Paris to ‘get rid of 70k parking spaces’
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However this is very polarizing in France because living space is very costly within the city. And it will not decrease as building any residential space may imply destroying an historical building and disfigure the skyline. Therefore, middle and lower class, needed to run a city like this are pushed to live in the suburbs. Where public transport is not as good as in the city center, so people need cars... I hope this decision will help find solutions to solve this inextricable problem, which might be the challenge of the decade for the city of love.
I really like how NYC has local/express sharing the same infrastructure. Manhattan has near the same height as Paris (Peripherique), yet it's possible to travel all the distance with 5 or so stops.
(the entire system is shut down overnight right now anyway)
And as someone who lived in Moscow for a long time I can attest it is the gold standard. It's the second busiest (or top-3) and just always works as scheduled. One rare thing one could rely on that comes from the government.
https://www.mta.info/press-release/nyc-transit/new-full-year...
I regret to inform you that the NYC subway has many more problems than you experienced. Before the pandemic I traveled between Brooklyn and Manhattan and problems were common. Much more common was just random slowdowns, sitting between stations, etc. that makes it a lot more difficult to know when you'll arrive at your destination.
It happened in Paris more than "extraordinary" number of times, so I have to put extra 15 mins to every important travel.
OTP sounds like: the train is scheduled at 3:25, it arrives at 3.26. Correct me if I'm wrong here. But if the normal margin is 5 mins for total time of travel, making it 15 mins is not nice.
If you dont have one, how do you measure performance of the system?
One could make the argument that a train showing up ten minutes late vs one on time doesn't really matter to a person so long as it shows up within a reasonable time of them getting to the station and it still takes them to their destination on time. If the headways are five minutes and every single train is running at the same speed just five minutes late, this is a distinction that doesn't matter to the passenger.
- due to all the merging in and out throughout the system, trains need to be in the right place at the right time or merging delays will cascade throughout the system
- for purposes of employee scheduling, you need to make sure that the right employees are in the right place at the right time; generally a train leaving a terminal is being driven by a crew that had to come in from somewhere else.
Passengers transferring to other lines or transit modes may also appreciate predictability.
Depends on the line and destination.
All lines fulfilled this objective except line 4, with 96.1%
AS for RER, there is an official governemental website that gives the numbers: http://www.qualitetransports.gouv.fr/les-chiffres-de-la-ponc... (in French) The most reliable one in 2020 is the A with about 94% of reliability and the worst one was RER B in March, with 78.9%.
The best RER gets you late around 1 every 20 trip. So once every 2 weeks on average if you count two trips per day. The worse one doesn't get you on time almost every other day !
You basically have to factor the unreliability of the transport system every single trip. This is very far from something you can count on. Even for the best lines.
How so ? Except for work, all the other thing you describes are basically at a walkable distance. And you also have a lot of buses.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popul...
Worker strikes arent something you can legislate away unless you're going to start forcing people to work, which is, uh, let's say widely frowned upon.
If you want to end strikes, you'll need to convince workers that showing up is in their interest.
If you're responding to my statement of "can't legislate it away", then I suppose yes you're right that is an example of being able to do that and I should have worded that differently, but the key there is that it only works if your threat convinces the workers to return. Which, according to that Wikipedia article, it didn't entirely and their staffing levels didn't fully recover for a decade.
This makes strikes a rare happening, and usually very predictable.
See: https://tema.3f.dk/bjmfimmigrant/new-in-denmark/are-you-allo...
EDIT: Oof, that's quite an error on my part. I was absent-mindedly conflating "downtown areas" with the whole city. My bad. Never the less, I'm skeptical that this change will amount to much in terms of lower property values, but I'd be happy for someone to articulate why my skepticism is misplaced.
Maybe we are thinking of different things but I see the average US city as suburban with 4 people per quarter acre lot. Paris is 10-100x more dense than that. That's why public transit is far more effective there.
> The French capital has 56,000 people per square mile while NYC, the most densely settled U.S. metropolis, has only 27,000 people per square mile
Manhattan and a few select sections are denser but US cities are sprawling.
edit: the Bois de Vincenne is roughly three times the size of Central Park (10km^2 vs. 3.4km^2).
NYC, the most densely settled U.S. metropolis, has only 27,000 people per square mile
Barcelona's 'superblock' structure boasts the highest density in the world (exceeding the world's densest city overall, Manila, and looks like this:
https://www.eltis.org/sites/default/files/news/shutterstock_...
A good chunk of Parisian suburbs is already among the most densely populated areas in the world:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_popul...
I do imagine that a high rise is going to be more dense than a Parisian 5-story. I understand that Parisian apartments are smaller and they aren't going to have parking or on-site greenspace like a US high rise, but I would be surprised if they are still less dense. Of course, that doesn't validate my original claim that Paris is sparser than US cities.
The city of love really IS magic for little privileged people like you. Go ahead and keep it up telling how other should live, and if they can't it's their fault: they just had to have your little privileged lifestyle, of a "nanti" as we say in France. First hit on the poor, who live far away from paris and come down to clean your office, and "hope this will help finding a solution". I guess it's their fault, they should just have been ... privileged like you.
Have you any idea of the pain it has become to use a car in Paris ? Does it really strike you as if people really had a better choice ?
