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Comment by lazyjones | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this concept of banning cars, especially by removing parking spaces from cities under the pretext of a reduced environmental footprint. Norway is on the forefront of the EV revolution, so they can go "green" by just banning gasoline cars.

There seems to be a second movement hidden behind the climate debate and it's keen on removing private transport altogether (except bicycles, for now), apparently driven by people with a particular urban hipster lifestyle. This is a massive reduction of comfort, a burden for families with small children and people with disabilities, as well as businesses and logistics.

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Cars are a huge impediment to creating walkable downtowns, even if they're green. This is downtown Annapolis, looking down Main Street: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9777543,-76.489652,3a,75y,10.... On a nice summer day (this picture is in October), the sidewalks are packed with tourists, but a handful of cars take up most of the space. Further down the street, you get to this giant expanse of pavement: https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9773508,-76.487682,3a,75y,67.... To get from the main drag to the water front (in the distance in the picture), you have to cross this expansive waste of space dedicated to cars.

All for what? The whole downtown area is walkable, and there is a perfectly good multi-level garage at the edge of Main Street for people to park in.

> This is a massive reduction of comfort, a burden for families with small children and people with disabilities, as well as businesses and logistics.

Parents don't need to drive up right to wherever they're going; their children could do with a little walk. I've got a four year old, and we go downtown every weekend. It's no problem to park in the garage and walk half a mile to where we're going. At the same time, it's a big worry to have kids running around with traffic zooming by.

Deliveries and disabled people can be accommodated by permitting busses, special vehicles for the disabled, and commercial deliveries during certain windows. You don't need to permit all vehicle traffic to accommodate those special cases.

It doesn't sound like you're talking about the same thing as anyone else. You're right that parking garages accommodate cars just fine, and nobody here is arguing against parking garages.

I don't get your response. OP said that bannning cars downtown would keep families, disabled people, etc. from enjoying downtowns. My point is that you can ban general vehicle traffic in the core downtown areas, but people with families can still get there by parking in a garage just outside the downtown.

You don't see any difference between banning cars and simply putting the parking spaces in a garage instead of on the street? The difference seems pretty stark to me — one implies that people cannot drive there and the other implies that people will drive there.

No, my point about the garage is that you could easily ban parking in the main pedestrian area (Main Street, the waterfront, and the circle in Annapolis) because most people already park in a garage outside the main pedestrian zone. Many plans for downtown car bans contemplate parking outside the car free zone.

In the US, cars are privileged forms of transport.

Just as we have shopping malls with outlying parking surrounding a pedestrian only area, you can engineer urban cores with appropriate pedestrian infrastructure, that are served with a network of transport modes outside of the core, including transit and garages.

>I don't understand this concept of banning cars

Downtown? It's easy: they're noisy, annoying, polluting, take up space, and designing a city for them results in urban and suburban wastelands as opposed to vibrant, walkable city centers.

>This is a massive reduction of comfort

Well, comfort is not everything. And for obese car-obsessed sedentary people "a massive reduction of comfort" might just what the doctor ordered!

>a burden for families with small children and people with disabilities, as well as businesses and logistics.

And yet, families with small children and businesses have been doing just fine in more traditional and not car-oriented cities.

As for people with disabilities, they can always use mechanized wheelchairs and disability friendly public transport (something car and private-transport obsessed cities usually lack, only allowing the richer disabled people those "comforts").

> Downtown? It's easy: they're noisy, annoying, polluting,

That's simply no longer true with EV.

> And yet, families with small children and businesses have been doing just fine in more traditional and not car-oriented cities.

In those fabulous city centers? Sure! Full of families with small children they are... ;-)

EVs are still annoying. When I have to cross a road for cars, I have to wait for the traffic light. Also, I have to be attentive in the first place. That's something I don't have to do to the same same extent in a pedestrian area.

Also, EVs are still noisy because a significant part of the noise of a driving car is produced by the tires, unless driving very slowly.

EDIT: Also, judging from the tone of your last statement, I'm going to guess that you've never been in Europe.

