hundred of thousand of people that do the same as you, and that has only driven rent cost up in the extended Milan metropolitan area, even 30-40 km further away from the city, and with roads that are not nearly capable enough to carry commuters' traffic, it just transforms the underlying issues into massive, daily traffic jams anywhere in the immediate area
That's fine. If you don't care about life and culture in a city, and are satisfied with your townhouse in some arbitrary quiet town, then that's fine? Just don't expect that you can just go into the city with a car whenever you feel like it.
While you are not totally wrong, it's very true that car centric society has enabled the sprawling suburbs iconic of America (a large home and yard for everyone), from a sustainability standpoint, freely developed heavily packed cities win hands down. It's so much easier and more efficient to take care of everyone in one spot rather than sprawled out all over the place.
Sustainability and efficiency, sure - you're definitely right on that. I'm going to take a bit of a devil's advocate role here though:
There are negative impacts to dense packing of humans too, though. Think about the local ecosystem of plants and animals that was irreparably destroyed and will never be recovered in the construction of X densely packed city you can think of. Think about the huge scale of resource shifting in the geographic region (water, food, electricity generation) that has to occur in the surrounding area which negatively impacts not only the city but the environments it pulls those resources out of.
Sprawl leaves room to interweave humans with the rest of the natural world in a way in which densely packed cities do not. It leaves room for trees to grow, critters to roam, rain water to be reclaimed into aquifers. It also spreads the strain of resource extraction and reduces the impact from hot spots at the most granular level.
You can live in the small suburban village and reach the downtown by rail or bike. And people will always want to live and congregate in the city center, because that's the most productive part of the city. But unless your city center literally looks like Manhattan, it can still fit plenty more people.
There are other means of in-city transportation, you know https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Railway
When this is the only reason, trains are far superior. Show me the country where I can drive 120km/h / 75mph through the city center.
Interesting use of the word “sustainable”.
Funny enough the USSR and tons of the developed western Europe (Barcelona) had and still have "superblocks" which are far better than car polutting everywhere. Yours, sustainable? Keep dreaming.
What nonsense.
> This has the consequence of making the cost of an house (or rent) go up to a point where most people can't even afford it
Except that in some of the largest cities in the world rents aren't that high.
> Cars allow us to develop our society not in big cities, but in rather small towns, without ugly skyscrapers
Go to Switzerland, it look like that before cars and still does. You can get affordable houses and apartments on rail lines where you can be in the city in 15min.
You don't need to own a car to live in a house with a garden if you have proper public transport.
And you can live in the city and have plenty of access to nature as well. And cites don't need to be ugly and ful of skyscrapers.
> To me cars, and now also remote work, are a benefit because they allow us to live in a more sustainable way.
People living remotely with cars are the opposite of sustainable, in fact, literally every study on the subject shows the opposite. Not communing makes it better, but its still nowhere near as good as a city.
> Except that in some of the largest cities in the world rents aren't that high.
Citation is really needed for this one. Especially if you consider Swiss real estate "affordable."
I love walking - both in places as a tourist, in NYC where I lived most of my life, and in my small north shore Long Island town today.
But similar to any other "product" the evaluation depends on the user's needs. As a single guy I loved that NYC was dense and walkable - because that meant (among other things) literally millions of date-able women within a 30 minute walk radius of my house. Great! Now as a dad of 3 I don't care about that at all - and the lower density suburb let's me have a backyard for my kids and makes shopping easy, or taking the kids to activities (yes you can do all those things without a car but people chose not to when they have choice)
There should be some sort of mom-friendliness factor in these conversations. If my whole town is old people, terminally single younger people and migrants (as seems to be the case for the city in question) then high density walk ability is perfect. What's the density and transportation situation in places people actually have kids?
I share this sentiment as well, but while living in a relatively small city with only around 150k people in northern Europe. I moved out to the "suburbs" after having my first kid and find enormous quality of life in being able to have a car and a house. The city center is getting increasingly more "hostile" to car traffic but there's nothing to be had there anyway. A side from restaurants and coffee shops you can get anything you need from the shopping areas on the city outskirts. In a sense I feel this is the best of both worlds: cities for city people, suburbs for suburbians.
As a fellow parent I find dense cities are worse. My kids are not welcome in most of the restaurants, bars, or shops - which is just as well because I couldn't afford to pay for regular family meals at any of them anyway. Even the parks are more art orientation - great for adults but no playground that my kids would enjoy. Not that it matters as 3 bedroom apartments are rare, and more than that impossible to find. They are often food deserts - it is easier for a farmer to get to a grocery store (they expect to drive but the uncontested roads are fast), you often need to drive to a grocery store as there is no option, of if there is one it is the expensive high end store not the discount supermarkets.
Note that most dense cities have within the same city limits less dense areas that look like suburbs. These are often called "inner city" they are generally affordable but because the schools are bad are not places I'd want to live. For this discussion I'm going to count them as suburbs...
It doesn't have to be like the above. I've seen dense cities around the world that are very family friendly. However not in the US.
There is also a gradient of density and walk/bike-ability between NYC, one of the densest cities in the country, and super spread-out car-dependent cul-de-sac suburbs, but the US often skips those middle steps.
Small towns where your kids can get to their friend's house by walking or biking a couple of blocks over can be great for raising a family, as opposed to all of their friends' houses being in a different gated communities up and down a 4-lane 45mph highway and where the line of cars picking up kids from school each day backs out onto the road and blocks traffic.
They exist, but in New Jersey -- most of the "cities" (with the exception of downtown Jersey City and downtown Newark) would be called streetcar suburbs in an earlier time. I live in one of them, and it's great: I have a small, private backyard, but I'm also <15 minutes on foot from multiple public parks, restaurants, shops, etc.
Sadly, it's illegal to build streetcar suburbs in most of the US today, because outfitting every house with a private driveway, setbacks, etc., would move everything far apart enough to significantly hurt walkability.
One factor here is the perception of safety. To choose public transit over a car, you have to feel safe walking to/from the station and you have to feel safe riding the train. This is especially true if you are at a physical disadvantage because of gender, disability, age, whatever. Because it's a perception thing, this is not just about statistics. A dirty, chaotic subway station just feels threatening to passengers.
I've ridden public transit in a bunch of cities, and this makes a huge difference to how welcoming the experience is. Hong Kong is #1 for me. The trains and stations are clean enough to eat off of - probably cleaner than my car. On/off boarding is fast and orderly even during peak travelling hours. This is not a universal, and there are definitely cities where I would hesitate to take public transit if I had some other choice - which is the root of the problem when you're trying to convince a population to fund and use such a system instead of bringing their cars.
Something I said a couple days ago:
> It's not an either-or. You can have streets which are car-friendly, bike-friendly, and pedestrian-friendly at the same time. Just look at the Dutch, they've been doing it for years. That is until recently in some big cities, though, where some less knowledgeable politicians have also adopted this false populist either-car-or-bike concept. Though the traditional principle still applies to about 99% of the country's roadworks, and it works really well.
Adding onto that, sentences like "made for people, not cars" absolutely validate my point that this is nothing but populist activism. I'm hoping that we can all have a honest, intellectual discussion on how to make infrastructure better for everyone. Just make sure to always remember in every discussion about this topic: it is never either-or, not even in the densely populated Netherlands.
You can have streets which are car-friendly (for exceptional or emergency purposes where you need the car) by getting rid of all frivolous car use. There's no feasible alternative, because congestion always destroys car-friendliness except in very sparsely populated areas. And you can only eliminate that congestion by promoting more scalable alternatives to the use of private motor vehicles.
I hadn't visited Madrid in over 20 years, and found the burial of the M30 (and, increasingly, the radial highways) extremely impressive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_Río
There's also the subway (impressive sprawl, infrastructure itself not so much), and decent buses.
Plenty of areas have also been closed to car traffic.
I'm all for restricting traffic, but it doesn't need to be completely either-or, even in a larger city.
I understand where it's coming from, but I have to disagree about the populist activism part. I don't think that pedestrians should worry about how to fit cars in their proposed solutions. That's something for the car proposers to do. It's not like the other way around is different. Just take a walk in any big city and you will see how pedestrians are a second thought in most of the roads.
I'd argue that the design of public infrastructure should be a discussion which every citizen is equally involved in, with the goal of finding a solution that works for all. Chanting an us-versus-them narrative does nothing but stifle this discussion, and accepting it as legitimate results in decisions being made by special interest groups (team-car or team-pedestrian) rather than the residents whom actually make use of the infrastructure in question.
To me, whether there's enough space for cars and walkability are both part of how dense a city is. Leaving room for cars must make a city less dense and usually less pleasant for pedestrians as well; in the same way, a suburban area with single family homes and limited low-rise apartments needs car infrastructure because public transport gets worse the longer each trip is and the fewer riders there are.