You could always take the Singaporean solution and make replacing them with automation a national priority? I am not being serious, I am pointing out there are actually national programs for this sort of social adjustment. It's more than a little scary.
I moved from Moscow to Paris a year ago, and I think Moscow is a success story of fixing traffic.
* Make streets in the center narrower, remove 1-2 lines and make sidewalks wider;
* Remove parking slots, make the remaining ones very expensive;
* No barriers to taxi aggregators or car sharing, just regulations on hours of work;
* Improve public transport (new metro lines);
* (Optional: pave the sidewalks with tiles (Собянинская плитка). Despite bad jokes it really feels nice vs old broken asphalt)
The city became pleasant to pedestrians, traffic jams reduced a lot. Before that I even refused to use taxis, because the price was high, quality was low, and sitting for 1 hour just to move 300 meters was usual. I do not drive myself, but taking a taxi there is no brainer - $5 per ride and much faster than before, without traffic.
Now Paris reminds me of Moscow in the 2000s. Often narrow sidewalks where even two people find it difficult to walk past each other, parked cars that make this difficult even for one person (good luck with baby carriage!). This is not everywhere, not on the main streets, but Paris is an old city and there are many old narrow streets. Those should be made completely pedestrian or keep just one line.
Before the confinement I lived near Petit Champs/Chabanais streets. They made Chabanais and one part of Petit Champs pedestrian, and removed 1.5 lines from another part in favor of sidewalks. Local activity thrived, children were playing, cafes full of people on the sidewalks or streets themselves. I used to joke that they called Moscow mayor Sobyanin to fix the streets. If they didn't, they should... at least not be afraid of radical measures.
And the measures should be radical so that improvements to pedestrians (or taxis, public transport) are big and more people give up on their own cars faster. Biking and scooters are possible all year around in Paris vs just five months in Moscow, so I'm looking forward to more and more of those changes.
P.S. Paris should also make public transport strikes illegal!
We are a democratic country, people are free to strike, and it's a good thing. It's a bit annoying sometimes, but it's certainly worth it (I'm sure there is no strike in north korea, but I'm happy to live in a free country with that minor annoyance)
They are also fully automating more and more lines.
This stands in stark contrast with the USA where the AMA calls the shots. In effect, the doctors control the supply of doctors.
Simply increasing the number of medical school places would result in many people spending years of their life (and in the US, 100s of thousands of dollars in debt) without then being able to then start their career.
Some degree of central planning seems reasonable here.
You have to remember that in a well working labour market strikes are a last resort, and 99% of the time having a strike as a tool helps the labour side wield their fair share of collective bargaining vs the dominant position of the employer organisation.
https://www.iledefrance.fr/les-passes-navigo-du-mois-de-dece... (in French)
[0] https://www.bicyclenetwork.com.au/newsroom/2020/12/03/paris-...
I don't like street parking. It's using public space to store private property.
I like how cities like Chicago are turning parking spaces into miniature parks.
Every time I travel abroad, I'm always in awe of functional public transit (well, before COVID anyways, until that's over I'm staying put. It's not like anyone is itching to allow Americans into their country considering just how astonishingly poorly we've handled it).
I'd really love for the pressure against public transportation in the United States to abate - from auto industry lobbyists to the public view that owning a car is a status symbol and that only "poor" people take public transit. My parents spent many years living just outside the SF Bay Area and their town can't get mass transit access because Livermore refuses to have a BART stop in their town because of the "bad actors" (read: poor people) it could bring in. Livermore even went so far as to design all of their new bridges to get in the way of the center-of-highway BART tracks. Anyone further down I-580 Eastbound be damned.
I traveled across Japan and Germany completely on mass transit (buses, subways, high speed rail, walking), there were only a few places I would've preferred to have a car for. If I were using it for work travel, I'd much rather take a train and pull out a laptop and do something than have to drive, maybe even just enjoy the view.
------------
Bridges in Livermore look to be of similar design to what exists on the section where BART does run, the center posts are not an issue, and there are center posts on every overpass of the BART tracks. Look at the overpasses to the east/west of the current terminus, for example.
Livermore's government has been advocating for bringing BART service further, has been frustrated by BART shooting down the extension proposal: https://www.bart.gov/about/projects/liv
Further, after the extension proposal was shot down, they were the ones that pushed for the creation of a new transit entity to build a connecting service, and have been a substantial portion of what's pushing the project forward. And it's planned to run on I-580 in Livermore, so clearly they don't seem to think the bridges are a problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-Valley-San_Joaquin_Valley_...
https://www.valleylinkrail.com/
None of their actions seem to be transit-hostile to me.
Wow, really? If true, that's some straight up Robert Moses level racial tactics.
Here's a softer take on Robert Moses' racially-segregating road building for those not steeped in NYC / Long Island lore: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-09/robert-mo...
Biggest issue is that America is so vast. Take for instance where I live. I am 15 minutes by car (going about 55mph) from anywhere. Public transport is only feasible in heavily populated areas.
An important second part is that over-night street parking is also very, very limited and towing heavily enforced. It's important to have both parts, otherwise you just end up with people getting parking permits through corrupt bureaucrats/etc and just leaving them overnight and the problem doesn't get any better.
I know this from personal experience when I took my two kids in strollers to Paris. Lugging the strollers up and down stairs was a nightmare.