> EDIT: Also, judging from the tone of your last statement, I'm going to guess that you've never been in Europe.

Perhaps you live in a different Europe then, I've lived in Vienna for the past 27 years.

I've been to Vienna once (3 years ago), and their public transit system was just as competent and reliable as most others that I've seen in central Europe. The car density was already much lower than what I've observed in the US.

>That's simply no longer true with EV.

Which all of 5% of the population or less have.

>In those fabulous city centers? Sure! Full of families with small children they are... ;-)

Ever been to Europe?

> Ever been to Europe?

Yes, pretty much all my life.

Check out who actually lives in city centers here. Elderly people, rich businesspeople without families etc. ...

In Vienna, where I live, the city center has the following demographics:

- 104m² average flat size, housing 1,89 people.

- 32% population over 60 (highest in Vienna's districts), average age 46,3 (vs. 40,5 for all of Vienna)

- 2,3% of the city's population live there, but only 0,7% of its children (and 2,5% of its cars)

>- 32% population over 60 (highest in Vienna's districts), average age 46,3 (vs. 40,5 for all of Vienna)

Downtown can also be more expensive than peripheral districts, so older people are more likely to afford housing there. That's not because of less cars though.

But for our purposes, Vienna with all its districts, not just the center, is still far less car oriented than the traditional US city and its suburbs.

>2,3% of the city's population live there, but only 0,7% of its children

Just considering all as single-kid families would account for 2.3% "of the city's population" living there but only 1.5% of its children. And tons of families have only one kid (but of course 2 parents, divorced or not), lots have no kids, and tons of adults are not married yet. Add immigrants (who are more often than not male who come to seek work and don't bring children), and one would expect adult populations to be larger than children population in the same area.

That may also have to do with what you get for your money and local walkable access to schools causing families to avoid trying to live in the centres.

Many people in larger cities do quite well without cars. In Manhattan, it's quite normal even for the hedge-fund-managing class to take the subway.

Knowing that it's possible to comfortably get around the city without a car, these citizen can't help but notice how much their quality of life is lessened by people insisting on cars.

- Emissions, known to cause premature death, and often exceeding the guidelines, especially in summer

- Traffic accidents

- About 2/3 of the area of public streets being required for cars (two pedestrian walkways, two lanes parking, two lanes traffic)

Even without completely eliminating cars and trucks, which you would probably still need for deliveries, emergency services and disabled people, you could reduce most roads to one lane, and get rid of traffic signals. That would:

- Greatly increase the speed of biking (currently, 1/2 of the time is spent waiting for signals or in traffic)

- Increase the speed of busses even more (they spend more time waiting in traffic that bikes can pass)

- More than double the available space for wider sidewalks, greenery etc.

I have a very small child, and living somewhere where we don’t need a car to get around is immeasurably nicer than living somewhere with car-centered planning. I can put my son on my shoulders or in a wagon and walk to the park, to the grocery store, to the library, to the post office, to the toy store, to cafés and restaurants, ... and we can smile and wave at all the other pedestrians as we walk along. Compare that to the annoyance of strapping him into and out of a carseat, not being able to interact with him while I’m driving and he’s sitting in the back by himself, and spending most of our outdoor time in parking lots.

Beyond that, the poor, disabled people, the elderly, and children between the ages of about 5–18 have a much better time living somewhere that they can be independently mobile instead of needing to rely on someone else driving them around.

> I have a very small child

One is easily manageable, but consider families or single parents with 2-3 small children and the amount of stuff they need to carry with them, buy when shopping etc. ...

Not everyone can afford to move to expensive suburbs or hire a nanny.

I live on the outskirts of a larger-sized european city with perfect public transport and still prefer my (electric) car, since it's so much faster, cleaner, safer and more comfortable. I'd use it much less if I lived in the city center, but it'd still be a reduction in living standards (carrying shopping bags 500m vs. perhaps 100m total etc.).

I have friends with multiple young children and no nannies who do just fine walking their whole brood around the (urban) neighborhood.