You can accommodate both regions within one city, but they can't overlap without compromising one or the other (edit: although this compromise is a desirable middle ground for some people). Note that Pontevedra built huge free parking areas on the outskirts of its urban area. For their whole city it's not either-or, but in any given place they've had to make a decision.
I think the thing that really struck a chord with me about car-centric development, as someone who lives in a city with fairly poor public transport (by certain standards, it would actually be quite good if it were in the US) and where driving is the norm for getting around -
Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers. We spend many tens of billions of dollars a year on roads in my state and traffic in the cities (and the highways between the biggest population centres in the south east corner where most of the people live) just keeps getting worse. When you give people real alternatives (convenient, frequent public transport, more cycling infrastructure, better planned cities so you can walk and cycle to things you need nearby) that actually gets people off the road and that is the one thing that can reduce traffic (apart from somewhere having a dwindling population).
Focusing all out infrastructure spend and making cars the primary mode continues to make car driving worse, but people get angry when too much money is spent on public and active transport, because “not enough” is being spent on road infrastructure. So politicians spruik their “congestion busting” road spending, and it keeps getting worse. It’s wild.
As someone for whom driving was just the default, I came around full circle.
Car oriented people seriously underestimate how many people that can be transported in a subway train and how much highway space it would take to transport the same number of people in cars.
One subway line can transport more people than even the widest existing highway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif...
(edit: spelling)
From an efficiency point of view public transportation makes a lot of sense.
From a quality of life point of view, I have never been comfortable being crammed into a sardine can with that many other people. I've done it. I've never enjoyed it. I do look forward to travelling to the Netherlands one day and I will enthusiastically use public transit there just as a personal experiment to see if my experience differs enough from the subway transit in Montreal or Toronto that gave me nightmares and has me thinking every time I travel there: "Even if it takes me 4x as long to get to my destination, driving is still better than this."
The parent poster made an interesting point that resonates a lot with me. Better public transportation will get people off the roads which will make quality of life better for drivers. I don't see myself ever not being a driver. I need that little bubble that separates me from other people. I don't even like walking on sidewalks in busy metropolitan areas because of the amount of other people and the "over stimulation". And yeah, that's a me problem. Do what you like, just don't take away my means of being able to achieve a little bit of solitude.
It's not pro- public transit and better urban planning that bothers me. It's the anti-car "lobby".
Then again, big city living isn't for me anyway (obviously). I will always choose smaller to mid sized cities, and possibly even rural at some point in the future, for the personal reasons outlined above.
I've seen many times how some people react to a single bus lane or even a tiny bicycle lane as though cars are getting the raw end of the deal when 90%+ of infrastructure is for cars.
People don’t pick their mode of transportation based on space efficiency.
They pick their mode of transportation based on their needs and priorities. Taking the subway works when there’s a stop near your home, a stop near your destination, and you have all of the time necessary to wait for it. If these conditions aren’t met then you need additional transport to and from one or both ends of the subway journey.
There’s also the matter of weather, which is less obvious to people who don’t live in locations that see extreme weather or deep snow. Safety and cleanliness is another issue depending on the location. There are cities where I’m just not going to take my kids on the subway if I can avoid it.
People who hold up numeric metrics like number of people transported per unit area don’t understand why people prefer to hop in their car and go to their destination rather than spend potentially far more time navigating a crowded subway system.
You have never ridden the TTC in Toronto.....
I don’t think it’s the number of people transported that is hard to get one’s head around—it’s imagining using a subway to get to all of their destinations which are spread all over and separated by at least a quarter mile of parking lots and 8 lane highways. In their mind, this would require an absurd amount of subway or bus lines and tons of transitions and it would take an eternity to get to their destination and they might interact with lower class people and so on. The thing they don’t understand is that without cars you can build all of those destinations much closer together in a single walkable place that you just need transit to get to/from. When you take away the cars, you don’t need gargantuan parking lots or 8 lane highways.
None of that matters when you consider the potential horror of interacting with another human.
Train oriented people always forget that trains don't transport people from the origin to the destination. You still need to get to and from a train station. With all your groceries, gear, children's things, etc. Oh and you might be odor sensitive, but there's a lady next to you on the train that covered herself in perfume.
Sure, if you pack people like sardines. If anything, trying to achieve this kind of density is what pushes people away from public transport.
Subways are great for high-bandwidth routes. Cars are great for everything. It's like wifi vs cat6.
How about if cities were built in such a way that you would just have buildings and podium being pedestrian and bike friendly with all transportation network being 1 level underground (or 2 levels) all as self driving EV pods. This may increase the no of possible 'roads' and does not sound as far fetched in terms of overall costs. Emergency vehicles can be given an exemption to operate on the podium
What do you mean by "car oriented people."
People who primarily drive cars? People who primarily drive cars when competitive options exist? People who argue for cars in areas where its not very feasible? People who prefer car oriented cities?
I think most people who primarily drive arent estimating subways at all.
I am with you. It is not only about lanes but also parking. My in laws live in a very car centric city and it is crazy the way all distances are multiplied when everything need a dedicated parking space. There is almost nothing left at walking distance and every time I visit I have the feeling I spend all my day in a car instead of ... doing stuff.
This was one of the things I realized living in a very car friendly city without a car. SO SO MUCH of my walking was just walking past/through GIANT parking lots.
It's pretty amazing how much time you can save by being able to park in front of whatever you want to get into. Starting at the same point I've beaten cars that should have gotten there 20 minutes faster according to google maps.
The Power Broker by Robert Caro, a biography of Robert Moses that's particularly focused on his long career in the government of New York, is, quite aside from a fascinating psychological portrait and a parable about how bad it is when someone has untrammeled power in a bureaucracy, an absolutely fantastic case study in how building more roads makes traffic worse. And it was published in 1974! For anyone that cares to find out we've know this for decades and have absolutely failed to do anything about it - pretty depressing.
Caro has a way with words; one of my favorite turns was when Moses declared traffic a problem "solved for a generation", only for Caro to begin the next paragraph with a description of the traffic jams that began to develop a few weeks after that particular road (I believe the Bronx River Parkway) opened.
Seconded - I'm currently listening to the audiobook of this book and I find it utterly fascinating.
Nobody likes to hear this, including me,
But a car with no traffic is the overall best form of transportation.
Anything that reduces traffic, just makes driving a car more palatable.
So we are stuck forever at an equilibrium of tolerable traffic. More people taking the bus, train, bikes, and walking? Great! I'll zip down the highway and get a parking spot right in front.
Urban planning has a term for this - the Downs Thomson paradox. Over time, traffic tends to increase up to a point at which equivalent journeys on transit/bike/foot are quicker.
What this means of course is that an effective way of reducing traffic is by speeding up the alternatives.
"But a car with no traffic is the overall best form of transportation."
Not if you are like me and likely to take a short nap after a long day at work...
Edit: I own a car, I use it all the time. But I also use the train a lot - all depends where I want to go and what I will be doing when I get there.
Edit2: I sometimes even drive to the train station, get out of my car and into a train!
> But a car with no traffic is the overall best form of transportation.
I hate driving even when I'm alone on the road. I'm forced to stare at the road when I want to be doing something else. I can't even take a break, since a simple 5 minute nap has high odds of killing me even if I'm the only car on the road.
Plus cars are slower than trains or airplanes. Even on the autobahn with unlimited speed allowed, most people are not going nearly as fast as a high speed train, much less an airplane.
There is a reason everyone zips around in them on Wall-e. Wait until we have full self driving and drone delivery. Then even when you are in traffic you can get your burger, soda and TV in without wasting any time!
Yes.
That's why everybody should heavily subsidize public transportation.
This is level one understanding of public transport systems. “We should build metros and then everything will be better”
There’s cities that are not setup for efficient public transportation or walkable living. Redesign it from ground up and put a metro smack bang through the middle. Until then, it’s just not going to work.
People, and especially people who like the idea of walkable cities that reside in council chairs, often miss this fundamental step.
“Build it and they will come” won’t get you housing density, small local retailers, geographic compression of services, suitable climate, a different way of living. All key ingredients for walkable cities with well served public transport.
I think you are being unnecessarily defeatist. Cities can’t be redesigned from the ground up, but at the same time we’ve seen that investment into roads can’t fix traffic in cities once they reach a certain population and density.
The first thing we should do is target development. For example, planning laws should require new development (suburbs etc.) to be built around some kind of transit (ideally rail). Zoning should always be mixed - for example it should always be permissible to have at least small apartment blocks, groups of townhouses (like row houses), and small shops and cafes in suburbs. The idea of mandating areas be dedicated to only detached single family dwellings should be consigned to the dustbin of history.