But maybe disabled people have other options like buses so it might not be as bad as it seems initially.
Can you share some link to the complains of the disabled community? I see you position posted quite often, but I have never seen any details and I am interested in there nuances of the situation.
I have experience with Barcelona and the public transport was adapted a decade ago. Is that an unique case?
Only one Paris Metro line with 9 stations has elevators and ramps for autonomous wheelchair access. There are 16 numbered lines and hundreds of stations in the city.
An area does not become walkable because there are no cars. First you have to ensure that journey distances are within walking range. That means having stores, work locations, and living locations all within a kilometer or two at most (not everyone is capable of riding a bike at race speeds every day). Paris, at least some parts of Paris, might have that in place. So too maybe NYC or SF. But a great many places are not setup that way and don't have mass transit infrastructure to convert quickly.
During the summer months it's great though.
According to wikipedia, average lows in Oslo are about -5. That's pretty warm. Salt still melts snow at those temperatures. Even sunlight will melt snow on pavement at -5. But below around -10/-15 salt stops melting ice, vastly increasing the manpower needed to clear roads/sidewalks. Clearing ice at proper winter temperatures requires mechanical means, hammers, if not propane torches.
Biking was practically impossible (and very dangerous), and sometimes even walking a few blocks was a challenge. That being said, I’d still advocate for places like Edmonton being “15-min” cities, and in-fact it would make it much easier in the winter when transportation is more limited.
It's good to have warm clothes for your extremities, but your core gets surprisingly warm when you bike with any kind of coat on. I often just wear a think goretex jacket till it's in the single digits fahrenheit. I wear winter boots, warm gloves or mittens (depending on how cold it is), and a balaclava or gaiter. Also ski goggles for really cold/windy weather. If you don't start off feeling somewhat cold, you've overdressed.
I tried studded tires, but found they didn't help much. Black ice is rare here compared to layers of snow and slush, which don't give studs much to bite into. For me, three inch tires with an open tread pattern at low pressure -- plus an upright riding position that distributes weight evenly between the wheels -- gives me the most confidence.
Regarding the cold, I'd say windproofing is most important, and expedition-style mittens are well worth the investment. You won't need much insulation (except maybe at the extremities) once you start generating body heat. Multiple top layers, each with their own full length zipper, will let you regulate your temperature without getting off the bike. That's especially helpful if you have long climbs and long descents.
In heavy bike using cultures, people have gear ready to go. Spending a minute to put it on is not really a barrier, an inconvenience. If there is a practice. If your environment supports it, by having plowed routes for bikes, bike parking.
I think we overrate the convenience & comfort factor. Don't knock it till you be tried it. You might like it! There is some real difficulty when your society self selects to only support & assist one mode of transit, doesn't have bike parking readily available, doesn't have safe paths for biking. And trying to embrace biking on your own, learn how to do it comfortably & safely, when few others do, that's hard. But I think the inherent comfort g convenience of cars is somewhat/greatly overrated. The mindset is that biking is inconvenient, but so many who successfully live it will tell you, it's easy & it feels great.
there's also the issue of those with pre-dawn and night commutes, these people are disproportionately lower income and live farther and farther away from gentrified city centers. it is not uncommon to see as much as a 20+ degree drop once the sun goes down and you'd better hope there's no windchill on top of that.
Cars are a tool to overcome that in the same way that air conditioning allows businesses to operate in Arizona summers.
Which places are you thinking about? I'm from a place that's quite cold during the winter (-15C some days) plus can have quite a bit of snow.
I don't find cold places to be as unwalkable as hot ones. You get used to the cold, the snow/ice are generally cleared after a few days.
If anything, walkability is frequently about how a place looks and winter time can look quite nice with all the snow.
I now live on the other extreme in Phoenix, AZ and during the summer, you'll see 115F (46C) or higher for ~2 months a year with no cloud cover. That's hot enough that you don't even really sweat while walking; it evaporates so quickly that it can't do its job. We've had people at my office go for walks during lunch and collapse after 15 minutes due to it. And Phoenix is one of the most unwalkable places to live imaginable from a layout/distance standpoint to boot.
But I will admit both of those are in the extremes and most of the country isn't like that, although many areas will have quite a few days that go subzero (-17C) and over 100F (38C) each year. I think a big thing the US needs to do is start rezoning areas and rely less on everyone living on a half acre of land 2 miles from the nearest non-residential building. Unless that happens, much of the US won't be able to realistically implement policies like Paris is.
> If anything, walkability is frequently about how a place looks and winter time can look quite nice with all the snow.
Why do you walk? Is it to go for a purposeless, leisurely afternoon stroll? Or to on a daily basis, go to your job, the grocery, to the dentist, the hairdresser?
In order for a place to be walkable, you should be able to safely, and predictably, with 99% confidence, be able to purposefully walk to that job, that grocery, that dentist, and that hairdresser, at any time of day - not just on a sunny weekend afternoon, after all the snow has been shoveled.
Any place with snow on the ground for 4-5 months out of the year is a misery of walkability. Maybe your job starts at 7 am, and walking to it sucks, because the snow hasn't been shoveled yet. Sometimes, you need to avoid patches of black ice (Good luck when you're carrying heavy bags of groceries). For weeks, at the start, and the end of the season, you are dealing with absolutely atrocious slush, that has a habit of freezing over-night.
