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Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

>His conclusion: When cities shut streets off to cars, people drive less. The myth of a “carmageddon”-style traffic jam is apparently overblown.

This seems to completely ignore the fact that what actually has occured here is that the reduction of drivers is a negative for those drivers. Those drivers now either have to cycle or use public transport instead of their cars or have to move. That might seem positive to the people who don't have to make those sacrifices, but it's a massive negative impact on the people effected by this.

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Well, and the externalities of the driver's carbon emissions are a massive negative impact on all of us. In a city as dense as San Francisco, transit, walking, or biking can easily cover most people's transportation needs. The more we build safe and effective infrastructure for those modes, the more people will use them. And that will be good - in the end - for the remaining few who do absolutely need to drive (though I believe that if we get creative, with things like bike rikshaws, we can even cover that segment with out cars).

If we don't change these sorts of habits, the climate will change them for us.

I'm not advocating for designing life around increasing car ownership. I'm pointing out that re-designing existing systems to disadvantage a specific group of commuters is more than a little problematic. Let's put it this way - how would you feel if we shut down your nearest train station and used the money saved to give everyone a tax break.

We can also decrease carbon emissions by just shutting down every power station in China, but targetting a single group of people to take the vast majority of the cost of fixing climate change is not reasonable.

Your point is that changes can be bad for some people while being good for others? I'm pretty sure everybody knows that.

Given that they spent 10 years planning this, and given the enormous infrastructural support cars get, I'm quite sure the city was aware.

> Well, and the externalities of the driver's carbon emissions are a massive negative impact on all of us.

This is just one part of it. 40,000 people are killed every year in the US, and over 4 million seriously injured or disabled.

You're right that this will negatively affect some drivers, but it's not necessarily true that every driver removed from the road is worse off. Some of the 25% increase in cyclists may have been drivers who preferred to cycle but did not feel safe doing so.

Anecdotally, I feel that way here in NYC -- I'd almost always rather bike (and it's often faster), but will sometimes take an Uber/Lyft because I don't feel safe biking in traffic, thus becoming traffic myself and perpetuating the vicious cycle.

Yes, there are winners and losers. The "loss" here is pretty tiny, but I'm sure there are a few people, by accident of where they live/work, for whom this is very inconvenient.

I don't mean to be crass, but, so what? There are zero-sum tradeoffs made by cities every. single. day. In comparison to, say, adding a new road, this is a tiny inconvenience for a tiny group of people.

I think it is strictly the novelty of drivers "losing" for once that brings this sort of thinking out. Things have been tilted towards cars for so long that if they aren't treated as entitled to environmental dominance always and everywhere, it seems like a status attack.

Yes, things have both pros and cons. Now list all the negative externalities of designing life around 5 passenger vehicles occupied by 1 person.

Massive? That's a pretty weak negative here. Cycling and walking feels good when there's no car around, public transport is a great time to relax, read a book or meet people. And it's only one street, people can still drive close to where they want to be.

At -20 feels great...

In San Francisco?

You'd be surprised if you tried cycling at -20. I have, it beats cycling in 30+C. Just don't forget cold protection and you'll be fine.

on ice? spiked tires or chains?

Ice is not that bad in the city.

In winter you want to change your breaking habits. Your rear break can become an insta-lose-your-traction lever; front break is safer (your mileage may vary, obviously).

It's when things start to melt that you may consider not biking: melting snow on ice creates a nasty surprise!

> it's a massive negative impact on the people effected by this.

The people who switched are the people at the margin. Previously, taking their cars was slightly more convenient, now it's slightly less. Anyone who would be massively inconvenienced is still driving, because they still have that option.

And those people who strongly prefer driving now have less competition. They are also winning.

We're talking about one street. Is it seriously a "massive negative impact" to drive down the next street over?

I thought it was a routing problem -- the one street half bisected a peninsula, so if you want to get from one side to the other it wouldn't mean "driving down the next street over," it would mean driving down twice its length and dealing with traffic at the squeeze point. Did I misunderstand the geometry?

Yes you misunderstood - you can cross the street at many points but not drive along it

That makes much more sense, thanks! Less useful for the pedestrians -- but also less apocalyptic for traffic.

Yes, some traffic is being taken off Market but it's a long way from being made into a pedestrian mall. I'm not sure you'd want one on Market anyway. It's not a very pleasant stretch of the city for the most part for reasons that are only somewhat car traffic related.

This brings up an interesting question. What street(s) in SF would be best for a truly automobile free pedestrian mall? My first thought would be the embarcadero, but it already has a very nice wide sidewalk and I think closing it to cars would be a pretty large hindrance to traffic.

Yeah, the Embarcadero is already pretty pedestrian friendly and it's a rather essential thoroughfare that can't be easily bypassed.

In downtown-ish area? Presumably in and around Union Square somewhere. You already have a mini restaurant version in Belden Place. There's a lot of traffic through there but it was already being messed with by lots of construction for ages.

Valencia! Imagine 16-20th or 20th-24th as pedestrian only. Mission and Guerrero can handle the traffic and there’s no need for cars there.

Maybe it's a massive positive for people who were driving because they didn't feel safe on the road and can now cycle.

If it inconveniences a lot fewer drivers than the number of cyclists and public transit users who benefit, then it's a clear-cut and uncontroversial net win, isn't it?

Where do you get 'massive negative' from? Cycling and walking are much healthier, so it might even be positive for them.

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