Why not go a step further and demand that all roads should be put underground, too, so that pedestrians can enjoy an idle stroll on green meadors above ground without all the annoyances that come from car traffic?
Don’t threaten me with a good time
If car parking is a worthwhile use of space, the market will provide it (and whether below or above ground is beside the point). If it's not, it won't.
> Why not go a step further and demand that all streets should be put underground, too, so that pedestrians can enjoy an idle stroll on green meadors above ground without all the annoyances that come from car traffic?
It's a good idea, but we probably have to get there incrementally.
In Germany, until recently the costs for a residential parking spot were capped at strong 35€/year or so.
The actual "market value" of the equivalent space in cities is often around 4000-6000€/year.
Getting cars out of cities and using the space more efficiently for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport is not only a way to drastically improve safety and quality of life in cities, but also a smart economical choice (and no, building tunnels like Musk dreams of it, isn't the solution to this problem).
Roads? Sure! Stroads, too (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroad)
... and 95% of that time there were no cars parked in the street
> pedestrians can enjoy an idle stroll on green meadows ...
Pedestrians like walking on paved streets as well.
Please don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that cars should be banned.
Cars are super useful! Cars are useful when you need to pick someone up who is ill, if you need to transport heavy stuff, when the city workers need to collect trash, etc. In all these scenarios it would be nice if the streets weren't crowded with parked cars.
So my suggestion is to remove street parking, turn the streets into shared zones where you can stop your car anywhere for 15 minutes (enough time for picking people up and dropping them off, or for delivering stuff, or for transporting heavy stuff), and where pedestrians, bikes, and cars can travel at reasonable speeds to get wherever they need.
It would actually be nicer for most drivers -- if you park long term, you drive into a garage, if it's just a quick stop, you stop right in front of the house that you need to get to.
I'll do you one better!
Since the cars are going to be electric, why not put charging inside the road, so that the car would charge while rolling?
In fact, we can forgo the battery entirely, making the cars lighter, by powering them through the road!
While we're at that, we could allow cars going to the same destination to link to each other to optimize traffic.
Oh, and we could also reduce rolling friction by putting these vehicles on rails.
There you go, we could do much better with underground roads on which electric vehicles roll on rails in metropolitan areas.
We could call these system metros.
Ah, if only such utopian dreams could be implemented. I guess we'll never see it in our lifetimes.
That's called subway.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/bike-blog/2011/jun/1...
Like a subway. Throw in some bicycles or e-scooters for the last ~200 meters.
I jest but people handle shopping in a myriad of ways, if you live somewhere with good transit it's really not an issue.
The Big Shop is a bit of a symptom of suburbia's unavailability problem anyway, since it's such a pain in the butt to get groceries I would optimize it all into one big shop with the car. It's really similar to living remotely, I used to live in rural Aus and the closest shops where a town over, so you drove half an hour or so to get your groceries.
Living in the city, you do more shops but less per shop, and it is totaly managable on foot with good transit or by bike with good panniers/bags.
Costs 0€ if you're not a stickler about the delivery window and order for at least 50€ at a time.
Then again, I've lived within walking distance of a supermarket most of my life, so I just go shop groceries every other day or so.
Honestly, it’s even easier than doing it by car; I don’t even have to deal with hauling bags out of the trunk, I just roll up to my refrigerator and unpack everything right in the kitchen.