I don't really care about the cold - I can solve that problem by putting on more clothes. I do care about all the other problems of walking in snow.
I now live in a mild climate, where snow isn't an issue. I can, with full confidence, walk anywhere I want on any day of the year, any time of day, and predictably get there at a good pace. I couldn't say the same for when I lived in a cold climate.
You have to be a lot below freezing before mere temperature makes a city unwalkable. Very few places actually get that cold with any regularity. If sidewalks are maintained and it isn't crazy windy, you really don't need to change your walking behaviour much at all.
Heat is in practice often worse for walkability, especially when combined with humidity.
With eBikes the number of folks who can go at bike race speeds is incredible. I also know a lot of disable folks who can use eBikes but cannot drive. It’s an incredible technology.
I think people seriously underrate the safety benefits of micro cars, and the necessity of car like vehicles for older people.
Pony is yes even at lower speeds collisions can be dangerous.
But yeah motorcycles are probably an order of magnitude more dangerous then cars... Specially with cars around.
encouraging most people 80+ to stay behind the wheel to shop and socialize is a pretty bad plan. maybe waymo and uber changes this..
It would only be incredible if that number is higher than 0. An ebike has higher friction than a racing bicycle and even the fastest ones have a top speed of 45 km/h (30 mph). "Bike race speeds" (road races) are up to 65 km/h, so 40 mph. I don't think even a Tour de France-level cyclist could reach bike race speeds on an eBike.
I've heard that this is already true of everywhere except the US, and the main reason it's not true of the US is zoning laws.
Lived there 12 years ... 120k miles less gas & maintenance. Miss it a lot now (one bus, nearest stores 2 miles, nearest transit station is a 15 min ride away. Perfect for Covid I guess.)
Except that most people cannot live in Paris because it's too expensive and need to commute every day. And using the RER which is dirty, smells like piss and full of graffitis, overcrowded at peak hours and often on strike is so unreliable that it is hardly an enticing option.
Except on rainy days in car I arrive at work warm and dry. On eBike I arrive wet, cold and miserable.
I jumped on the eBike ship very early but I simply can't leave it anywhere.
When people are out for a $5-$10 return for crack at 4AM, nothing is safe.
On the other hand, if anybody has any info if this will be a thing in Germany, please let me know! It's surely better than nothing.
At the moment, it costs a lot more inconvenience+money to use SNCF/RER than driving for many people.
If someone stabs you in the kidney, and someone stabs you in kidney and chest.
You don't thank the former.
Plenty of areas you can only move either with own car or calling taxi.
The next bus stop is a couple of kilometres down the road and only crosses a couple of times per day.
Public transports are extensive, but they're overcrowded and perpetually strained to the limit of breakage. This week, a 400 tons concrete beam fell on RER C tracks. I suppose it will be weeks before it runs normally again. This sort of problems happens constantly.
Paris resident are only about 30% to own a car (a constantly dwindling number). Most cars in Paris come from the suburbs, therefore making motorists miserable isn't a problem for the mayor as most motorists vote elsewhere. This has the very unfortunate effect that nobody is really interested in solving the problem at its root.
Yes, and it still sucks. Now imagine how much it sucks in other regions.
The first reason is obviously cultural, but forbidding workers from striking would have some knock-on effects that the rest of society may not appreciate. The second reason, at least in Germany, has a lot to do with the semi-privatization of our train system which doesn't have inventives to invest in it's infrastructure and due it's cozy market position enabling rent-seeking.
The first problem, at least in the cities, could be solved with grade 4 automated metro according to the example of Copenhagen. The trains even drive much better than human drivers there, with no abrupt stops.
This would create unemployment, but it wouldn't infringe on people's rights.
The second problem we would have to solve by replacing the politicians that enable this. A much more difficult undertaking.
How can we use capital to create meaningful work, rather than the status quo oscillation left<-->right?
Using capital just automate for the sake of excluding workers is (IMO) silly. Improving safety and reliability, fine. But capital is also needed to start new labour intensive jobs, and anti-labour capitalism has a blind spot for this, and it leads to more political unrest.
I mean, that's the bazillion-euro question, right?
I would love to apply stochastic principles to it, using random choice to break deadlocks and force choice.
See also, models of collaboration between companies: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3679737
Also bomb defusing. F* you World-War 2, even for all the wrong reasons!
I was surprised that the RER doesn’t have bathrooms on-board. In Ontario Canada, we have similar double-decker commuter trains and they have them. They’re about airline-style in terms of size (barring 1 “accessible” one per train), but they do the job.
I’m sorry, when did we start talking about BART
Besides, removing cars from the road means that busses will be more reliable (less traffic jams) so you can avoid the trains in more situations.
Maybe, but seeing how Western nation's personal transport being way down due to COVID having little effect on CO2 leads me believe the real issue for the future is China's manufacturing sector, which will not go down.
The politcal view is "can't do that, price of cheap imported tat will increase and people would have to buy locally, which would be awful"
Yes this is key, as otherwise it's just outsourcing to others and hiding under carpet at the expense of local jobs.
With gas being 1 "badness" per 100KWh, oil being 2 and coal being 3, this would mean avoiding 1 unit locally, but getting importing 5 units.
The beauty of a carbon tax is that it satisfies those on both the environmental side ("the left") and the localism side ("the right"). The only ones not liking it are globalists that don't care about the environment.
