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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps we should ban cars from cities altogether.

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/madrid-spain-...

There are certain reasons cars are needed: goods transport and people with disabilities for example. I wonder if you could do a general ban with enough exceptions to be okay.

There's be a fraud problem though, and it could make it difficult for disabled people in practice (they may not be able to easily get the right badge, or be believed when they do, they wouldn't be able to benefit from car infrastructure…)

> There's be a fraud problem though

That's a non-argument. You could say that about any regulation. I assume regulating transport for disabled people isn't that hard cause we already have system in place that deals with disabilities.

I'm really fond of the areas I've been where the only cars allowed on many streets are things like delivery and service vehicles.

I would expect that that kind of environment is actually a net improvement to accessibility for people with disabilities. It's probably quite annoying for people who use wheelchairs to get around a lot of places without a car, simply because the sidewalks are so frequently blocked off by people who've parked their cars across the sidewalk. There's one man in my neighborhood who frequently has to go out in the street to get around those sorts of obstructions, and is then stuck out in the middle of the road until he can get to the next wheelchair ramp in order to get back on the sidewalk. Limiting private car usage would admittedly only remove a portion of the sources of obstruction, but it would get rid of essentially all of the safety hazard that he has to take on in order to get around them.

And, especially now that cars are going electric and getting quieter and quieter, I would guess that restricting unnecessary car usage could be a big boon for blind people who want to be able to leave the house without a chaperone. I had one acquaintance who would essentially Uber everywhere - at great expense to herself - because she just didn't feel safe even trying to cross the street.

(Heck, I'm sighted, and sometimes _I_ don't feel safe trying to cross the street, especially later in the evening when a sizable portion of drivers are intoxicated and really are not watching for pedestrians.)

A lot of university campuses are like this. Very limited car access on certain roads, but maintenance etc. gets free reign to drive on the walkways even during heavy foot traffic.

Many cities in Europe have successfully banned cars in core downtown areas. You can adapt curbs, street crossings, and buses to work for people with disabilities.

In the U.S. priority parking is already given to people with disabilities, so the exception already exists and would just need to be extended. People using grandmas hangtag does happen but it's not all that common (and cities could always issue huge tickets for violators to deter bad behavior).

Even for disabled people cars are not a strict requirement. You could build a smaller vehicle that goes walking speed specifically for transporting the disabled & severely disabled.

Able bodied people in wheelchairs are the easy case - just pave the roads with enough smooth transitions.

In particular you could make the environment friendly to motorised wheelchairs.

I would love to see proponents of such bans trying to explain to a random plumber, gas-fitter, electrician, floor tiler, carpenter or other craftsmen, that they cannot use a car to bring in the material and tools they need to do a work with, that the customer is ordering.

Ideally, when the customer and the person doing the explaining is the same person.

Same for gods delivery. You bought a new freezer, washer or other heavy gods? You can pick it in the store in the fringes. No deliveries into the city, you need cars for that.

Generally a ban on cars only applies to cars owned by private citizens. Often the ban also only applies to parking. Your comment is pretty shallow.

Craftsmen are private citizens too, their vehicles are their personal property. Many delivery drivers are also owners of their vehicles, and do delivery on contract. Not everyone is employed by huge corporations who got exceptions.

We (me and my wife) were just renovating an apartment in a city center, where the traffic limits apply. The problems the craftsmen had are real, and I speak from my own experience. Many times the solution was be bold and hope cops will be sympathetic. They were, though we got the recommendation to sell everything and move somewhere else, where there are no such problems.

That gets tricky though, Can tradespeople can use their vans to do their food shopping? Can private citizens become a painter/decorator so they are then allowed a vehicle? Can a private citizen have a vehicle if their sister is disabled?

Government can issue permits, on request. If requesting a permit can be done through an app or website, then this could even be feasible on a per-case basis. E.g. plumber needs to visit the city, requests permit, then drives to client.

Oh boy another regressive poor tax that eats into my time and earnings just so I can do my trades job

Doesn't have to be expensive or time consuming, could be something you fill out in 10 mins and drop in the mail/submit online. IRS already knows you are an independent contractor so that could be your verification right there.

My builder bought goods in 100kg at a time by cargo bike from a local aggregation point.

The only things which couldn't be delivered this way were joists, which came by a small electric lorry.

On this topic I am always surprised to notice, walking around downtown SF on a weekday that literally every single parking space is taken up by a work truck, like a contractor, repair person, plumbers, etc.