There’s just so much like that that can be started right now. But we don’t - we just keep making the same mistakes and things get worse.
You can adapt cities.
Most British cities predate cars. They have had tramlines put in, taken out, and put in again. They have had roads widened, then bus and cycle lanes added. Train underground lines have been built.
> “Build it and they will come” won’t get you housing density, small local retailers, geographic compression of services, suitable climate, a different way of living.
You can build and change housing. We have lots of what used to be big houses that are now blocks of flats. You can encourage small retailers in many ways. Services can be reorganised or public transport routes designed to ensure access to them
Not sure what you mean about climate - there are cities you can manage without cars from the tropics to very cold places.
You can pedestrianise roads in existing existing towns and cities.
I beg to differ. A few Dutch cities did exactly that. Here's a video with a great example of the city I live near:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9kql9bBNII
Utrecht did something similar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPGOSrqXrjs
People centric infrastructure didn't fall out of the sky, we recognised bad ideas and reworked cities over decades to make them liveable. And it worked!
Car infrastructure takes so much space that you can repurpose parts of it in place. Just turn one of the lanes into a tram line, make dedicated bus lanes. On huge parking lots you can just split parts of and build housing or more smaller stores there.
Of course there are limits to this, but cities are often grown historically over centuries and city planning usually takes place in such constraints rather than planning cities from scratch. Don't let the perfect be the enemie of the good.
> “Build it and they will come” won’t get you housing density, small local retailers, geographic compression of services, suitable climate, a different way of living. All key ingredients for walkable cities with well served public transport.
Yes it does. It will take 20 years, but if you don't start now you will never get there. Are you willing to invest in a better future or just accept the status quo?
People always say stuff like this, but plenty of European cities like Utrecht have shown that it's very much possible to turn the tide. A few years ago Utrecht replaced an entire highway and turned it (back) into a canal and the area is indescribably nicer in every way, it's called the Catharijnesingel.
This canal was, in fact, always there, they just turned it into a highway at some point in the 70s. So the reverse is more than possible, it's a question of will to do so and convincing the, frankly, selfish car drivers. Having lived in the US myself for a stint, there's plenty of cities that could easily have work done similar to what happened in Utrecht, it's just that there's a lack of a will to do so to make things much better.
Sure, you won't have a direct train from NYC to Dallas (although, seeing China's high speed rail I don't see why that couldn't be on the table), but we're talking about individual cities making these changes a bit at a time.
I grew up in London where it is almost always preferable to take public transport anywhere central (cars work fine in suburbs).
I prefer to walk and take public transport, but where I live now (small town) busses are infrequent, and fairly short journeys can require changing. It can take two hours on the bus to get somewhere that is less than half an hour by car.
I think people here would be delighted with more public transport. The main complaint I hear about roads is not repairing potholes which is not hugely expensive. The problem is that the political push is to use a stick (make cars more expensive and inconvenient) rather than a carrot (provide better public transport).
There is always some private company benefiting when a town/city rejects public transport. I remember reading an article about a town that rejected public transport, there was intense door-to-door lobbying by some Koch brothers funded group. It was a small town, I suppose they were just testing their lobbying efforts before deploying the same in large cities.
All this to say, if the public is sufficiently informed, they are not going to reject public transport. We've been brainwashed that car centric transport is the best.
Then there is Japan, they kept a station open just for one girl, so she can get to school - https://www.ndtv.com/feature/kyu-shirataki-station-japanese-...
Car-centric does not mean driver-centric.
Even driver-centric is less anti-human than car-centric.
Maybe we need a “People First” movement in this world. I know the climatists and PETA won’t like that, but it’s worth considering as some sort of competing, balancing force in the world vs everything else we have today.
'Climatists' is a strange way of putting this because pulling everything we do back to human scale will be a huge boon to solving the climate crisis. As someone who's worried about threats to the future of the species in the form of climate change I'd be all for a human centric movement.
> Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers.
I 100% agree. I live in Newcastle, a city that is fairly car centric, but we have a Metro line and have had pushes to increase bus and bicycle transport (though Labour are generally bad for active travel).
My brother moved to Leeds, one of the largest cities in Europe without a Metro or tram. Driving anywhere in the city is fucking awful. The planners clearly kept trying to add one more lane and the result is congestion everywhere, even at quiet times.
I've also driven round Liverpool and Manchester and found, though they're better as they have Metro lines, the car-centric roads are still really awful to drive on.
I completely agree. You've hit on the central, infuriating paradox of car-centric cities. We're told that building more roads will bust congestion, but the exact opposite happens. It's a self-destructive cycle and a betrayal of drivers. We're sold a promise of freedom and speed, but what we get is a constant, grinding battle. We spend our lives in traffic and our wallets on fuel/tax, and the very infrastructure meant to liberate us ends up imprisoning us.
The starkest example of this for me is comparing Orlando, Florida with Malmö, Sweden. Orlando is the end game of car-centric planning. The city feels bigger than its population suggests because you spend half an hour in a car just to get anywhere. The eight-lane highways and endless parking lots are supposed to make driving easier, but they create the very congestion that makes driving miserable. This architecture of disconnection means fewer spontaneous encounters and more social isolation. The city is designed for a machine, not for people.
In contrast, Malmö's population is actually larger than Orlando's, yet a 30-minute bike ride can get you literally anywhere. The largest road through the city center is a quiet, two-lane street that prioritises people over cars; as there are large crossings and lights. This isn't an accident, it's a choice. The city's excellent public transportation and extensive bike lanes make the car a choice, not a necessity and because it's penalised: the only drivers are the ones who need to be driving, for which now there are open roads (as long as you're patient).
The truth is, every person on a bus, a train, or a bike is one less car in front of you. Giving people real alternatives is the only thing that can truly reduce traffic. This isn't an attack on cars. It's a demand for sanity, a call to build cities that work for everyone, including those who choose to drive.
And if you don’t have a bike you can rent one instantly and nearby from an app like https://www.malmobybike.se/
I suppose it is because Florida has a lot of modern development, but the number of disconnected subdivisions there is relatively extreme. In much of the US you can easily walk to the thing you can see.
> You've hit on the central, infuriating paradox of car-centric cities. We're told that building more roads will bust congestion, but the exact opposite happens
That is a bad reading. If there is more congestion it is because you made some trips that were impossible before possible and so people are better using your city. The point of a city is all the things you can do - otherwise people would live in a rural area with less options but not traffic - so limiting the things people can do means you are a bad city. You need to build enough to get out of this, eventually people will no longer find new/better opportunties opened up by building and congestion will no longer increase (if you don't believe me explain why there is no congestion west of Jamestown ND - an area where few people live that has a 4 lane freeway which by your logic should have congestion anyway).
Note that I'm not advocating you build a road to get ahead of congestion. Generally it is much more cost effective to build a good public transit system. However system is the key here, roads only where because you can get anywhere on them anytime you want to go, if your transit system isn't the same people won't use it.
There's also the "south east Qld option" (which I'm certain is the region you're describing in your comment) where the government is so roadbrained that all public transport solutions inevitably end up as some form of bus, further adding to congestion and making it worse for everyone, drivers, public transport users and active transport users.
You guessed correctly :)
The other problem is that city councils historically have run busses, whereas the State Government runs the rail, so a lot of our bus network competes with the rail instead of working together as an integrated network. At least the ticketing is integrated, but the network still has never felt like it’s designed to work together as an integrated transit network.
This is just a factor of car driving being wildly more inefficient at "people-carrying" than public transport. That is why "improving things" for cars just makes things worse-you're spending your sparse resources (money, land, manpower) more and more inefficiently.
Public transit needs a lot of money and time so I'm not sure it's even doable for many NA cities.
One middle point I think might be more reachable is to build good transit for the busiest part of the city (downtown) and build large parking lots around the terminals, so people can still drive to the terminal and then switch to bus.
I live in a suburb on the Montreal island and this is the model the city is trying to build IMO.
Most of the time aspect comes from excessive regulations and approvals and always, always giving jobs to the lowest bidding contractor. The lowest bidder is always the most expensive, and they always waste time far beyond schedule to burn more money, yet North America as a whole just won't learn from the past 70 years and keeps doing the same thing.
I visit China sometimes and it's seriously just wild seeing a town suddenly have a metro system go from not existing to being fully functional and world-class compared to anything in the west within the span of a few years. And that's not even starting on their high speed rail system, which went from not existing to connecting basically every major city across the country within 20 years, and connecting the biggest cities within 10.
Every construction site in America is endless thumb twiddling, guys holding signs, senseless traffic for sham work, and zero results after decades. One highway near me was under constant construction for one segment for 5 years and still didn't get finished. Every single day, it was the same construction vehicles parked in the same spots and some dudes holding signs while absolutely no progress was made. In Asia, it's a job that'd be done in a few days.