Or maybe the transportation and power generation sectors pollute far more than what I read and believed?
Or maybe clothing manufacture? Or food?
Who knows? But it's made me really curious about what it is out there that hasn't gone down during COVID? (And not just because I want to make a fast buck. It's genuine curiosity.)
The EPA knows! [0]
Global greenhouse gas emissions can also be broken down by the economic activities that lead to their production.[1]
25% is from electricity and heat production;
14% from transport;
6% from residential and commercial buildings;
21% from industry;
24% from agriculture, forestry and other land use;
10% from other energy uses.Source: IPCC (2014);
So it is power generation and farming.
That makes sense. Thanks.
So as a species, our big gains against global warming are going to be made by reducing CO2 output from the power generation and food production sectors.
https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector#energy-electr...
What's really motivating policies like this is an aesthetic aversion to cars from a few loud people who think they can socially engineer a beautiful shining future for humanity whether we want it or not.
I like cars. I'm perfectly happy to talk about emissions, but I'm not willing to give up my car on some new urbanist's say-so.
You're right about one thing though: we should all expect a lot more of this top down meddling with our lives.
I know people talk about it — I talk about it, semi-seriously — but I don't see any comments here mentioning banning cars (except yours), and it's not in the article.
When people argue for the rights of cars, they are really talking about their own personal rights to large movement (grocery shopping is far easier with a car than by public transpo and foot as a quick example).
And as the caveat, yes I do believe we need to take steps to solving our pollution generation. In the same breath, I dont believe in taking away personal freedoms or independent abilities. Paris is literally an archaic city. The design is archaic and what city planners have to deal with are hacks due to legacy design. Then again, French culture is rather archaic as well. They still refuse to adopt loaner words as an example, something the rest of the world has been doing for the past few hundred years at least. Using them as a poster child for what the rest of the modern world should do to fix pollution problems is like trusting an Italian engineering firm to build a bridge... it's going to collapse :P Add to that, banning anything is a very buercratical answer to a complex problem. Tell me the last time banning/prohibition has worked well and never had 2nd or 3rd order severe consequences. Historical speaking, they're pulling ideas out of their ass and are going to regret this decision regardless if its "for the greater good".
Most people have never experienced a good transport system. Even in Europe most have not. Paris is good for some people, but not even everyone in Paris. It is even worse in the US.
Living in London I travel on my schedule everywhere on public transport. That because a bus or a train turns up at every station or stop every 4 mins. Very little need to wait, never any need to plan.
I live in flat with a parking space (and paid a hefty premium for it) but still don’t have a car. Not because I can’t afford one, but because it just doesn’t make sense. It quicker, easier and cheaper to take public transport everywhere than it is to drive. Trains don’t get stuck in traffic, and there’s more train crossings over the river than there is car crossings, making most trips more direct by public transport.
You view cars as personal freedom. I see them as noisy pollution machines that try kill me when I walk and cycle. Why the hell should i give up my personal freedoms to walk and cycle, just so you can drive?
That there is some public transport rather than none doesn't make it 'excellent'.
Of course, depending on timetables/connections the train could be a bit slower, and if one has a lot of luggage door-to-door by taxi might be better. But for me it would be hard to argue that fighting through London traffic in a car or taxi is superior to public transport.
Soon it’s gonna be even better with Crossrail.
There is no single factor that contributed. Perhaps it is more efficient if everybody drives to one big parking, perhaps people overall started to use cars less, perhaps rash hour became more spread in time leading to lesser max car density and smaller jams. Whatever the reason, it was win-win.
It is not. On a CO2 per mile bases cars emit less than non-vegan humans, because it takes a lot of energy to grow food. If you put 2 people in the car it's not even close.
https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2014/07/22/walking-can...
http://web.mit.edu/2.813/www/readings/DrivingVsWalking.pdf
> but after it takes place everyone agrees things are much much better with less cars and no one wants to go back.
Speak for yourself. Every place that has done that is basically a place I will never go to. Since I'm not there anymore I can't complain, right?
It's especially stupid when a downtown of a large city does that - God help anyone who needs city services and lives in the suburbs. (Are you expected to walk for 3 hours? Spend a ton of money on a taxi? There is no bus.) What ends up happening is the city and the surrounding area mentally split into two, and they fight politically.
This is Paris in the EU. Home to the densest (most stations per square mile) metro system in the world.
Trust me, you don’t need a bus, nor will you walk for 3 hours.
Don’t assume that every city in the world lacks resent public transport. That seems to be a uniquely American thing.
Also, I've taken public transport in major EU cities. It's a miserable experience compared to less dense city with a car.
It basically discourages me from living in a large city, it's such a terrible experience. Which is, of course, my choice.
But I think lots of people are going to start making that choice.....
If we take the bottom table, "US Diet, typical", it looks like it is 1000 for driving, 230 for walking. That is more than 4x lower GHG emission by walking, per mile.
Which numbers from that article are you comparing?
There are a group of people that are hurt but those people aren't around to complain.
The same with this. The people who need a car and can't get a space have to move out. Now it's true that population could be zero but to the extent it's more then zero you probably won't hear from them because they aren't in Paris.
My gut feeling is that no matter how many cycling lane or pedestrian they would anyway park on there, the invincibility due of lazyness is unbearable high here.