That’s pretty crazy when you stop to think about it. The space isn’t actively being used all day, I’m guessing these folks just know the right time to get there early after street cleaning to get a spot they can sit in all day because it’s cheap. Is there really no better use for this public space on some of the most expensive land in the world? Surely they could unload their equipment and then go park in a garage around the corner.

So to your broader point, yes obviously there needs to be some way to get heavy equipment, furniture, etc into cities. But there’s no reason it needs to be the extreme it is today, with so much priority given to private cars and parking.

Commercial license for your work van? Even if only work trucks and delivery vehicles were allowed that would be a huge reduction in congestion.

Don’t forget how much space is taken up by car parks

As someone that will only have taken his car away from him by prying the keys out of his cold dead hands, car parks really are a sad sad thing, all of that acreage wasted on tarmac that could be community gardens or even just pleasing green grass and local wildflowers.

Or even more housing, which would in turn often reduce pricing and then commutes.

This even applies to the "some of us want a yard" rebuke of suburbanites. Houses nearer cities can have more land if there isn't an 8 lane highway.

Increased urban density helps areas reach a criticality, denser accomodation cheaper to service, the trick is as ever to find the optimum balancing point.

Green spaces aren't to be sniffed at though, even for hayfever suffers.

> "some of us want a yard"

I was more speaking to the, every acre of land we pave over is one less acre sequestering carbon and ensuring biodiversity...

"Green spaces" also have psychological and physiological benefits.

If they're not even faster than walking, what of value would be lost?

Arriving to your destination not wet/frozen/soaked in sweat? Or with your luggage... through an area dangerous for walking... to a destination you aren't familiar with... because you are old or infirm.

These are all solved problems. Cold? Wear a sweater. Raining? Carry an umbrella, or wear a raincoat. Have luggage? Wear a backpack, or pull a wheeled suitcase. Mere walking makes you sweat? Go see a doctor, that shouldn't happen - you probably ought to do more walking, not less. Too old or infirm to walk? You need a wheelchair or an electric scooter. Dangerous neighborhood? Well, I'll grant that's a trickier one, but the solution certainly isn't to usher the wealthy through it in motorized sedan chairs so they can ignore the problem.

Granted there's some infrequent edge cases where you need to move a sofa. Maybe we still allow occasional delivery vans. And bonus - they'll be able to get there more efficiently, because the road won't be choked with cars.

> Too old or infirm to walk? You need a wheelchair or an electric scooter.

The title of this article wasn't "Uber data reveals motoring slower than using a wheelchair".

Even with the most progressive, pro-active/public transport systems in the world, which we should totally aim for, there will be a need for some level of taxi-like service at a minimum.

This is one of the most self-righteous, narrow minded, inflexible, and delusional things I have read on this platform.

I invite you to walk at 1am, everyday, through the dodgy parts of London with your smartphone in your pocket. Please, report your mugged or stabbed rate in a year.

I've done this without being mugged, stabbed, robbed, etc. many times -but- I am a relatively big fella with what has been described as "resting murder face" which really renders my anecdotal experience fairly niche.

Again, the solution to "bad neighborhood" isn't "cars". Especially not in London, where it becomes "cars, for those who can afford parking fees and the congestion charge in addition to all the other expenses".

(If anything, by segregating neighborhoods and exacerbating wealth inequality, cars make the problem worse.)

I did this regularly for 2 years, with the additional factor of being in varying degrees of drunkness. The worst that happened to me, or anyone else I knew in the area, was dropping my pizza.

Try being an attractive and small 20 year old and report back. Experiences are not universal.

I did get beaten to a pulp in London but because I did not wish to have the police do anything I did not get into the papers. Once the adrenaline kicks in you would be surprised by how much blood you can lose and how knives, broken glass, boots, fists and relentless savagery just blur into one out of body experience.

If you get dragged into the dirt between parked cars for some extra brutality then none of those people driving by in their cars are going to stop and intervene. You are hidden by cars and in that peculiar filth that cars bring to the street. Plus noisy car dominated roads mean that everyone in residential housing shuns the street, so there is nobody looking out.

I felt sorry for the gang that picked me off but I felt a lot of anger and resentment thereafter to car drivers that expressed forthright opinions on the matter with an air of 'knowing best'. As if any of them had a clue or direct experience.

If everyone hides in cars because the area they are gentrifying is 'not safe' then you only end up with vulnerable people on the street getting preyed on by the more violent members of society. Everyone ends up terrified. Streets become walled off behind rows of tin boxes and there is no community. Excessive car culture is part of this climate of cowardice.