You can easily carry quite a lot of shopping bags for 2 or 3 kilometers in a wagon if you need to.

Or if you like, you can use a car occasionally for shopping trips (or even a taxi), and for a workday commute and the great majority of other trips, stick to walking/transit/bikes. Even if people just ditched their cars for 80% of their trips it would make the city overall much more pleasant.

I grew up in Queens. My mom would drag the three of us up hills and across Queens Blvd to run daily errands.

It wasn't that bad.

"particular urban hipster lifestyle"

I don't think everywhere needs to look like or support the activities of dense urban cores. But I do think dense urban cores should look like and support the activities of dense urban cores.

In America even this is controversial and difficult to achieve.

> Norway is on the forefront of the EV revolution, so they can go "green" by just banning gasoline cars.

That's assuming that you can "go green" in any meaningful way with a significant share of motorized private transport. Electric engines might emit fewer pollutants and CO2 than ICEs while operating, but it would take quite some advancements in battery tech to produce the required battery packs without CO2 emissions that are about as significant overall. See e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14608959

As far as the environmental impact goes, it's always much better to replace trips taken by car with trips taken by bike or by foot (or, to a certain extent, by public transit) than to just replace one type of car by another.

I don't understand why such a large fraction of our usable land in people-dense areas needs to be consumed by expanses of ugly, dead cement full of giant deadly "creatures" traveling at high speeds, nor why that state of affairs needs to be imposed everywhere on everyone.

It's all about balance...

The reason is very simple: dense urban cores are currently for everyone, not just those with enough disposable income to pay the premium rent.

As you get your way and the richest drivers lose their transport options, pressure on rents in walking distance from offices will skyrocket.

Middle and working class suburbanites, who don't have that option, are simply screwed. You propose to make cities exclusively for their urban residents, fuck anyone who needs a car to keep their travel time reasonable. Maybe some middle class people will be willing to suffer through on buses to visit occasionally.

(Good public transit like rail just becomes an extension of the city, and living near it becomes as unaffordable as living in the city center. Only shitty transit is accessible from affordable housing).

Raise height limits. We can address those who are drivers by choice (rather than economic necessity) once a below-median family can comfortably afford 3 bedrooms in a high-rise near transit.

This rant isn't true at all. Philly is a good example of a city where there are tons of affordable neighborhoods along extensive commuter train lines.

Which height limits are there in Oslo?

I'm talking about bringing the same thing to American cities, as many in this thread advocate. Outside of a few, a building over 5-10 stories is seen as a big deal and neighbors will fight it tooth and nail.

> I don't understand why such a large fraction of our usable land in people-dense areas needs to be consumed by expanses of ugly, dead cement

What other useful space would you put between tall buildings? Pedestrians have plenty of space to walk, at least I don't hear much about pedestrian traffic jams.

Roads are very valuable and they're being used for many things that everybody needs: buses, ambulances, fire service vehicles. Do you really want them gone?

The services you mention could be run using just a single one-way lane, alternating between blocks.

And, yes, pedestrian traffic jams do happen. There's also untold other costs of traffic, and potential uses for more space:

- Outdoor dining

- retail displays

- kids playing

- Trees, bushes, etc

- Bike lanes

See, that's what I mean by "urban hipster lifestyle".

Outdoor dining can be done in backyards (pretty much every 2nd tavern in Athens, a big, sprawling, dirty city) does this.

Retail displays - pardon me, how many more do you need and why do they need to be in everyone's faces in the middle of the street?

It seems that millennials don't really know what they want and aren't flexible enough to choose from available lifestyles in different cities, countries etc. - instead, they what everything together immediately right in the place they live, no matter how contradictory those things are. If you want trees, go to a park. Kids can play there safely, too, without being run over by an ambulance or biker. ;-)

The spirit of capitalism, condensed into one statement: If your kids want to breathe non-toxic air and play, they better be prepared to walk (or, rather, drive) half an hour to the park.

> If your kids want to breathe non-toxic air and play, they better be prepared to walk (or, rather, drive) half an hour to the park.