I used to drive in from the suburbs for work. I spent a lot of money downtown. Expensive dinners, evenings at the bar, or show/concert/sports/event, bought all my clothes, electronics, gifts, office supplies, dentist, some food shopping, haircut, insurance, doctor, RMT, physio, acupuncture. I did as many errands downtown as possible.
Now that I'm working from home due to the virus I haven't been back. When the office opens I won't go back. If they force me I'll find a new job where I can work remote. Now I spend all my money where I live.
:-)
I'd imagine reducing spaces to the point where the assumption is "there is no parking" instead of "if I fight hard enough I can find a space" would actually reduce the number of people searching and driving in the city center in the first place.
Similar to the observation that expanded highways don't actually reduce congestion, they just attract more cars.
Commuting by car or public transport takes 1h30 to 2h, so up to 4 hours a day on the bad days. Traffic is terrible. Parking is terrible. Train is OK ish and comfortable enough to work or read. Some trains (RER) are awful. Working remotely, 3 days a week around the weekend is the best.
People indeed becomes quite aggressive, even if somehow disciplined. I worked in south India earlier this year, and I found people there completely undisciplined on the road, but very friendly. Like line splitting in front of a bus with a friendly smile and a gentle press on the horn.
Exactly. There's local norms of conduct for traffic everywhere. There's standards for acceptable aggression and obliviousness (and other attributes). Paris, India, etc are all low on obliviousness. If you expect to be able to just blindly follow markings and signals and think that all you have to watch out for is the car in front of you you are going to have a bad time. India is lower on aggressiveness because the nature of the traffic there really doesn't lend itself to that. Likewise if you try to drive like you're in Rome in a wealthy American suburb or somewhere else where high obliviousness is the norm you're gonna piss a lot of people off because you're not gonna behave the way they expect.
The difference is how drivers reacts to the deviation from the rules.
In Paris, it seems that revenge is preferred. If you honk me, I squeeze you. Or push the brakes violently. Then finger.
Rome is more exotic but a lot quieter in fact. A lot less crowded too.
I assume most of the streets in Paris were built before cars were a big thing, what was that space used for way back then? Sounds like a silly question, but, did people park horses in the same spaces used for cars now? (I assume you didn't "park" your horse, but it seems like more or less the same concept?)
Bike lanes or Lime and Bird scooter lanes?
The large streets have been rebuilt many times already, before and after the war.
The Haussmann reform is famous for enlarging the streets to make way for protests, err, no, army maneuvers. Large, straight streets.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but wasn't it to prevent barricades?
Funny note though, protesters are counted by the police only if not walking on the sidewalks. Those would be considered observers.
The streets of Paris were mostly built at the end of the XIX century where cars were common, just powered by horses.
The problem since the mid 1990s is the increase in the car traffic. It is remarkable when you watch movies from the 70s to see those empty streets, full of empty parking slots on the sides.
For instance this short film. Shot early in the morning (so empty streets expected) but look at the side of the roads, almost no cars parked anywhere. Today these streets are packed bumper to bumper. It feels like another city: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-GqZIR0HUw
But you would notice the same on any film or documentary from the 70s.
Now can we remove the free street parking from Manhattan?
In the center of Copenhagen it's $4-6/hour.
30 days x 12 h/day x 5 US$/h= 1,800 US$ month x 12 = 21,600 US$/year
Typical rent 5% of value.
21,600/0.05= 432,000
Size of a parking spot 5x2.5 m = 12.5 sqm, let's make it 15.
432,000/15= 28,800 US$/sqm
Cost of a house in Copenhagen (centre):
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Copenhagen
47,555.60 kr = +/- 7,500 US$/sqm
That is for an apartment, not a full house of multiple storeys. If you have four storeys (counting the ground-floor), then interestingly the costs would be roughly on par. I am not sure, how many storeys the houses are supposed to have in Copenhagen.
There is NO market in the world AFAIK where 1 sqm is considered multi-storey, a house that is 100 sqm in plan and is 2 storeys is a 200 sqm one.
The opportunity cost of 1 sqm of street parking space is not 1 sqm of "living unit", but 1 sqm of land.
If 1 sqm of apartment is worth $7.5K/month, and average building height is 4 stories, that suggests 1 sqm of land is worth approximately 4 * 7.5 = $30K/month (minus value of the building).
16 will be 4 times that.
My note was not about "opportunity cost", it was about the (extremely high) "rent" that a parking space at 5 US$/hour represents compared to its cost.
If you buy a 50-55 sqm apartment/flat/living unit in Copenhagen, you spend roughly 400,000 $, you can possibly rent it for 5%/year, i.e. around 20,000 $/year.
If you can manage to extort 5 $ /hour (for 12 hours/day) for a parking space which is 1/4th of area (and is not a building) you get more or less the same.
In the downtown core of much of the east cost US, you're looking at $20+ for a minimum period of 3 hours. On the other hand, in my small city in the midwest during my adult life parking has gone from $.50/hour to $1.60/hour, and people have been outraged by each incremental increase.
Edit: noted that $20+ is often for multiple hours, but you regularly can't buy a single hour for $7, you're stuck paying a min of $20 upfront.
Sounds pretty par for the course for a parking garage in an upscale part of Boston or DC with a minimum charge.