Bikes, buses, trains would work so much better in London without the tin boxes cluttering up the place. Kids could play in the street. They could know their neighbours. Regular taxis can work fine, there is no need for this gig economy Uber nonsense.

Oh, so what about the disabled? Well, people would be able to visit them for a change. Delivery vans, people moving houses and all those whataboutisms? All that can be resolved easily when we drop the mentality of people having to be in their own armoured tanks for security.

We have gone past 'there is no such thing as society'.

Arguably, when people shut themselves inside their cars for safety, they also become disconnected with the problems their society faces. They will have less incentive to fix the problems, so crime rises, and more people shut themselves in cars. A vicious circle.

Yeah, crimes in London is on the rise. And at the same time, people also keep getting hit and killed by cars. The diesel exhaust is filling people’s lungs, and the constant traffic noise is certainly putting a strain on people’s mind.

And instead asking Londoners to spend lots of money and get a car which they will have nowhere to park, what about reverse the police budget cut that left us with 22,000 fewer police officers?

> Mere walking makes you sweat? Go see a doctor, that shouldn't happen

Or maybe it's 100'F and merely existing makes you sweat. Hello, large parts of the United States right now!

Or maybe there's elevation.

Either way, walking is no longer feasible if the distance is more than a couple miles.

That's when you bike

I think you are oversimplifying things. I can tell you that merely walking in the sun when the temperature is in the high 30s (Celsius), makes me sweat, I hardly think that I should seek medical advice over this, to pick on one of your solutions.

With a good public transportation system in place, you don't need to walk further than a few blocks to reach your destination.

Not everyone lives downtown in Megatropolis...

This type of comment really make me think humanity peaked a few decades ago. When did we all became lazy snowflakes that can't handle any kind of hardships ? Humanity spent millions of year hunting shit in the woods and eating raw meat to end with what? People who can't walk in the sun or work in an office that doesn't have AC.

Walking in the sun is too much effort and makes you sweat ? Buy sunscreen, bring an extra t shirt and stop making excuse. Sweat is a perfectly normal response to heat, your body knows how to deal with it. God damn it, some kids in africa run 10km to go to school every day while eating 5 time less food than you and they probably complain less.

Rain is a viable excuse for burning fossil fuel and moving 2 tons of steel to transport a 80kg meat bag ?

Unless you're disabled or commute 30+km a day you're better off with good gear and an electric bike. It's cheaper, better for your health, better for local and global pollution, &c. ICE vehicles have nothing to do in city centers. Good public transport + a fleet of government owned electric taxies would solve every issues.

I hardly think that sweating while walking in the sun in 30°+ weather is not being able to handle any kind of hardship. In fact, it is quite the opposite: My better half sweats very little and she very nearly had a heat stroke when we last visited The Living Desert in Palm Springs.

As it happens I commute by bicycle but that's by the by.

The core thing is that people don't think about how many assumptions are baked into their "need" for cars. The assumption that you have to live in a suburb, that public transport must needs be terrible forever, that you absolutely must be able to do this or that unnecessary thing at a whim, that nothing about the American car-dependent lifestyle should change.

Don't think about this in terms of your immediate personal situation, think about all the variables that need to change to build a future largely without cars.

>think about all the variables that need to change to build a future largely without cars.

It can be done by changing but a single variable: cost. Make driving more expensive, and people drive less. Make driving cheaper, and people drive more. With a sufficiently high cost, the majority of people will seek alternatives.

This is, unfortunately, so politically unpalatable that will only happen when it's too late.

> Make driving more expensive, and people drive less.

"If we tax the poor, they'll decide to be less poor"

It won't work. The suburbs are predominantly filled with people who could not afford to live places with functional transit in the first place.

If you make driving more expensive, the few people who are wealthy enough to choose the city, will do so (driving sky-high prices even higher). And for the 99% of suburban people who already can't afford cities, these people will have even less money for housing, so they'll be forced to buy cheaper housing, which will be even further away from the city, and you'll exacerbate even more sprawl than already exists.

It's not so much an "assumption" as a true fact of life today

Suburbs today (not 1950, but today in 2019) exist almost exclusively because of failures of their cities, mainly in housing, education, and transportation. To suggest "people shouldn't assume they have to live in a suburb" is to suggest that people should assume they'll be allowed to live in a city.

And that's simply not true. That's never a safe assumption, effectively that's impossible for most people in the US. Just in housing alone, they're already priced out for at least the next decade or more. (Even in "cheap" cities, even in the South or the Midwest, etc)

> think about all the variables that need to change to build a future largely without cars.

