Münster’s iconic ‘waste of space’ photo keeps on giving

Trains might well win in that case, especially metro trains in cities. You can move at least 500 people every 3-4 minutes, less if you try especially hard.

Cars in London average 19mph (30km/h) on "major roads" and 9mph (14km/h) in Central London.

That solves it, then! Everybody should be required to ride motorcycles and lane splitting should be legal everywhere. Best of both worlds!

Our local (and deficient) bus system at least has bike racks as part of the bus, so you can take your bike to the nearest stop, and change over to the bike to finish your trip.

A bike isn't flexible in that I can't work while using it, I can't use it whilst intoxicated, I have to find somewhere to secure it. I have to be fit to use it. I can't use it when I'm sick or too told.

I don't hate cars. I have on myself and it is simply a major and wonderful invention. That being said, I vastly prefer the bike for commuting and the way cars are used in certain areas/countries is just infuriating to me - after all cars are very bad for the environment, using them to drive to a highway just to go stand in line there is silly and governments actually subsidizing (by making it interesting for companies to lease cars for their employees, as is the cae in e.g. Belgium) this whole principle is just insane.

Compare a country to a company. Suppose part of the company's production process is getting stuff from A to B. I doubt an engineer would stand up and figure out the best way to do this is put money into a transportation process which makes a super inefficient use of space, where the transport mechanism is seriously overrated for the weight it actually has to transport and where the mechanism pollutes the environment.

In many parts of the US the average joe has to have a car to do anything. There is no safe passage to anywhere without getting in a car. Pedestrian and Bikes are discouraged, and there is no practical public transportation.

From my personal perspective - taking a bus to work would take at least an hour each way, usually more depending on the traffic. Add standing at unheated bus stops in winter = no thank you. By car I get to work in 15-20 minutes. At the temperature I like, listening to music I like. That easily saves me a good few hours each week for other activities - learning, relaxing, family time.

I could cycle, like I did while I was at uni - but that leaves a problem of getting sweaty, can't really cycle in a shirt, and cycling in winter is miserable.

Am I an "avarage joe" going to work from 9-5, or am I being wasteful? You tell me. I know what I'm going to continue doing :-)

I think the problem is that, because of historical quirks and social norms, cars are much bigger than they should be. It wouldn't be such a big deal if those single-person cars were as big as a scooter, for example; but cultural norms tell us that a real man must have a "real car": 4 seats, a huge engine you'll never really need, an empty boot, and projecting an image of power and superiority (mostly through size).

People have the right to make journeys privately and in comfort, but they don't have the right to waste space and energy just because of outdated cultural norms. Enlightened cities would promote extra-small cars, segregating other cars and trucks in congested lanes "for security". It can be done relatively easily, but there is a very hard cultural battle to fight with the likes of Jeremy Clarkson and his viewers.

Thanks for calling me silly. It may not be efficient, but I tell you what. If it weren't for the ability to drive by car, public transport would more then double my daily commute.

Driving by bike in a very rainy environment would about tripple my commute.

I really love having my own home with a garden and can't stand the idea of living in these cramped loud dirty inner city dwellings.

And driving has one real great upside for me: It takes care of my mental state, as I really hate these idiots inside these cramped busses/tube-cars, that smell like chemical shit (having forgot to shower and doing deodorant en masse) or listening to their music over shitty headphones, so that everybody get's noise polluted.

Not having run amok during my public transport commutes over the last 5 years (before I switched back to driving 'cause of a new job) was really sometimes hard.

People are obnoxious, loud, smelly and egomaniac. Having to endure public transport showed me, how bad humanity really is. At least here in Hamburg, Germany.

So tl;dr: Being an ambivert i really need the quite time of my private car commute to function well in this society.

> What would be the inconvenients of banning car circulation inside cities?

Depends how the city is setup. Most major metropolis and almost all US ones are designed mostly if not solely for cars, banning cars requires significant improvements to the transportation infrastructure in general, both adding public transport and making existing ways more walkable and cyclable. Even in non-US cities the transition tends to be rocky (e.g. I believe Paris is progressively making the inner city less drivable and further improving public transport, the transition phase is no fun as driving becomes very tough but not-driving is not a great option).