Car infrastructure also takes a lot of money and time. Remember how long it took to reconfigure the Turcot Interchange - a few years later you still (already?) have bumper to bumper traffic during rush hours there anyway.
Public transport gives much better ROI for more people - you don’t need the added expense of the car to benefit from it.
If you look at pictures of cities from the early 1900s, one of things you realize is that even small towns of only ~20k people managed to fairly reliably have a streetcar line or two in them. (Actually, a lot of these systems still exist, the streetcars have just been replaced with buses.)
What happened to most NA cities is that they fully embraced the car by tearing down the city to make room for parking lots; there's a few cities where every other block in the city center is a surface parking lot. Combine this with systematic underinvestment in public transit (because it's seen as for people who are too poor to own a car), and you can see how we ended up where we did.
The main obstacle to fixing this isn't really money, it's in getting people to accept public transit as something that could be a viable mode of transit for them. There are far too many people who think that public transit is inherently unsafe and that by riding it they are at extreme risk of getting shanked (which includes the current Secretary of Transportation).
> Public transit needs a lot of money and time
Public transport is far, far more cost effective than car infrastructure. And that's just direct costs - not even including the cost of sprawl (which makes all other infrastructure more expensive), road deaths and injuries, noise, pollution, storage costs for vehicles, the health costs of inactivity and social isolation, etc etc.
> build good transit for the busiest part of the city (downtown) and build large parking lots around the terminals
This is a terrible idea because the numbers simply do not stack up. A typical metro train can carry roughly 1000 people. A large car park might fill half of a single train. At a station with good frequency, a train will leave the station roughly every 5 minutes.
A much better idea is to run good regular public transport to the station, build bike paths to the station and quality bike parking at the station, and build more housing at/near the station instead of a big parking lot.
> Public transit needs a lot of money and time so I'm not sure it's even doable for many NA cities.
Is this a joke? I grew up in Poland, a relatively poor country (and used to be a lot poorer) and in most cities it has public infrastructure that flagship North American cities can barely dream of. It's not a question of money but of societal priorities.
This. The quickest & most pleasant places to drive a car are the places with the fewest large single-mode roads & - importantly - even fewer cars on them.
I think it is not just car-centric. It is "private mobility"-centric.
In towns, and large towns especially, public mobility should be the rule and private one the exception. If any.
And maybe also for long distance mobility.
Might I suggest bikes are a great form of private mobility?
Extremely off-topic, but do you have ADHD?
No, why?
Cars seem to live in a special category in peoples minds where the costs simply do not exist, and thus the problems can be solved by simply throwing infinitely more resources and space at the problems.
Cars are inherently spatially inefficient, which makes them a terrible form of transport for cities. That is the hard mathematical reality that so many people avoid reckoning with.
Think of the space taken up by 1000 people on a single metro train, vs 1000 people in nearly 1000 cars. Think of 1000 people on bikes vs 1000 people in cars.
It's so obvious that this is a terrible way of moving people about, and we see this in congestion, in longer commutes in spite of cars traveling at higher speeds, sprawling patterns of urban development, road deaths (the biggest cause of death of children in most western countries), noise, pollution, sprawl, inactivity and social isolation.
Only ideology (car brain) prevents people from seeing it as the problem it is.
Simply & beautifully satirized by the "bro just one more lane bro, bro I swear just one more lane and it'll fix the traffic bro," meme from a few years ago.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/one-more-lane-bro-one-more-la...
I actually counted these two: https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/417/129/282...
If it's an average of 1.2 persons per car (which is the typical average) and counting roughly 1,200 cars on those images (in aggregate) it would take roughly 28-29 rail cars to transport this number of people.
That's 3-5 trains worth. All that traffic could have been saved (in theory) by 3-5 trains.
I don't imagine a train would serve all those people, but imagine the massive dent it would make to have good train systems between large population centers.
Katy Freeway's at 26 and counting! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_10_in_Texas
"One more lane" is so much easier to ridicule because of America, so thank you.
I really wish the US could get more of this. I know here in Boston this has been a hot issue with the summer shutdown of Newberry on Sunday.
Drivers will come out of nowhere and complain, will start suddenly caring about people with disabilities (of course in no car areas we will figure out how emergency vehicles, deliveries, and people with disabilities will get around).
Sure our public transit system needs a lot of work, but that is not an argument for keeping the current car centric system we have in place now.
Cars obviously have their use cases and I can also understand why most of the US will never do this. But the car culture within cities is insane.
Writing this on a tram in Zürich. At this hour(peak hours) they depart ever 2-3 minutes or so. Walking distance is 50 meters.
It feels great.
Now let me hear your objections to why public transport could never work at your location
The drivers in my country emigrated to Switzerland.
I jest, but it's true that my city of 650k souls is in a dire need of around 100 bus/tram drivers and that many emigrated to rich countries which provide an overall better standard of work/living.
Personally for minor errands I cycle because I can't rely on public transport and neither can anyone else, so there's traffic congestion everywhere. I'm not happy with this, but I don't really have other options.
My location isn't urban and those in the nearest cities don't care about making it convenient for me to get there.
It's a trade off, but I've never been as comfortable when living in an urban area so it is what it is.
Yeah, it's not for every location.
Switzerland's extreme wealth makes them a bit of an outlier though, other european countries are probably a fairer comparisons for most places.
I would argue having functioning public transport is a must to generate extreme wealth.
I travel all across Europe for work and only few places has similarly functioning public transport as Zürich. Stockholm city center, that's about it.
I am not from Switzerland.
Public transport usually requires a medium-to-high density to be sustainable. However, it can get saturated - in Paris, the subway and the trams are full for long periods during the day, even at midnight! It makes the experience really unpleasant when you have no alternative.
Man, you really public transportation, you've been all over this thread sniping every positive comment about public transportation
I'm not really arguing that the world adopts the Paris metro system. First of all, there are turn stills everywhere which is nowhere to be found in Zürich. Why not create choke points and erect this annoying block everywhere in front of people who wish to reach their destination as quickly as possible. Great idea.
In Luxembourg, public transport is for free. Also great.
That's the reason nobody uses public transport in Paris: it's too crowded.
My favourite thing about living in the Netherlands is that kids have freedom. They can bike to school, their friends’ houses, sports, town etc and parents aren’t their taxi.
Growing up in suburban California I was basically in an outdoor prison until I could drive.
> Growing up in suburban California I was basically in an outdoor prison until I could drive.
Having grown up in the Netherlands and having a decision to make where we want our kids to grow up (US spouse), this feels painful to read. I suppose the SWE salaries aren't worth it.
Also this is one of the best towns to cycle in the Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TuGAHR78w&ab_channel=NotJu...
Another problem is that they very seldom make walking pathways between cul de sacs.
These 2 houses are 100 meters from each other but you have to walk 1700 meters and most of the distance is without any sidewalk, only "Odell Cir" has it. The small amount of sidewalk is so narrow and close to the cars that it is hardly a sidewalk.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/28.8760292,-81.9827997/28.87...
Edit: compare to this: longer distance for cars but there is a direct walking path: https://www.google.dk/maps/dir/55.6714604,12.3530984/55.6716...
Shout out to @NotJustBikes in general. Infrastructure should be built for humans first. This benefits cars as well: more accessible for walking / cycling / public transport = less congested for when you do need a car.
Money is great for a lot of things, but money alone would definitely not be enough to get me to live in the USA, especially now that I'm preparing to have kids.
This reminds of an SUV killing a 7 year old and parents were jailed for 'manslaughter' instead of the driver (North Carolina, US).
https://abcnews.go.com/US/parents-charged-manslaughter-boy-s...
It seems like those comfy US coastal salaries usually buy you either:
- A largish house in the subs, and a nice car that you'll be seeing a lot of, unfortunately.
- A tiny house closer to work.
While European SWE salaries are significantly lower, they can generally buy you a decent house close to work.
Agreed, last summer we contemplated moving back to CA for work but wouldn’t want that for our kids.
And hello from Houten :-). If you’re here and want to talk bikes maybe we could have a coffee some time!
Hah, I had a feeling that was a NJB video. It is generally surreal to me that even smaller settlements in Europe have more, shall we say, evolvability than North American ones, and (at least in some cases owing to their antiquity) prioritize the needs of pedestrians.
> Growing up in suburban California I was basically in an outdoor prison until I could drive.
Just as a counter point, I grew up in suburban Massachusetts and this wasn't the case for me. My friends and I rode all over town on our bikes. Bike lanes weren't a thing back then at all, and this was in the 90s when violent crime was at its peak in the US. We just tried to stick to streets with less traffic, rode on sidewalks where available, and took alternate routes through the woods, the cemetery, private property, etc. to avoid busy areas. This is anecdotal, of course, but no kid from my town ever got hit by a car when I was growing up (one kid did die chasing a ball into the street, though).