Manhattan residents would have to be ok with all property losing 90% of it's 'fair-market value' overnight. Same for Seattle, and San Francisco, and Boston, and Minneapolis, and every other city on earth.

Oh, no one in Manhattan is OK with that? Then, effectively Manhattan residents are guaranteeing "car-dependent" (read: cheap/affordable) lifestyles for everyone else, are here to stay for a while.

Don't be rude.

Because today we have higher standards for how "put together" we appear in public.

I cannot be in the office with pit stains and BO and expect to be treated with respect and have the same career advancement and pay as if I show up fresh, with hair combed and no BO or visible sweat.

Today, our hygiene standards are higher and for many of us, driving to work is part of "the cost of doing business" because of this.

The same goes for if it's snowing..walking around in soggy or salt-stained boots is not a thing I can get away with doing.

People do it, but I have a job where I have to meet certain (yes, partly self-imposed) expectations on appearance and hygiene and I can't meet those expectations if I walk 20 minutes to work in 80 degree, snowy, or rainy weather.

I'm not a dandy or a snowflake or whatever. I love sweating and I love hiking. Being outside in the rain can be a sublime experience. But that's just not compatible with a trip to work.

I don't like it but as I said, it's part of the "cost of doing business" in society.

Um... I know a lot of people who bike to work, including several co-workers. They bring a work shirt, wet wipes, and deodorant with them to work in a bag. Get to work, change shirts, wet wipe the pits and apply deodorant in the restroom. Good as new. I didn't even know which co-workers were bike commuters when I first started.

If you worked in a formal environment you'd probably have to bring extra pants too. But most people bring a change of clothes to the gym anyways, so it's not like it's a completely outrageous concept.

It's really not that big of a deal. In formal businesses ladies have done this forever with having comfortable shoes for traveling and high heels for the office.

> Because today we have higher standards for how "put together" we appear in public

I find this historically inaccurate.

Wool suits were common middle class and upper class wears throughout the 19 and 20th centuries. Turns out that a jacket covers pit stains. Wool is also breathable, moisture wicking, and anti microbial/ anti odor.

And inaccurate by occupation - based off of understanding of clothing. Many landscapers and builders wear long pants and long shirts. In part for the physical protection they offer, but also because of the air volume they hold.

At the end of the day we can rationalise _everything_, even the most insane life styles. If the "cost of doing business" is slowly killing everything on earth maybe we should find a better way.

Do you really have no place to change at work ? No public transport at all ? Not even car sharing ?

I bike to the gym before work, change there and head to work on my bike, I'm perfectly presentable no matter the weather, and that's in Berlin where it rains 50% of the year.

I remember when I first moved to a city with real public transport. I was interested to try commuting by train/bus/bike. But I had lived my entire life up to that point in car-dependent areas and pictured the experience of getting to work without my portable metal shelter to be very close to what you're picturing, a battle with the elements. I figured it would be challenging and may be a bit crazy to live without a car.

To my surprise, it was a total non-issue. Hundreds of thousands of people got to work without a car in my city and still managed to get to work looking perfect. The vast majority of days, an extra 20-30 minutes outside was a blessing. The very few days it wasn't I kept an extra shirt and pair of shoes in the office. And if I got a little wet on the way to work, so did everyone else. And this is was in a city with rain, hail, snow, wind, heat, and humidity. It just wan't a problem and there was no way to justify owning a car while I had 2 working legs.

All that to say, I know where you're coming from. I've been in that head space myself. But if people in NY, London, and Paris can deal with a little weather and still make SVP, so can you.

I have seen the 'without AC Texas is not habitable' (or a weaker version 'large cities cannot exist in Texas without AC') sentiment, which is somehow related to what you are talking about, many times on this website. It absolutely boggles my mind. The climate of some of the most densely populated places in Asia are similar to Texas. Those places are densely populated before AC became a thing, and even now there are plenty of people who cannot afford AC.

Sweating isn't just a result of physical exertion. Have you never been in a sauna?

>Arriving to your destination not wet/frozen/soaked in sweat? Or with your luggage

So someone flew me out to San Francisco last June to meet me and have me talk to a few people. I landed during the pride parade at SFO and was staying at the Proper (that place felt decidedly John Wick - the Continental and their chicken liver mousse hnnghh), I'd literally no idea nor did my uber driver that we wouldn't be able to get to the Proper. He got me within about 2 miles before the crowds and road closures and was like "I don't know how long this will take or if I can get you there" so I got out with my suitcase, in a city I'd never been in, with throngs of people.

