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Comment by david2ndaccount | Hacker News Reader

Part of the problem is you can’t just convert an area to a pedestrian area as people still need to be able to get there. You need to construct low cost parking garages around the area so people can still get there.

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Comments like this make me appreciate living in a city that has a pretty comprehensive public transport coverage, and where bicycling is at least tolerable. The city you describe seems to be only usable by car.

Many cities in the US are only usable by car. You can’t just leap from a car-based city to a non-car-based city, you have to provide transitionary options (also even car-optional cities still have parking garages).

Absolutely, and while the transition is probably desirable, it'll take a long time. And yes, of course there's in fact still too much car traffic around here, and parking garages exist in great numbers.

What it takes is tearing down large swaths of current car infrastructure and the buildings surrounding it. Eg. Seattle tearing down the viaduct a few years back

Which is what it took to turn American cities into car based to begin with.

That's not a great example, because Seattle spent kajillions of dollars on a ridiculous tunnel under the city to replace the viaduct AND THEN built a second ground-level highway on the newly available delightful waterfront space. Seattle's way of getting rid of the viaduct is a colossal waste of money and years of work for a terrible shitty result that is 1000% car based. A giant failure.

I don't think it's a _complete_ waste. It's better than it was before, but, it's absolutely true it could've been done much, much better than what we got.

Sure, but many cities in the world are not in the US.

Somehow many cities took the leap from extremely pedestrian friendly in 1900 to completely car based, so "you can't just" is clearly not true. It just takes a lot of willpower, or in the case of cars, tons of lobbying.

Don't forget a huge post-war economic boom, plus a bunch of racism and white flight.

Having just returned from Europe I feel like the public transportation options are so much better.

On the flip side, Amsterdam is great, but I felt like I was constantly dodging bicycles.

There's currently very little incentive to pedestrianize actual problem cities from all concerned parties. Because pedestrians are still largely able to bike, walk, bus etc just fine. And drivers are largely able to commute/park just fine.

We need to be honest that the folks most concerned (rightfully so) with urban car congestion are wealthy upper class people who moved TO the cities for their upperclass nature. Should we totally upend one of these groups in an attempt to solve an unsolvable problem for both groups?

Bit of rambling but I am fascinated by this problem.

> Because pedestrians are still largely able to bike, walk, bus etc just fine.

I don’t see how that’s true for most cities in the USA.

For walking, in many cases, there isn’t even a sidewalk for pedestrians to use. If there is, crossing stroads is way more difficult (large distances between crossing opportunities) and dangerous (e.g. no pedestrian islands halfway) than needed.

Same goes for biking. If there is a bike lane, you still have two ton vehicles buzzing sometimes inches away from you at twice or three times your speed. The smallest intersection scares me. Turning left requires me to come to a complete stop and wait for a chance to change lanes and turn. It's equivalent to crossing the street on foot. When I arrive, I have to search for a bike rack. My nearest grocery store has one rack for five bicycles tucked in the far corner of the plaza (I have never seen a bike parked there, however). My favorite coffee shop has no bike racks anywhere on the street, so I lock up to a sign in the parking lot.

There's no way to escape this as my house is flanked by two stroads. I hear constant traffic sounds well into the night. I live in a beautiful old neighborhood that predates the Ford Model T. I've seen pictures of ox-driven carriages rolling by historical downtown buildings. We had a cable car that ran down one of the current stroads. My city could drastically drop car dependency if we had the will.

I recently needed to book a hotel in a medium-sized town. There is a shuttle I need to get to leaving on one side of the road, and three different hotels on the other side, immediately across from the shuttle stop. I can’t book any of those hotels because this “Main Street” is 6 lanes, there are no crosswalks for 1 mile in either direction, and the sidewalk on the 3-hotel side doesn’t exist (the only way to get to any of those hotels appears to be to drive).