I'm all for building bike lanes and public transport. And also not all suburban areas are equal - I've definitely seen areas of the US where I would not feel safe riding a bike even as an adult. But I think whatever is keeping kids confined to their homes is just as much a cultural change as it is a lack of infrastructure.
New england's suburbs & small towns are the outlier in the US. I grew up in the south and my experience exactly mirrors that of the CA resident you're responding to.
No amount of cultural change is going to make suburban charlotte a good place for 8 year olds to bike alone.
I think New England towns are better, especially back when we sold cars and not giant SUVs and trucks.
Same in Midwest
I was fortunate to raise my kids in an exurb that's popular for scenic and uncongested roads. We get a lot of road bikers on the weekends. That means it's relatively safe for kids to ride their bikes all over town. This gave my kids a lot of independence at a younger age than most.
I'm always wondering how Americans feel traveling to Europe and being able to walk in cities. It must be so surreal that they either have to move, or they can't fathom that these cities are practical to live in.
> traveling to Europe and being able to walk in cities
All of Greece is car oriented. Of course if you stay near Acropolis you get the impression of walk-ability. Spain outside of the historic city centers is car oriented. Average mileage traveled by car per person in Germany is about the same as is in Canada.
I can continue your generalization about my home city - Montreal. Which is walk-able .. but not really, see the second part here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yDtLv-7xZ4
To me, it's a big reason why Americans love Disney World: you can drive to your local airport, fly to Florida, take a shuttle bus to your resort (that handles your luggage for you), and then rely on Disney's private network of bus routes, monorails, gondolas, boats, etc., instead of having to drive yourself.
In fact, if you use their transportation network, you actually get somewhat better treatment: in all of the parks, there's a shorter walk to/from the transit terminal than to your car, and in one of them (Magic Kingdom), you are required to park a distance from the park and take a connecting ferry.
Believe it or not, we do have cities in the US with walkable areas :)
I am in Madison, Wisconsin and we have a number of areas like State Street where walking is the norm: https://visitdowntownmadison.com/
By and large this is not the case but it isn't as if it's unimaginable what it would be like.
New York City at least is extremely walk able/bike able and car unfriendly.
It's not surreal at all, and most Americans marvel at how tiny and unliveable the houses are.
Europeans must marvel at being able the size of living accommodations in the US. They can not even fathom in their brains what it's like not to be crammed into a tiny 20sqm flat.
I love this quote from the mayor:
The fact that you park your private car in a public space is crazy: if you don’t have room for your freezer, do you put it on the sidewalk?
I dont think its a very good analogy.
I completely understand dedicating space to public transport instead of cars. But dedicating space to cars seems entirely reasonable in isolation, because the city has an interest in making it possible to get there. Parking spaces store cars - but is that their entire function? Or is that just an aspect of enabling people to drive into the city?
Consider the fact that you cannot in fact store a freezer in a public parking space. Nor even a car, actually, beyond a certain period of time, precisely because it's all about enabling movement.
Many places have on street parking that is used by residents (e.g. you get the "have to move my car twice a month because of street sweepers" effect). It's possible that's what the quote is referring to.
Compare Brookline MA, which allows on-street parking, but only during the day to neighborhoods in Boston proper which has free on-street parking permits for residents.
Yeah, it's a not perfect analogy.
But, when talking about the expectation* that every public space have acres of free-to-use public parking, it makes a fair amount of sense.
* In my experience, this is a very common expectation in the USA.
https://archive.ph/9z7IP
Thank you, this comment should be higher (maybe even sticky), we managed to kill the original server (504).
Unfortunately, there is a lot of ideology in the issue of restricting car traffic in cities, for example, the Netherlands is often cited as an example, but they forget that it is one of the most motorized countries in the world (80% of families have a car, and 33% have two), and has one of the densest networks of motorways in the world, and 78% of trips in the Netherlands are made by car, and the average distance of a bicycle trip is only 5 kilometers. I do not argue that local restrictions or a ban on cars, especially in the center, make life more comfortable, but this does not mean that it is necessary to restrict it everywhere.
I often ride a bike, but it is generally surprising that after a century of development of the car, the creation of comfortable climate control systems, noise insulation and multimedia, I am seriously asked to take children to school in the rain, wind or snow on a bike. For me, this sounds like regression
Sounds amazing. When I visited Venice in 1997, I appreciated the lack of cars about as much as the presence of the canals.
In my city (Tampere, Finland, pop. ~260,000) the annual number of traffic accidents leading to injury has halved since 2010. A big driver has been the decision in 2015 to lower the speed limits on all local streets from 40km/h (25 mi/h) to 30 km/h (~20 mi/h), with appropriate traffic calming measures implemented where necessary. (Industrial zones are exempt.)
A map link showing the current state:
https://kartat.tampere.fi/oskari?zoomLevel=7&coord=327979.56...
That's an area surrounded by a lot of water!
TIL that Nokia originated in Tampere.
Thank you for the information sharing!
I hope the traffic calming measure is the speed display that shows a sad face when you are speeding.
Well, there are a couple of those. But mainly we’re talking about the basic things: narrowing lanes, speed bumps, raised zebra crossings, preventing through traffic, rebuilding intersections as roundabouts and so on. The key points to preventing speeding are
* reducing drivers' perceived safety, and
* making it more uncomfortable for the drivers to speed.
I was walking in a narrow street in Granada, Spain yesterday and two guys on their scooters where going at 40mph, on a street meant mostly for pedestrians. They pollute like cars (the stink is the same, even if smaller engine.) When people talk about cars ruining cities designed for walking, they should include scooters. They look cute in movies but they are not so pleasant to have around in practice. I don't mind the electric scooters the type you stand on because if you're going really fast on a narrow pedestrian and you hit someone it won't be so fatal, and you will get hurt probably equally, so people generally don't ride them at maximum speed. Also, they're essential for take-away food delivery.
I feel like this common conversation is missing a dimension. Car vs. public transport is too flat.
I prefer that cities are walkable and have good inter and intra public transport. So I'm with the anti-car crowd on that.
However, I do not prefer cities in general. So I'm with the pro-car people on this one. I enjoy the trend of spacious car-friendly suburbs and rural areas. I value the space and freedom over the conveniences of the city.
I'm hoping for a self driving taxi + trains combo to maybe solve the problem.
For one a self driving taxi fleet could take up vastly less space - you'd no longer need one car per person, you'd need far fewer parking spots, most cars could be single or double seaters again taking less space and running more efficiently.
The space savings could be used to boost rail-based public transit options, which would see more adoption as self driving taxis make last-mile transport cheaper and easier. A bunch of positive feedback loops driving public transit adoption and improvements.
Result is cleaner and more efficient transport for all, and vast amounts of space returned from serving cars to serving people.
At least that's the dream!
To me, it's more than just reduce traffic, but a sign that government is investing in its people. In order for a traffic free/minimal zone to thrive, you need policies that promote affordable housing, policing policy that reduces crime without being "brutal". The population also must accept certain civil responsibilities as trust and respect must go both ways.
These threads always turn into fights between car vs. non-car people. But the answer should just be more of everything. More bike lanes, car lanes, buses, trains, parking, etc. Close a street or two off to car traffic, maybe just on weekends initially, to create a nice walkable downtown area.
People always seem to talk about these things like it's one size fits all, when needs vary massively from one city to another. And even from one neighborhood to another.
Bike lanes and public transport will reduce traffic congestion as long as they are well-designed and people actually use them. And being able to get into a car and drive somewhere is incredibly convenient when traffic is light and parking is plentiful.
Where do you put the "more car lanes"?
Houston is almost entirely lanes and parking, they're still congested. At which point do you have enough car lanes?
The rest of the lanes sure; a fully used bike lane like Boulevard de Sébastopol is worth 8 lanes of car traffic. That helps. But more car lanes?
> Where do you put the "more car lanes"?
I'm not very familiar with Houston, but a quick google search shows that there is a big project underway right now to add more lanes in Houston [1]. So it would seem that civil engineers there have found a place to put more car lanes that they think will help with traffic congestion.
> At which point do you have enough car lanes?
As long as Houston is growing (currently it is the second fastest growing city in the US), I don't think there will ever be enough. They need to continuously improve their transportation infrastucture to keep up with a growing population. As I said above, I think this should include bike lanes and public transportation too. But if engineers identify a solution to alleviate traffic congestion by building more roads, then I think that is worth considering, too.
[1] https://www.txdot.gov/about/newsroom/local/houston/i45-const...
I would say more of everything but NOT all in the same place.
