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Comment by jinushaun | Hacker News Reader

I think getting rid of cars isn't going to fix the problems the people in this article are complaining about. It's the age old problem that plague all popular cities around the world: tourists versus residents. And having visited places like Florence, Paris and Barcelona, I'd rather see the residents get their way.

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Residents aren't the ones with cars. No one in this area own a car.

Except the residents (and workers) use taxis, Ubers, black cars, etc. And, as the article notes, the local businesses need to get deliveries, repair people, etc. I would guess the issue doesn't come so much from owners' private cars traveling through the area.

I was adding that I made the mistake of passing through Times Square on my way to some destination a number of months back. As in the article, you literally could not walk on the sidewalk which was effectively blocked by the mass of people. Times Square (like areas of downtown) is an extreme example, but things do get really crowded. (And you can't just do away with road traffic there. You're at intersection of two major N-S avenues.)

I'm ok with having cars drive through the area. I just don't approve of people leaving them idle on the street. Taxis, Ubers, and black cars aren't parking. Delivery trucks are stopping, but only for a few minutes. A third (or more) of the street space is devoted to vehicles that aren't in use. Those cars could be placed in garages or parked on the street in another part of town where the owner can subway to where they're going.

Ideally, streets would be used only by pedestrians, but I acknowledge that's not feasible.

Couldn't they eliminate more of the street and make them one way? I feel like you would make a single lane then, but then driving wouldn't use so much space.

> make them one way?

They are one way. Almost the whole of Manhattan is.

Broadway is already narrow. Seventh not so much, but car traffic there can frequently be as bad as foot traffic. I'm not sure what a good answer would be.

>Broadway is already narrow. Seventh not so much, but car traffic there can frequently be as bad as foot traffic. I'm not sure what a good answer would be.

Add second floor above the road. And on top of it, a third floor.

> Add second floor above the road. And on top of it, a third floor.

Like an expressway? What about exits, turn-offs, on-ramps? Where would the city find the land to build these?

Most vehicles driving around Times Square are at least fairly local; they're not looking to bypass Midtown Manhattan. If they wanted to, they would probably have driven the short distance to FDR Drive or the West Side Highway.

You put the heavy things on the bottom. The lighter things on top.

(Literal plexiglass cieling)

Pedestrians

Bikes (if not with pedestrians)

Transit vehicles (in what is now a service tunnel/grid)

Yes, this would actually require ventilation engineering, but a city should anyway. You might also push for highly restricted emissions vehicles. CNG, Hydrogen, and Electric come to mind as things to consider for a white-list.

This is an interesting idea. It would require a sea change in the city.

You'd have to fight a lot of business owners. Most transit in Manhattan is by foot, and you will have separated pedestrians from commercial entryways. As it stands, a great deal of storefronts—even in the most commercial and highly trafficked parts of the city—are in mixed-use buildings, with apartments in the upper stories. Now most potential customers, instead of walking past shop after shop, are walking past residences. Signs may point out what lies below. Presumably this would cut into businesses which rely on customers popping in without planning to; if you weren't going to exit onto that block for something else anyway, why make the climb down to commercial level just for a little something that caught your eye?

And how did it catch your eye? Stores could no longer entice with a storefront, by showing off their inventory and sales. Restaurants, bakeries, and coffee shops could no longer waft out onto potential guests. They'd be in virtual basements, and would be much less attractive for that reason alone. Manhattan has a history of severing its residents from one thing or another—waterfronts are the first to come to mind—but I would be surprised to see them do this.

Of course, not everything has to remain as is and the city may evolve (as it has before), but this sort of plan would require much more work than building a tiered roadway.

Maybe in the future, when 'brick and mortar' starts to fail even in densely populated areas, the problems described above won't be problems anymore. But then, neither would the traffic; and the tiered roadway would be redundant, and not worth the money to maintain (nor the daylight lost).

I have yet to see a single DT Manhattan denizen in my professional circle who does not subsist solely on Chinese takeout and phone order pizza (sarcasm:)

So you move up your business to the pedestrian floor level.

Part of the problem is a lack of alleys, so delivery trucks have to park in the street and block traffic. If zoning required an off-street loading dock area for all buildings it would start to help as new buildings are built. I'm not sure if that's a rule or not.

A much easier solution is to dedicate a space on each block to deliveries only, and make parking a car in it a massive fine/immediate license suspension.

>Part of the problem is a lack of alleys, so delivery trucks have to park in the street and block traffic.

There are walled-off backyards and "gardens" within big blocks. Just make them open

Courtyards are largest where alleyways would be least needed, on residential blocks.

For most blocks where unloading is a problem, courtyards are narrow, uneven spaces that frequently do not run the length of the 'interior' block.

The city would also have to justify reclaiming two lots per block—on either end of the courtyard/alleyway—in a city which already has a housing shortage.

Where's the space for that?

It comes out of the building footprint. Building owners won't be happy, but everyone else would.

Residents use the subway. Taxis are mostly for visitors: tourists, or day trippers from the periphery.

What are "black cars"?

Private car services. Like a taxi, only prebooked. Uber uses many black car companies in NYC.

As untog says. Limos in other words. In addition to people booking them for theater or such, it's very common for downtown law firms, investment banks, etc. to have an account with a private car firm so that people working late can just call up to get one to take them home.

Black cars aren't limos. A more accurate way to describe them would be unmarked taxis that are dispatched not hailed. What us New Yorkers call a car service.

They have "limo licenses" but yeah, few if any of them are actual limousines in wheelbase / shape. Most are towncars or upscale SUVs.

> Black cars aren't limos.

What's the difference?

Standard definition of a limo is an extended wheelbase and partition between the passenger and the driver. I suppose one could argue the details but that's how the distinction is understood in an NYC context at least.

Might be size (I'm not in NY).

Private car services and/or illegal taxies.

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