Wake up, "cars" is no longer synonymous with "pollution". I take offence at such ignorance as an EV owner.

As for kids who want everything while condemning capitalism: the problem isn't that they want clean air and play time, the problem is that they demand just as vigorously warm pizza delivered to their home in 10 minutes, furniture brought to their doorstep by whoever sells it on Amazon and the fire brigade to arrive quickly when they set their WLAN-enabled fridges on fire. Obviously, they don't understand how these things relate to each other, but they moan about it nevertheless.

I'm actually surprised that space hasn't been occupied by more buildings.

Building codes prohibit this in many places, i.e. the taller the buildings, the more free space is required between them (for light, safety etc.). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floor_area_ratio

Parks?

You could eliminate half of roads and still have ample room for emergency services.

Just because you don't understand doesn't mean they're wrong.

Because for the majority of people, that ugly, dead cement is eminently useful. You essentially seem to be expressing confusion at why people who are different from you should be allowed to exist.

That's a total strawman.

Suggesting that there might be a better way than today's status quo is different than saying that certain people don't deserve to exist.

The entirety of your comment was about how much cars and their associated infrastructure suck and how you wish we didn't devote space to them. That's a hell of a lot more specific than "there might be a better way," and those specifics are entirely negative toward cars.

If you actually think something more nuanced, I'm glad to hear it, but I have no idea how anyone is supposed to glean that from the comment you actually wrote

I would encourage you to read this Wikipedia article about how today's road culture came about -- in particular the section on the road lobby.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automotive_city

As a parent of two young children, cities are stressful because of cars. You constantly have to be paying attention, holding hands, watching out at intersections. To me, no cars is more family friendly.

@lazyjones here's the "second" movement you're sensing. It's about concentrating the population in urban areas as well as curtailing personal movement. It's called UN Agenda 21 and it is being quietly implemented without voter approval through local zoning boards.

[link goes to UN website] https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/outcomedocuments/agend...

Don't like it? Move to the suburbs. But don't expect a suburban lifestyle in the city center.

> But don't expect a suburban lifestyle in the city center.

Since when is an urban lifestyle one devoid of cars? It's you who should move to a small village, where people used to walk everywhere. Large cities were always busy with horse carriages, cars and other means of private transport.

And urban streets used to be for pedestrians first, until the automotive industry lobbied to create the crime of "jaywalking."

I still don't get why that's even a crime. I live in Germany, and I jaywalk 5-10 times on a normal working day, because it's stupid to wait at a red light when there's no traffic within sight.

Small villages have become more spread out with the automobile in the US. Cities are dense enough most kinds of destination are within walking distance. 50% of Manhattanites don't own cars. The question is what modes of transport should have priority and in suburbs the answer is cars.

You've got your history backward. Suburbs exist in America for two reasons: widespread car ownership and institutionalized racism in the form of redlining.

I think we can learn some things from the way some French cities do things. Most days and most hours of the day, cars can drive on all streets, however, on weekends and some other times, in certain core commercial areas, only delivery vehicles are allowed and these streets become pedestrian-only. I'm okay with that. [as an aside, interestingly, people are in some areas, are allowed to park on the pavement (sidewalks) --which is a bit jarring at first].

Autonomous electric vehicles present the opportunity to keep a lot of the comfort you want and prevent the dead expanse of cement that so many people distaste.

It's like zoning.

You can improve an area by seperating incompatible uses. When white flight was in full swing in the 1970s, cities removed pedestrian plazas, bulldozed marginal real estate and created parking lots in the name of urban renewal (and enriching speculators), etc.

In my area, a few cities have selectively closed streets for events or permanently closed streets to create pedestrian zones. It's largely been successful in attracting more visitors and creating a good environment.

> Norway is on the forefront of the EV revolution

That's great! How do they deal with Li-Ion batteries in the cold? I imagine it'd be similar to what you'd do before—turn on some lights and the radio to get some juice flowing before you try starting the engine.

Nissan Leafs have had cold weather packs for quite some time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWqumtF4Fq8

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