Look at Greater Tokyo. 37 million people - and they have everything. Pedestrians, cyclists, cars, taxies, buses, surface roads, expressways, trains, subways, monorails, high speed rail, ferries, etc. All interconnected, and all being used to capacity at rush hour every day. It's absolutely insane, but every time I visit I'm in awe at how easy it is to get around (albeit unpleasant at times).
This is nice and all for tourists and people that live in the city center. But then if you don't live in the actual city and need to drive for half an hour to reach the city, spend half an hour searching for parking, then take a half an hour bus, then it's not so funny.
This linked article and the comment section remind me how I admire American maximalism. No half-measures - want to be able to drive everywhere? Let's bulldoze whole cities to make them car-oriented. Tired of the concept after a few generations? FUCK CARS, let's have Pontevedra everywhere.
Meanwhile there are places in the US that managed to preserve a more balanced approach. Take for example the borough of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Fgs9pBLmGCgWbtLGA?g_st=ac
At first glance it looks like a typical car-oriented landscape, but note the presence of sidewalks. There's on-street parking, but hardly any driveway visible, because they're at the back, connected to one-way alleys.
That is brilliant. On one hand the area is fully walkable, on the other everyone gets to live in their detached house with a garage and whatnot. You can drive, but you can also walk. Hell, you could probably even cycle through those alleys as cars use them only to park, so they won't be speeding through there.
Prioritizing people is by any means the way to go, but it's not hassle-free.
It has an impact on businesses and delivery operators that end up being obstructed.
Ideally I think one should move towards layered cities, pedestrians on the ground while beneath them roads, parkings and especially train and train carts thrive.
In Norway the public transportation in Oslo has become so bad that it's essentially no longer reliable. If I want to get somewhere in time, I have to use a car or a bicycle.
Also, the violence and sexual assaults on public transport is getting worse, the times that it does work it's completely overloaded, and the prices are insanely high and quite frankly becoming unaffordable with the insanely high inflation and interest rates.
A city that was altered greatly to accommodate pedestrians has become a city that does not accommodate anyone. This is likely to be the outcome in other cities that take similar measures, governments always fail eventually, once it becomes impractical to use cars the country's economy will suffer greatly as a result, because there will come a time when the government just decides they don't care about public transport anymore and it can be as horrible as possible because nobody has any choices anymore.
Not to be a doomer but I think public transport has peaked in many places in Europe except the big famous standouts like Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg etc
The UK government for example is reducing subsidies for the railway and raising prices sometimes even 12-14% per year. This would be unimaginable 10 years ago. We have many railway workers who feel underpaid and some that feel they deserve the same pay as speciality doctors. This gets directly paid for by price rises. It is strike again /again/ for the railways.
I think the time is now that governments don't care about public transport
This would lead to literally murder in my part of upstate New York. Heck, my neighbor will even park on his own lawn to avoid the ten foot walk from the pavement.
I had a neighbour like that, only it was right in front of our apartment building.
Needless to say, we didn't get along.
First sort out how people can manage to visit cities without having to own a car on first place.
Most European villages and town are unreachable without cars.
Some can already consider themselves lucky if there is a daily connection into one direction.
Everyone likes to think we are all living in Paris, Berlin within city boundaries.
The topic is about cities, not about rural areas. No cars in cities, simple. This concept will probably blow your mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_and_ride
Imagine a city without personal cars in its inner limits. Residents who decide to own a personal car can park it in a Park&Ride which also includes unlimited transit access for the duration of the parking.
Deliveries, you say? Those aren't personal cars, but I'll comply. Businesses will be able to drive in the cities, within the permitted times/routes.
Emergency vehicles? Those aren't personal cars, either. They're also allowed.
I live in Germany, and don't need any lessons in Park and Ride.
What I need is a transport infrastructure that cares about people that live outside city central area.
Maybe it will blow your mind that with P+R some of us take about 2h to come to work, versus 45m with a car.
Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy? P+R isn't even a known concept.
A lot of people in the US seems to have a candy colored version of the EU in their heads that mainly consists of an idealized version of these cities and free shit.
Ofc, things look great if you spend a few days in expensive hotel or furbished AirBnB ruining things for locals. And in that time visit a few local places for food or get groceries for a few meals. But this is vastly different from living such places for years and trying to pay for it with local wages...
Pontevedra has around 80K inhabitants, so it's practical to design it this way. But when cities are much bigger, problems start to arise. Not everyone can afford to live in the center (nor is there space for them, and building taller than a certain number of meters or floors is often forbidden for various reasons), so people begin moving farther out.
Sure, there's public transport... but only until it takes six times longer than driving a car - and that's not even counting all the issues public transport has in many places, which some people deny even exist, although doesn't matter to me because I just experienced them first hand way too many times (I have never owned a car until recently).
At that point, you might as well move farther out to a nicer house, less expenses and just drive a bit longer.
>Sure, there's public transport... but only until it takes six times longer than driving a car
if everyone is driving, noone is. This is simple game theory and a system fault happens when there are too many cars. You can't widen city streets.
For example: public transportation in NY is often faster and cheaper than a car + parking.
I would argue that a public transportation network is a requirement, maybe even a prerequisite, for high density. Manhattan simply could not work without the various public transportation methods -- if everyone commuting in from CT, LI, NJ, upstate NY, etc., had to drive in, would there even be enough space for all those cars on the island?
> But when cities are much bigger, problems start to arise.
Actually, the bigger the city, the more efficient public transportation is. Just look at LA with it's 16 lanes of car traffic, and compare it to London - the fundamental difference being that LA has no real public transport and London has an extensive tube and train network. Oh, and London has about twice as many people as LA... which one would you rather be a commuter in?
Just an example: a colleague of mine was commuting from Reading to Canary Wharf (before the Elizabeth line even), this is now an hour long train ride, if you tried to take it by car it would be double that - and then you'd have to find parking for your car in Canary Wharf, which is not easy and very expensive.
It's not about being bigger, but having high population density.
Obviously in larger cities it will take longer to travel from one extreme to the other, but that is a similar problem as trying to travel to another city. Trips that are 20km long need to be treated as such, no matter if they're in the same city or not.
Some suburbs in Barcelona and Madrid have more than 20K hab/km2. And they are expected to have as low car transit as other European cities with around 3K to 6K hab/km2.
It is obvious that even though lots of people might be able to switch to alternative ways of transportation car is still extremely useful for many use cases.
The solution is the right city design: more populated areas in the district centers, and less densely populated areas towards the outskirts. Spain is terrible at this, as they design high density areas everywhere. Americans do the opposite, it's mostly all low density.
A balanced solution is how dutch cities are designed. You can live in your own garden house, while having access to commerce, offices in higher density areas, just by 5-20minutes by bike (up to 5-6km).
Cities can scale far further than that and cars make the situation worse, not better. The Amsterdam metropolitan area houses in the ballpark of two and a half million people, most of them not living in the city center.
Don't forget to throw out the stinking loud gas mopeds and motorbikes while you're at it!
And taxis. Or whatever new bullshit name they use.
TL;DR: «Only “necessary traffic” is allowed in Pontevedra: vehicles used for emergency and public safety, public services (including garbage and water trucks, etc.), transportation of people with reduced mobility, and accessing private garages are permitted 24/7. However, loading and unloading for commercial supplies, home delivery, transporting bulky objects, and house moving and related activities, are permitted only during certain hours.»
I have never once in my life seen someone with groceries on the metro. I have no car and kids.
I did. The person had bags all around them, things rolling out of them, and at one point dropped a box of coke cans on me that thankfully didn’t explode. The situation looked terrible and completely impractical. But people helped him gather his things.
> Made for People, Not Cars
cars are just people that move from A to B.
if there is no sensible way to move where you need to go it is not a city made for humans but just hostile to people and their requirements.
i need exactly 63 downvotes please, don't be cheap.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45196547
I feel like a bit of a failure when it comes to transport. I tried for many years to cycle to work in Dublin covering 25km on an ebike, but gave up after several nasty incidents that almost resulted in serious injury (for example my head almost going under the wheel of a van). I've experienced so much hatred, verbal and physical violence from drivers — and I'm the kind of cyclist that is fully lit, clad in high-vis and stopping at all traffic lights.
About a year ago I started to take the bus. My commute went from an hour on the bike to over two hours. Spending four hours a day on a bus to travel such a short distance is not a fun experience. The bus meanders through a city choked with traffic. It's often faster if I get off and walk that part of the journey (I've checked). I enjoyed cycling for the most part. It was great for fitness and clearing my head. The parts of my commute away from cars were beautiful but there was a significant risk of death or serious injury every time I got on the bike. More and more drivers are buried in their phones. Cycle or bus and you'll see this.