You also have to figure out stuff like deliveries and garbage collection, which generally require trucks going through.

But some cities are planning it, Hamburg is trying to become car-free within 20 years for instance. Freiburg also has the "pilot" district of Vauban which was laid out with peripheral car parks (owners must buy a parking spot or sign a declaration of no car ownership) and following filtered permeability (the further in you go the less convenient cars become, and the more convenient walking or cycling). There are also no parking spot inside the neighbourhood. Cars are not outright forbidden (they're allowed "at walking pace" for pickup or delivery) their absence is mostly a consequence of social consensus.

My girlfriend lives in Singapore and travels exclusively by public transport. She recently moved across the city and how she did this was by incrementally moving things. Moreover, when I visited her, I noticed she was good at being light, only packing the essentials when she goes out, which is something I try to do too, since I bike exclusively.

Essentially, it comes down to changes of habit. You learn to cope with not having a huge cart to carry things around with. With the loss of convenience you get better health, less traffic, less noise pollution, etc.

We've already tried various solutions to this problem and the one that seems to work best is to gradually degrade the road experience for motorists as demands on the space go up. First we take away street parking and left turns. Then we take away stopping / idling. Then we make carpool / high occupancy vehicle lanes and bike lanes. Then we convert lanes into transit lanes only. Then we completely prohibit cars / motored deliveries during rush hour. The last one is usually the hardest politically to get through because it is a major disruption to many businesses, but it is quite effective and usually leads to a great number of people switching to mass transit and bike lanes.

London has its "congestion charge", which is an extra charge of about $15 to drive in the core of the city. It's still pretty congested. It also has plenty of public transport options which are also congested.

For many people, that's not really a "choice". It's what they can afford.

You Australians brought it on yourself, living in a big ring around the edge of your continent! Has to be the most difficult public transportation situation possible.

Did you list 'speed' in there? Because that's the biggest fallacy. Its not just about square feet; multiply that by how long the space is occupied per journey. Bicycles can be 1/3 to 1/10 the speed of a car.

Then add in the congestion factor. Bicycles on the road impede cars. We like to ignore that, bicyclist can be militant about their right to use roads. But the sad fact is, they get in the way of cars. Which reduces cars to the speed of bikes in city driving. That's just a tremendous waste.

I know, everybody should be on bikes. But in the mean time, the most efficient vehicles in terms of road use Min(sq ft X time spent on the road) are being squandered. I mean cars.

A little bit of nuance : cyclists do not own the roads. Motorists, cyclists and pedestrians share the roads.

Every motorist also drives his bicycle every now and then and so he knows what it is like and will accommodate.

Which city BTW?

I love the Netherlands, but cyclists there are absolutely crazy, and in incredible quantities.

Of course, it doesn't help that I'm blind on my left side and the only Dutch I know is "Sorry, ik sprek gein Nederlands".

Welcome :)

There's quite a few interesting videos on traffic design in the Netherlands, junction design is a big topic, as well as separating lanes.

Videos like these might be fun to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlApbxLz6pA

If it piques your interest, there's more comprehensive videos too like this one which is still only 5 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpQMgbDJPok

Which is part of the problem.

> The cyclists make sense, but where I live you can picture the bus with one guy on it.

That was my city around 7 years ago. Public transit was very underutilised and the general mental image people had of it was that it was for children, old and poor people. Then the city councils in the area got together and started to really put money into improving the routes and service. It was hard to justify politically because of the existing attitudes, but seven years later, almost all of the buses I see have >50% occupancy with mostly regular middle-class people, even outside of rush hour. During rush hours have to send extra buses as they fill up fast.

So I think part of it is to break out of the cycle of public transit providing shitty service, people not using public transit because of shitty service, and the service getting shittier because there's even less political will to put money into it with fewer passengers.

When I lived in San Jose, same problem. Bus routes were limited; ridership would suffer; they would cut routes to save money. Death spiral!

Cycling can also be very dangerous in big cities. It's much more dangerous to cycle than to take a train in London, for example.

You say that like its a bad thing; I make that tradeoff consciously.