Public. Transit.
Cars will always be a perpetually morphing problem whose repetitively common theme is "too few people moved per unit area".
De-prioritize cars. Re-prioritize walkable, bikable, and train-accessible cities.
Cars will always be a perpetually morphing problem whose repetitively common theme is "too few people moved per unit area".
De-prioritize cars. Re-prioritize walkable, bikable, and train-accessible cities.
Non-car centric development.
The Oh the Urbanity channel has a video on the (misguided) idea that "urban living" = Manhattan / Hong Kong apartment blocks:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E
Want a front yard, back yard, and garage (attached to a laneway)? Plenty of that was built pre-WW2:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=1m8s
Examples (Streetview):
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/125+Hampton+Ave,+Toronto,+...
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O...
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/70+Jackman+Ave+Toronto,+ON
See also:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6txCZpbsQ&t=9m28s
Fifteen minutes pedalling in one direction is downtown, fifteen minutes in the other is farm land.
Most kids in european cities go to school themselves from a certain age onwards, in my case that was after kindergarden, elswhere it might be a few years later, depending on the regional culture.
Current public transport is like transport belts in Factorio. Fixed routes. This works ok in a simple old-fashioned economy (a few large employers, large hubs where everyone goes to the same place).
What we need is a more flexible, on-demand model of public transport. Something like logistic bots in Factorio. Lots of small people-movers which go direct from point to point, on demand. Buses and trains were already obsoleted by cars and can only survive by targeted anti-car policy.
Some kind of taxi (which would need to be automated to be at all economical for regular use) or electric scooter hire is the next stage of evolution.
Logistic bots do require a lot of energy, but that's the nature of progress.
It works just fine in new-fashioned economies as well because good public transit is made of networks and criss cross.
As an example, even in the middle of the night, the majority of Toronto's population has public transit available just a short walk away:
> Then in 2005, several routes were added so that east–west service would run on every grid street instead of alternate ones in much of the city. This has brought the Blue Night Network up to a total of 24 routes, serving 97% of the city's population within a 15-minute walk.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Night_Network
Stumble out of a bar at 3 AM? You can take the bus/streetcar home.
During the day the network is much more extensive, with more routes operating, so most people probably have to walk <10 minutes to get to a route (some routes though having more frequent service than others).
Rural areas are rural. One car or truck every mile or so isn't the problem we're talking about here. It's the hundred cars per mile chokepoints that are the issue.
Where? In France most people would take the train to travel a long distance (2h+ drive). I can be in Paris in 2 hours at 320km/h using the high-speed train whereas it would take me 6 hours at 130km/h using a car. Not counting the nightmare of going through the Parisian périphérique.
- Toulouse: 4h by train, 5h30 by car
- Nice: 5h30 by train, 5h by car
- Strasbourg: 4h15 by train, 5h15 by car
- Le Havre: 5h05 by train, 7h by car
- Nantes: 4h50 by train, 6h45 by car
Closer to 4h30 by car, although the train does drop you off directly in Part-Dieu. Still, this doesn't take into account the need to go to the train station.
>Nantes: 4h50 by train, 6h45 by car
From personal experience, I can promise you that 6h45 is horribly optimistic.
But really, that only furthers the point: Lyon is the second biggest city in France, and it's more or less equivalent to take the car to get there, with farther places slowly winning out on time. That's _dreadful_.
Planes are best for longer distances, and some sort of personal transportation is best for short distances.
Public transit is also called mass transit, which gives a better idea of what the service is about. Traffic is a necessary evil. It's not valuable in itself but only as a means to an end. Mass transit works best in urban areas, where it maximizes throughput while minimizing the space wasted for traffic. The resulting urban topology is different from that arising from individual modes of transport. Instead of a grid of streets, you get a network of walkable neighborhoods. And much less traffic per person.
Why?? Cities like Berlin work perfectly fine with a massive public transport network, you get to almost anywhere in 30-45 minutes (except for the most far away places).
I don't need point-to-point on demand, I just need to be able to get into public transport in 5-10 minutes and get through the network to destination B in 30-45 minutes. That moves a lot of people efficiently, there's no need for this hyper-individualisation of transportation...
Useful systems have huge positive externalities that can't be captured by charging passengers at a rate that reflects those benefits (I'm not sure if this is due to a free-loader effect, irrationality on the passengers part or something else).
I think the only systems that have profited on scale commensurate with their benefits are those that were a real estate play, eg.: the Metropolitan Line[1] in London, Los Angeles trams, Hong Kong subways. I might be wrong about these examples, either due to misremembering or to falling to a just-so story.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro-land
Edit: formatting.
Edit 2: The point, I think, is that if you rely on direct profits for the transport system you give up on huge benefits and accept huge costs across society.
You do realize that the traffic will be moving at the speed of walking then, or ?
And mixing people with bikes and cars is a bad idea.
walkable paths do not usually overlap with cars/bicycle lane/bus lanes.
but they are very effective to reduce the use of vehicles for routine activities (grocery, schools, catching public transport, meeting friends, going out for a drink, etc.)
Also traffic speed is actually not that relevant, in Rome, where I live, most of the time cars move at an average speed lower than 10 km/h, the real issue is avoiding congestions, not making cars move faster.
15-20 km/h is more than enough to do what you have to do in a reasonable time.
where I live in Rome to reach the station I can either take the subway (5 stops, 11 minutes), the bus (~20-25 minutes), a cab (~15-20 minutes) or my car ~30-35 minutes and forget about parking it.
fast tracks for cars can be moved outside of the city, like the great ring around Rome.
You don't understand. They see this as a feature.
They will not be happy until everyone (except them) is living in Kowloon and eating bugs. Individual mobility and autonomy is a problem to be solved, not a solution to be sought.
You can get from The Battery to Inwood Hill Park (opposite ends of Manhattan) in an hour or less without a car. After you exit the terminal, no extra parking step needed. No car insurance. No gas. Just individuals mobilizing to their destinations with greater autonomy.
A car definitely takes longer and leaves you fixated on driving rather than reading a book, browsing the news, or streaming a TV show, especially at 5pm.