The road immediately outside of my hotel window was the road the parade was on and was ultimately between me and the hotel. I had no idea there were subway entrances that I could get under the road with. Walking shoulder to shoulder, crotch to butt, butt to crotch, trying to protect my phone, wallet and suitcase, literally stepping over people passed out on the sidewalk (if not overdosed) that were being somewhat trampled. The heat in those dense pockets of people was insane, I had to keep craning my head up to try and get cooler air.

Yeah, even if there hadn't have been so many people, wondering around with a suitcase trying to find the hotel would not have been an enjoyable experience... especially given the alarming amount of human excrement, phlegm, gum etc I kept having to dodge.

I got to the hotel finally, opened the door and was hit with a wall of air con and was like "ughhh yassss" making it to the check in counter with my beard all poofy, my shirt soaked, probably looking like a vagrant and getting a weird look from the person behind the counter until I said I was checking in. First thing I did in the room was peel out of wet clothes, crank the air down and had probably the 3rd best shower of my life while I killed time waiting for the hotel restaurant to open since there was no way in hell I was going back outside into that mess to try and find fast food or a convenience store.

Transportation for people who can't walk for whatever reason, also sometimes you gotta transport stuff too bulky to carry.

Do they need to bring a ton of steel too though? I've thought it might be nice if we only allowed golf carts for personal use in the cities, even better if they'd be foldable in an upright position.

Transport of heavy or bulky items. Although in many cases a bicycle with panniers would be sufficient.

With my Bakfiets Long cargo bicycle, I handle 100 kilograms payloads easily - a washing-machine sized item is perfectly movable by pedal power.

I prefer to attend my meeting not dripping in sweat from hiking across the city, call me old fashioned.

You shouldn't be dripping with sweat just from walking. I walked several miles yesterday, on a warm day, just for fun - not a drop of sweat left my brow. If you're overheating, wear less clothing. This notion "I need to be ferried around from air-conditioned box to air-conditioned box in yet another air-conditioned box so that I can obey my office's dress code in the height of summer" is not an attitude we can afford to keep, in the 21st century.

Not to say we should abolish all motorized transport. In any modern city there should be half a dozen ways of getting around that are all faster than cars. Light rail, buses, casual bicycles, and electric scooters spring to mind.

I invite you to try different climates around the world. It is not at all unusual to be drenched in sweat from just walking outdoors for most of the year in many parts of the world. I do agree with the rest of your comment, however.

If climates are different in places, solutions should be different in places too. Yes it might not be feasible to force everyone to cycle in Texas, but that doesn't mean that everyone in the US should drive everywhere.

Good for you. The temperature you generate while walking and the amount you sweat is not dependent on fitness level.

I presume you don't do family shopping (easily 30kg), or +-gazillion of other use cases that your 'solutions' don't cover and would make people's lives measurably worse and more stressful. If I have to carry all my load for weekend adventures to car that is parked 300-500m away I end up properly sweaty even in coldest winter day, and sometimes its just not possible. And I work out hard on average 6-7 times per week.

I love walking, sometimes spend hours on long walks since I live in a very pretty place but forcing everybody to adhere to your own vision of car-less cities without offering a proper alternative (not those you mention in this thread, they are far from enough)... sucks.

How can anyone transport 30kg without a 1500+kg vehicle that destroys our environment? A small folding shopping cart, perhaps? A bicycle with baskets? Your alternative is worse than those you dismiss.

You make this claim like those are the only two options. There is a wide gulf between driving an "environment destroying" vehicle and pushing a cart 10 miles in 100F degree weather.

People are different. Some will sweat by doing nothing at certain temperatures. Just like there are people that are fine swimming in ice water and others... that are not.

I bike 6+ miles per day, and several thousand per year. I used to run 10+ miles per week, with periods on the order of 40 miles per week. I'm in pretty good shape.

It's going to be 100 Fahrenheit (40C) next week. It's 93 and rainy today. This will continue to happen regularly from now until September or October.

When I talk, I'm going to sweat, especially where there's no shade or if I walk beyond a slow saunter. Being in shape does nothing to prevent that.

Getting a bit sweaty - how terrible. I prefer not breath particulates that damage my heart, call me old fashioned.

https://now.tufts.edu/articles/big-road-blues-pollution-high...

I might have this wrong but I think it's not a ban but a restriction on driving and only in the centre of the city. IIRC, so called zero emission vehicles can still drive around unrestricted, to give, but one example.

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