For convention centers, hospital clinics and other "people who have to come from far away must come directly here and they are likely to have a situation whereby public transit is impractical" type destinations $20 would be cheap.
It's so bad, now when I drive through Manhattan and see an open free parking spot I get a twitch urge to park there immediately. Even though my destination is in Queens...
How many of those are free, since that was the claim? Nothing in Midtown is free, for instance.
If you were to double or triple that number(which is unlikely), that still means the vast majority of parking in NYC is absolutely free of charge. That 3M number also doesn't take into account all of the 'No standing', 'No parking', sidewalks or bike lanes which have been repurposed into parking by people with parking placards, PBA cards, or whatever other miscellaneous artifacts allow drivers to leave their cars wherever they want with impunity[1].
What I find amazing is that people have an expectation of being able to bring a several thousand pound object that is bigger than many NYer's kitchens, into one of the densest parts of the country that is served 24/7 by public transit and for-hire vehicles, and store it for free. Even tourists with tiny suitcases have to pay to store their suitcase somewhere.
[0] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2011/03/22/new-york-has-81875-me...
Yes, they absolutely should. Here in Chicago, a residential street parking permit costs $25 per year per car and allows you to park in a specific zone near your residence. 24-hour permits for visitors are sold in sheets that end up costing just slightly more than 50 cents each. The program more or less brings in revenue to pay for itself but makes getting street parking much more fair.
Oh, I forgot to mention that you cannot buy more then 45 of the 24-hour passes per 30-day period. And that's per address, so if you have roommates or a spouse their purchases are all aggregated together.
There is a real chance this will not have the effect hoped for, or at least not to the intended extent.
Paris also is one of the most congested city in Europe - which this move is actually trying to fix.
Having lived in 'walkable' European cities, I can vouch for them, and I think it benefits the vast majority of people living there.
I'm lucky enough to have a decent job in a fairly rural area and a cheap car that I can easily maintain. At one point I was even a car enthusiast that liked doing modifications. I still think society as a whole should be progressing towards a carless future. Although I'd appreciate it if VR tech was advanced enough to let me drive around in virtual classic cars by that point with feel and smell.
Transit isn’t the only issue.
Public transport in Paris is wonderful, and while there are parts where I still would rather not bike around, cyclist safety is getting much better too. The city is simply adapting to other modes of transport that are better for everyone.
Only someone who never lived in Paris more than two days could ever write this sentence. Paris’ subway is one of the worst in the world (often on strike, technical problems, stink piss, expensive, unsecure especially for ladies, no accessibility, etc.)
When I had choice to take sub for 40 min or walk 40 min to go to the same place, I took walking every time because of how bad public transportation are in Paris.
(There's also buses and bike shares, by the way.)
We probably don't have the same sense of wonderful. It's overcrowded, unsafe and the metro smells horrible.
Now yes, you can live there without owning a car, but I don't call that wonderful.
You know you can do this on foot or on bike too right?
https://cupofjo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/biking-three-...
Part of the idea of a walkable city is that everything you need - nursery, groceries, parks, schools, housing - is within a 15 minute walk.
For the centre of Paris that is easily achievable for many.
https://twitter.com/fietsprofessor/status/684397797358067713
I go a bit more often than I would have done by car, and I've started buying all my meat separately at a local butcher.
But it's amazing how much you can fit into 2 panniers and a rack.
However, that's the sort of legitimate delivery that's actually a lot easier if the roads are not so congested with people driving themselves to work in huge comfortable 4x4s.
I guess these central areas of Paris will become completely unsuitable to families, who will be forced out to suburban areas.
What you can do, is buy or hire a parking garage that already exists. This is possible of course, but expensive. Think 1/3rd of the cost of a family car (either as monthly rent, or as purchase price).
Then factor this into the price you have to pay to own a car, why does everyone need to subsidise car owner's parking?
And if you force the government to inefficiently reserve street space for cars, society has to incur the same costs, except non-car owners are forced to unfairly subsidize car owners by bearing those costs.
There is always land available to buy, €10k per square metre for this property for example: https://tranio.com/france/adt/1928891/
Maybe that's too much to park your car, but land has a cost, why should a car owner be allwoed to store their property on public land for free? Can I build a shed in that space instead?
I can not buy land outside the city to park my car. I can not afford a second car payment to rent a monthly spot. City parking is really my only option to avoid taking public transit and risk getting and spreading COVID.
You didn't need to buy a car and avoid taking public transit to risk getting and spreading COVID. Likely every single one of the places you've gone by car have been more risky than taking the train or bus.
Multiple research articles have found no link between public transport and the spread of COVID, even when looking at places like Seoul and Tokyo where transit use is much higher. The risk of catching COVID is higher at the grocery store than on a bus.
I sympathize with why you thought you needed to do that and I genuinely hope you will dispose of the vehicle once the pandemic is over. Humans are terrible at evaluating risk, and people's sudden impulse to buy a car when that's not where the risk lies is an example of this.
Are you really suggesting that 7% of Chicago's entire land area be given away for free to car owners -- because if everyone owned one car you'd need 1.7 million square feet to park them. That's in addition to the space used for those cars to move around which is at least as much.
If you don't own a car, how can you claim your free space?
Or are you only complaining about on-street parking?
And all the families that currently live high quality loves, without cars, in these places would find your assertion about “can’t have a family without cars” absolutely comical.