The bus was slowly killing me. It was hard to work as the crowded bus wobbled around narrow Dublin streets along with various degrees of anti-social behaviour. I got off the bus angry and frustrated and groggy.
I've just bought a small little electric car and I can get to work in around 40 minutes. I don't have to listen to other people's loud voice calls or TikToks that are so loud they penetrate through ANC. I don't have to ask someone to make space on the seat they are occupying all by themselves and their bag and endure the dirty looks for it. I don't have to wait and wait for buses that never show up. I hate the bus. I hate that I hate the bus. I feel like a failure for having to buy a second car but I fucking tried!
I'm happy in my car. It's fun to drive and it makes me happy and guilty. I feel like I have so much more freedom. I'm not tied to the bus schedule which placed very tight limits on my time, and the bus frequently didn't show. Otherwise it would take much longer to get home. I can stop by somewhere on the way home and pick something up. Like the bike, I am by myself in the car and I can decompress. I can sing if I want.
It makes no sense for a 25km commute to take two hours. Its madness. By travelling from one suburb to another via the city centre the bus becomes wholly impractical. A public transport system has to work so that people leave their car at home. London worked for me, I got the tube everywhere. Valencia has an amazing public transport system. Dublin is completely broken.
This is a problem when the public transport system isn't built with these exact issues in mind. You're right, it shouldn't take 2 hours for that commute, and all the other issues you pointed out are legitimate. The problem is that the infrastructure hasn't been adapted to make things better for the people using public transport.
As a comparison to the Netherlands, public transport always has right of way vs regular traffic, they have their own dedicated lanes that traffic isn't allowed into (this includes taxis! They can use the public transport lanes) and even their traffic signals treat them preferentially. I take a bus very often, and quite often it won't stop at a single red light because the traffic lights are programmed to help the flow of public transport, despite the street it travels on having 5 or 6 different traffic lights. In many cities, only public transport is allowed in some of the denser streets too, so they don't have to compete with other drivers on the road.
Trams, metros and trains are pretty obvious as to why they work so well.
Same with bike lanes. First of all, whenever they can be they are wholly separated from the main traffic and live in their own independent lanes. If a bike has to join regular streets, they have the right of way and these situations are kept at an absolute minimum. The streets and intersections themselves are also designed so that drivers are forced into driving safely via traffic easing measures and low speed limits. Plus, everyone here bikes, so there isn't the same type of animosity or stigma you see elsewhere because drivers understand what it's like to be a cyclist and view it as a normal thing.
So it's not your fault and you shouldn't feel bad, it's the fault of your government for not investing into proper public transport infrastructure. They are trying to squeeze in public transport infra into existing road infra, whereas what they should be doing is redesigning the current infra to make sure public transport is better integrated.
And, guess what, the roads here are still awesome for drivers! Other than the centers of the bigger cities, there isn't much congestion to speak of and the highways are of extremely high quality (to the point we have a billion memes about feeling the bumps of Belgium as soon as you cross the border). It's not like NL is a car-free utopia, something like 65% of people still have cars, the difference is that there are alternate options that are just as good, and often better than driving. That's the secret sauce to good public transport.
What this article doesn't mention is that economically, people are so much more productive then cars.
The land value of your city will be so much better if you have a walkable city. Walkable is always the start, then you map bikes, and public transport on top.
You will have city that is economically productive and vibrant.
So a tax financed site telling how it's great to have more tax and regulations. Not surprising. Find it very weird to have government trying to gerrymander things just as we are on the cusp of EV transition and autonomy. Go take a ride in a Tesla with FSD, the future is here, let it come in, get out of the way. In a few years with autonomous vehicles the need for vehicle ownership wild radically decrease and with that a huge need for parking space will simply vanish.
What I suggest instead: make electricity super cheap use all the ways possible create space for charger system but let brands compete( don't over regulate) Allow autonomous system to operate, be a trailblazer in the field.
The car-centric alternative requires more expensive infrastructure and more aggressive zoning regulations
Your EV argument does not address the main issue of urban sprawl in car-centric design and how the ever-increasing infrastructure costs (and decreased revenue: parking lots dont create wealth) are bankrupting cities.
Fifteen-Minute Cities and Chat Control are brought to you by the same people
Yep. It comes down to attacking the options and freedom individuals can have.
I am going to be downvoted for this but I am not wrong.
The thing most mass transportation advocates need to understand when it comes to the US is that we don't want cars necessarily for convenience, we want them to be able to avoid other people. We don't want to have to endure the constant micro aggressions of other passengers. We certainly don't want to have to endure the assaults, murders and rapes that happen. We don't want to be forced to mix with the most violent of society while unarmed and packed liked sardines.
Every argument you make about cars being more dangerous are 100% valid, we just don't care. We would rather die 10 times due to an accident than a violent murder. Its just our nature. Until you can get crime to essentially zero or ensure either an armed officer in every train car or allow citizens to carry mass transportation will not be a thing in the US. Especially not in Red states. I'm talking complete removal of all inconveniences, including things as minor as someone playing their music loudly on a blue tooth speaker. This murder of the Ukrainian woman combined with the treatment of Penny essentially killed any hope of mass transit being popular in Red states for the next 100 years. I am not arguing for or against Penny's actions I am simply stating the effect that it had on most people that support what he did, the same people that would need to support mass transit for it to catch on.
Again I am not arguing numbers here, mass transportation is obviously statistically safer than car travel by a massive degree. I am arguing human nature. We will not subject ourselves to criminals and intentional violence when there is an alternative no matter how much more dangerous that alternative ends up being
If there is no correlation between actual crime rates and perception of crime rates there is no reason to do anything about actual crime rates.
Nobody is advocating for banning cars. Texas will always be there for you.
Why would I move to Texas when Florida is perfect
That's how the EU liberals are losing the last drop of good-will that they have from the general (lumpen) populace. But good for them they all stand behind gentrification.
Taking car transport to the extreme is bad, but the narrative that life in a small flat and commute by public transport is the future is dystopian, too.
The "air pollution" argument is disappearing fast as well with the ongoing transition to EVs.
What we need is a good balance. Pedestrians, bicycles, public transport, and cars.
>The "air pollution" argument is disappearing fast as well with the ongoing transition to EVs.
All that's left is the enormous amount of death, destruction, and injury motor vehicles cause through crashes. The leading cause of death for children!
Also tire noise and pollution, and an even higher road maintenance cost (as EVs tend to be heavier than ICE cars).
Sorry, I forgot to think of the children! I was too focussed on drafting a thoughtful and substantive comment, I suppose.
Edit to @Zigurd below: What have all you guys replies to do with air pollution? You don't have to agree with my original comment but please at least try to bring something to the discussion. I feel like I stepped into a meeting of an anti-car cult...
EVs still produce air pollution from tyre, brake, and road surface abrasion. There is also new research that indicates resuspension of particles is a major source of roadway-related pollution.
This review is a good jumping-off point for research on the subject if you are interested: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096669232...
How is it dystopian? I loved having a small flat in a city where I biked everywhere. When I needed a car I used on demand rentals.
Urban is usually associated with panhandling, trash, public urination and crime.
> "Galicia is mainly and historically ruled by the right-wing Popular Party"... (Galician Nationalist Bloc)
So they likely have much stricter standards of what constitutes acceptable urban behavior...
... than, say, New York, where very recently a person with 30-year criminal history has allegedly killed a couple...
... or in Charlotte, where an Ukrainian refugee was fatally stabbed in the light rail.
Or Memphis, which is smack dab in the middle of a permanently Republican supermajority state, yet has three times the murder rate and twice the robbery rate of NYC.
Is there a charitable explanation for why people cherrypick a single homicide in a metro of 8 million people and somehow act like it's proof for the downfall of liberal democracy?
Especially when by most relevant metrics, illiberal democracy performs dramatically worse?
You seem to be living in a distant parallel world.
Here is how it looks like on the actual world: urban centers are dominated by Democrats in almost every state. The leniency regarding criminals comes from Democrats, specially regarding violent criminals.
Memphis' Paul Young is affiliated with the Democratic Party https://bestneighborhood.org/conservative-vs-liberal-map-mem...
https://ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliation_of_the_mayors_of_t...
Because you can gauge how you feel when you walk through the cities and realize something is off with this narrative. I suspect a lot of crimes aren’t tracked or classified properly in the data we see from cities in blue states, to support their policies. Or that victims are exhausted by the lack of prosecution and sentencing, and stop reporting things.
People also drive cars, so a better title is: Made for pedestrians, not cars.
No, people walk, run, shop, sit, use a bike and use a car, cars are just cars. If something is "built for cars" its just built for one of many tings people do. If its "built for people", it should be built for most of the tings people do.
Well people who drive probably cover much less road when they are not driving.
You learn something every day.