Whereas if I was in a car I could turn left from the 3-hotels’ lot into the lot where the shuttle is stopping in under 1/4 mile. It’s absurd when you can drive for 1/4 mile or walk for 2.

Your class narrative is not a real world scenario.

In many countries (including USA and EU) working class people are pushed out of the cities and into suburbs or satellite cities as the inner city prices are simply to high and they cannot afford rent. This is doubly true for people with kids or otherwise large families. If they still work in the city, they are simply forced to commute. Thankfully many cities have adequate public transit systems so they are not always forced to buy a second or a third car for the household (notable exception here is the Sunbelt in the USA) and move even further away to an even cheaper house to be able to afford that.

It would be a simple narrative if in place of the poor folks moving out of the city, rich folks would be moving in. But that is not the case. In many cases these houses are filled by AirBnB, short term rentals, or simply left vacant by a landlord hoping to rent at a higher price.

Most working class people that I know and commute to work by driving would love to be able to leave their car at home and commute with a bus or rail. For them driving to work saves might save them over an hour a day in commute time, time they would rather spend with their family then waiting at a bus transfer. If they could park their car at a nearby park and ride and save even more time, they would. For them, they are not commuting just fine, they are indeed very annoyed at not having a better option.

I don’t have the stats, but would be very surprised if the number of airbnbs, short terms, and vacant apartments was more meaningful than the number of wealthy folks moving in. But if it were the case, it’s somewhat fair to assume it’s the wealthy that own those properties. So I think you agree with GP more than disagree.

As the price of rent/mortgage increases, this becomes irrelevant. I may be wrong about AirBnB but if low income people are priced out of a city, and middle income people move in instead, however the price of housing is such that after rent/mortgage payment the middle income folks have about the same disposable income as the displaced people, the dynamics end up being the same, and the only difference to the class dynamics is that low income workers can now blame gentrification for their struggles.

The only rich folks in the gentrification scenario are still the landlords, and honestly I don’t think they are moving to the city and complaining about too much parking. (though I admit I agree with GP that they are probably the ones that are complaining about congestion and lack of parking)

I never understood why you can’t do this to say 10% of city roads. That way there’s still car accessibility and you can continue to grow public transit, as well. Personally I think the majority of roads should be reclaimed to pedestrians and tracked rail cars. The only exception would be street-local deliveries/residents can enter and drive at say 3mph yielding to all pedestrians.

People literally took to the streets (ironic, I know) when they tried this in London, UK

SOME people did, yes. Others quietly enjoyed the improvements. Things seem to be moving in the right direction, despite the usual reactionary noises.

I read that no councillor had suffered at the ballot box for their pro-LTN news. Which suggests it's a noisy minority.

A vocal minority, who largely lived outside of London.

converting an area is hard, but a street is easy. we don't need to pedestrianize whole city centers, just pick the streets where it makes sense. cars don't need every street. people are perfectly willing to walk a block if that's their only option. if you close a street to cars, people will park on the next street over and walk.

the street parking in front of a business is never enough for all the patrons of that business anyways, people are usually parking and then walking 1-2 blocks to get where they're going. removing the street parking in front of a business only removes the hope of finding that perfect parking space.

This sounds like the worst of both worlds. We should ban on-street parking regardless.

> Part of the problem is you can’t just convert an area to a pedestrian area as people still need to be able to get there. You need to construct low cost parking garages around the area so people can still get there.

From what I've seen pedestrian area conversion typically includes perimeter parking.

A interesting case similar to conversion to exclude cars, is the conversion of very old places to have cars. Guanajuato, MX was built up in the 1500's. For the majority of the old town residences and businesses alike are inaccessible by car. The city did convert some major roads, creeks and mines to roads, but parking for many is relatively distant.

[Edit, update from state to city of Gto]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guanajuato_(city)

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g150799-i726-k1701090-...

Yes you can. There is usually enough parking around the area and just having a basic bus usually already leads to far more use of the area. And if there is really not enough parking, then there is a commercial reason to build it.

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