For large chunks of the US, top down urban planning has forces people in most areas to own cars. But it doesn’t have to be that way, it was a choice that was made, and a choice that can be changed.
https://priceonomics.com/how-the-world-shops-for-groceries/
I live in NA, but a grocery store is an easy walk, and was on my daily commute in pre-COVID times. This makes me an outlier among North Americans I guess. But it would be the norm for places that allow for car free life.
The following is therefore speculation, but the best I can come up with to try to meet you where you are. Right now, your car based life is so inconvenient and so inefficient, that stopping by a store is something to be minimized, to do as infrequently as possible. So to you, going to the store more than once a week is an inconvenience. You have to drive somewhere special outside of your normal route, park, walk a long distance from the car to the store, wander around a store so large that the idea of stopping and grabbing something quick is almost inconceivable. You likely even have to wait in line, because checking out a single person with a full week of groceries takes many minutes.
Once we allow the possibility of not living with a car, which means all of your daily needs within walking distance, an entirely new world opens up that is much more convenient. There is a smaller, well stocked store along most routes you take. Grabbing groceries for a day or two is not an affair that has an extra half hour of driving and walking. It's a quick hop in and out. You can always have fresh food, because you stop frequently and quickly, without having to wait a week in between trips because to shop more frequently would be wasteful of time. Run out of sugar? No big deal, it's conveniwnt to buy some more.
Once cars are gone and cities are designed around that, everything is more accessible and convenient. I mean, the whole thread started with how life in cities so not need cars, and how having cars in cities ruins life there. And for that matter, much of small town life can be similar to cities, because there, needs can also be within walking distance for a small compact town.
It's only car-based suburbia with highly restricted unmixed land uses that leads to this "I can only go the grocery store once a week" attitude. Life does not have to be that way, people that want it should be able to live like that, and those that don't want it should be able to have walkable lives. Walkable areas mean more accessibility than car-based areas, because stopping does not involve parking.
This is not about "allow[ing] the possibility of not living with a car", all your suggestions increase costs, some increase them a lot. And sure, with unlimited money, I understand that the center of a big city is more luxurious than the suburbs or countryside, this is not controversial. You get to drop the car, which is about 500 dollar per month. But you spend double that on the equivalent apartment (I don't mean equal sized to what you get in the suburbs, I mean the MINIMUM apartment for 5 people)
So yes, costs will need to be comparable, as a basic condition. So using something between a convenience store and a "agent" supermarket is not a serious option, nor is fulfilling every meal by "grabbing something quick", not just from a weight/carrying perspective but from a financial perspective. Making the choice simply based on which is the closest is not a reasonable option either. The problem with a family of 5 is that every cost you have when you are single multiplies by a factor of 3-4, and I'm sure it'll be 5 by the time the kids really get past puberty.
Furthermore, you haven't answered my original question: just simply how to carry it. I assure you a 2-3 day supply of soda for a family of 5 weighs minimum 6kg, and 12kg is better (even that is 3-4 days at best). Carrying this onto public transport, over the sidewalk and/or into an apartment block is supremely uncomfortable. Your suggestions change nothing except making it expensive as well.
Let's take an example: 1 day breakfast + lunchbox + dinner for 2 adults and 3 kids. Take 2 bottles of soda (3kg), 2 cartons of milk (3kg), breakfast cereal (750g), 2 full size breads (750g), something to put on there (700g), vegetables (1.5kg), meat (500-750g), potatoes (2kg), and general supplies (2kg). This is three bags of groceries weighing 15kg. I assure you it definitely won't last 3 days.
How do I comfortably carry this on public transport, and sidewalk, and up a flight of stairs, and you say to carry it on the way home, so in combination with what I carry to work (let's say 5kg) ?
Going once a week, with, say 3 people, carrying something like 20-40kg of groceries, seems vastly more comfortable, attractive, cheaper, easier and faster to me.
This is a common concept in some European cities, with large parking garages directly attached to the subway/train stations.
Kinda like how hot-desking reduces your desk space needs by 30%+.
In my city in The Netherlands, new buildings sometimes get a parking garage below the apartments. The ratio is 1 parking spot for every 3 apartments, and next year it'll be 1:4. But new houses don't get a parking garage below them, because that raises the price of the house too much, or so I was told by an architect employed by the municipality. Thus inhabitants get to fight over the available space in the streets.
Yeah, demand will always consume everything that is free, but as soon as you put a price on something behavior changes.
Owning a car costs money.
When I bought my condominium in the USA, I got two parking spaces in a garage with it. With only 1 car, I rent out the second space. 3 years ago, I could rent it for $350 per month. Now, I can get $200.
Around here, the condominium and the parking space are different tax IDs, so you can buy and sell them independently. A lot of buyers choose not to buy the parking space when they buy the condominium. You should assume that when your local builders are moving from 1:3 to 1:4, they are doing so in response to market demand for parking.
Do note that I just describe the current situation. I do agree with the fact that the amount of cars/parking spots needs to go down, to make a city more liveable.
I don't own a car. I need one, to regularly visit clients and visit family. Thus, I have joined a car sharing initiative. However, it's about equally as expensive as leasing a new family car. I can afford this, but I recognize not everyone can. And I find this recognition is sometimes missing from the discussion.