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Comment by jefftk | Hacker News Reader

> My feeling is that every vehicle other than delivery trucks should be banned from the city. There is no compelling reason for anyone to drive in Manhattan.

I recently played for a contra dance in Manhattan. My band members and I drove in a small car, with a sound system, keyboard, and other instruments. I would have been happy to pay some sort of toll/charge/fee/tax but any other way of getting our equipment to and from the gig would be far more expensive and a lot of a hassle.

(My family doesn't have a car, and I commute to work on the subway)

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Try getting a Ceili band to a gig :D

I think the article is trying to get to this train of thought.

We want X that requires a vehicle, instead of assuming that this is a zero cost activity lets factor in the cost of parking, mileage etc.

Assuming for a moment that the total cost was an extra $200 any self respecting contra dance should be able to spread that out at $1-$2 per person.

I grew up in a musical family and spent many a weekend covering vast distances in the back of an old car so my dad could play a gig that barely broke even. Reminds me of the definition of a musician: "A musician is someone who will load $5,000 worth of gear into a $500 car to drive 100 miles to a $50 gig."

But seriously, people need to value things correctly. I spent some time on a local council and the shopkeepers would be up in arms whenever they thought they'd lose a parking spot, despite every census showing most of their customers walked to their stores. The shopkeepers viewed the parking as "their parking" and not "our parking" (As in the community). Yet for some reason the footpaths were most definitely "ours footpaths" (The council's) so repairing or even cleaning them was the Council's job, and heaven forbid we suggest the shops pay towards that cost.

The opinions of businesses wrt parking are the same stateside, but legally it is the property owner's responsibility to build and maintain clean sidewalks, while street parking is part of the public-ally owned right of way (meaning it can be re-striped or removed at whim).

Its common in Seattle for the city to do basic maintenance on a sidewalk, and bill the property owner for the amount, as they failed to maintain their sidewalk (whether Ivy has overgrown the sidewalk, roots have uplifted it, or its become a public health hazard due to lack of cleaning).

It is really nice to walk on freshly steam cleaned or pressure washed sidewalks :P

That is a form of delivery vehicle in a way, right?

Sort of, but it's not registered as "commercial", driven by a professional, or anything else people would normally think of as a "delivery" vehicle. Like, if you call any vehicle that moves things from place to place a delivery vehicle then everyone who drives to the grocery store to buy milk is operating a delivery vehicle.

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