It's all fine and dandy until you realize that economy pays a big buck for faster and more comfortable ways of transporting a body. (And it's been this way since time memorial).
You either transport your body fast, or you are missing out. And the greatest thing to miss out is an opportunity. While programmers can live in one room for years and just use Zoom for everything, others can't.
Sorry to say, but most of my European friends who were much anti-car, have changed their opinion after... buying a car. Being able to move in whatever direction at whatever time and being able to carry some stuff in your trunk makes your life convenient. Add to that the privacy and your personal AC and you won't be able to top it off. In South Africa personal vehicle means security at night.
The only places where this works are the places where: 1. People live for retirement and pleasure. 2. The road infrastructure is just straight hell. (Like Portugal. It's bad in Lisbon. It is terrible in there). 3. Where you are not under any circumstances can be robbed by a random person on a street.
So, the so-called cars problem is not something solvable. You just have to handle other factors to and cars will follow. I've seen cities where improvement in economic and social conditions led to the development of nice pedestrian and bike infrastructure.
You can transport your body faster by walking than by taking a car. But of course, this depends on how you design a city. If I have a supermarket 5 minute walk from home, is going to be faster than taking the car out, and finding a parking lot and finally walking to the supermarket.
And let's not forget, that if you want a more fair society, you cannot assume that just everybody can afford a car. I went to university by bus and it was a horrible experience. I could only dream of the modern cheap electric vehicles. But still, the city I studied has barely any infrastructure for this, and you risk your life every time, even though it would be PERFECT for this.
Car infrastructure isn’t faster though, because it pushes everything apart. Noth America is a vast sea of parking with a building sprinkled here and there, so a five minute bike ride to shops with little parking is replaced by a thirty minute drive to a big box with 12 acres of parking.
> You either transport your body fast, or you are missing out. And the greatest thing to miss out is an opportunity.
This is such a modern take on life, we have to run everywhere to consume as much as possible as fast as possible. The irony is that you're probably missing out more of what makes life "life" by being entirely driven by FOMO and checking boxes of the infinite TODO list.
What's funny is that the faster the means of transportation the more time we spend time in them, commute times are getting longer, you're most likely literally missing opportunities due to cars more than anything else.
In any city the shortest distance in total time spent is by bike.
Even if it is widely dangerous to do so (most american cities i've ever visited)
You can hem and haw - but its pretty bang on
When you then add finding parking at the ends of your trip to it it is crazyly more efficient timewise.
Now even copenhagen denmark has rain causing many more to take a car or public transport (that works).
But it is very clear that the time argument is simply not true.
Now you can argue convenience at the start of the trip vs agony in the end (finding that parking space)
Or for "need to lug an ikea sofa across time"
Or even for "my kids and familiy needs to go as well"
That's super fine, and all true - but 70-80% of ALL trips in cars are by 1 person sitting in 1 car. So moving just 10% of car users to alternate means free up a tremendous amount of space in the city.
I love my car, my bikes and my public transports and each does something nice for me - but seriously do you think cities like l.a. are even livable on a human scale - people don't even walk if the distance is over 1000meters.
I certainly agree with the idea of "uhm lets try to plan for otherthings than cars going forward"
Agreed. What's the way forward though? https://www.romania-insider.com/insurance-union-one-cyclist-...
'In Romania, one cyclist dies every two days'
It's not as straightforward as that. Sure, a car gives you more freedom - if you need to go further out for stuff. But if you live in a dense city, you won't need it - your job is in walking / cycling distance, all shops are, etc.
The other factor I found is that quality and affordability of housing is inversely proportinal to access to services/public transit; that is, in the Netherlands you can live like a king in eastern Groningen for the same amount of money you buy a starter home in the Randstad, but to get to the nearest city you're looking at at least an hour's travel (by car or bus/train).
What a shitty take.
> You either transport your body fast, or you are missing out. And the greatest thing to miss out is an opportunity.
This is what’s known as "fomo". Arguments driven on fear never sustainable.
Also apparently you have never been stuck in bumper to bumper traffic in the aftermath of a massive event. Or maybe county closes major roadway for repairs. Or a _single_ motor vehicle accident brings an entire highway to a halt for _hours_ (many people rubber necking as well …)
Ah yes because massive events happen everyday therefore I should need to never ever have a car and choose the way I want to travel.
> Where you are not under any circumstances can be robbed by a random person on a street.
I will be very surprised if there's anywhere in the world where the expected loss from being robbed on the street while walking exceeds the expected loss from being in a car accident while driving.
Getting in a car is by far the most dangerous thing most people do routinely.
That’s cute. But if you don’t have the public transportation infrastructure & enough housing it’s totally infeasible. People who drive the cars are not the city residents. They are the ones who cannot afford living in the city and have to commute from far away.
This is a very backwards way of looking at the issue. The public transportation infrastructure and denser housing used to exist throughout north American cities, but was bulldozed to make room for comically wide roads, oversized single family houses (increasinly occupied by empty-nesters not utilizing all the now empty space), parking lots, malls, and big box stores.
Car centric design caused these problems, and moving away from car centric design is how you fix them.
Did they also bulldoze the skyscrapers that we are missing to house all of the suburbs population in the cities ?
It’s nice to believe in fairytales, but what you are proposing is effectively cutting access of poor people to opportunities so that the rich can bike to their cafe safely.
How about we enforce existing laws first?!!!
It is dangerous for pedestrians to walk on sidewalks, because cyclists on their electric motorbikes are driving there 30 mph!
Aggresive off-leash dogs are everywhere! Entire cities, parks and streets are one big dog toilet!
can't understand why your opinion is down rated. You're so right pal.
It is timely to publish that the day pretty much all public transportations in London are shut down because of a strike, and it is raining in case you thought cycling would be a good idea. Meanwhile the streets of Paris are blocked by leftists trying to set the city on fire, also disrupting public transportations.
You can cycle in the rain. Just plan and get the needed equipment for it.
Also allow me to point you to Mexico City - you can’t imagine the hell it is for car drivers when all the things you mention happen (rain, protests choking half the city, and the subway shut down due to either failure or a strike). I’m talking literally 4-5 hours to get to your in-the-city destination; I once spent 2 hours driving half a kilometer and it was only raining. Just in case your actual point is “it’s better to drive as you’re less vulnerable to an eventuality with public transport or alternative mobility”.
Those darn Leftists! Imagine the paradise if we made protesting illegal and just let corporations and government have full control over our lives.
Yeah man, damn Europe is limiting businesspeople to do business! If they just let go of all these stupid laws that protect the population, a few people might get really rich! Why wouldn't they want that?
If the union strike is so inconvenient, management should agree on a deal promptly.
Exactly. If France doesn’t want more terrorist attacks, Macron should abide to the terrorists demands and convert to Islam! Perfectly reasonable position.
Only the tube is affected by the strike.
Overground, National Rail, DLR, the Elizabeth line, trams and buses are all working. And the few parts of the tube network that don't have any nearby heavy rail services (eg. the Hainault loop on the Central line) are mostly still running.
Sure, the non-tube services are (much!) busier than normal but this situation is actually a great demonstration of one of the most important factors in making public transport useful: route redundancy, so that if one is suspended for whatever reason there are reasonable alternative options for most journeys.
i am totally an advocate of the 15 minute city, but the strike thing is a genuine problem, it's total blackmail. yes, they are asking for better working conditions, but then you look into the details and it's because early retirement age has been raised from 56 to 58 and days off have been reduced from 28 to 26. that sort of thing cannot be indulged. i'm getting to an age where i know seniors in my european side of the family that have been retired longer than they have worked, but insist they deserve their yearly vacation. that social contract meme is real.
Taipei moves on scooters. It also rains a lot. Every office has hangers in the stairwells for rain ponchos. Adapting to rain seems very doable.
Taipei has warm temperatures year round that mean everything is dry quickly. It's quite a different situation when your socks get soaked in < 15 degree weather.
You do know it's possible to cycle in the rain, right?
It’s also perfectly possible to walk in thick mud. Or to walk 3 hours to the office. Or to do both jumping on one foot.
I cycled a reasonable distance to work (about 25km a day) here in sunny Scotland and rain wasn't really a problem, or snow - but cycling in really high winds isn't a great idea.
Edit: To explain - I was cycling on a that was on top of an embankment and a strong gust of wind unbalanced me at a bad moment when a lorry was passing - I actually hit the lorry with my shoulder and was knocked back upright again. This was all quite exciting at the time.
"you're not made of sugar", as my parents would say.
Don't they have rain coats in London? :-)
Oh no people are exercising the rights their ancestors fought and died for, someone call the police! Daddy Trump please bring the national guard to liberate Paris from the LeFtIst!
I mean I feel for you but cycling in the rain is not that big of a deal, greetings from the Netherlands