If you also live in an area where you cannot imagine how you could possibly live without using your car frequently, the prospect of a car-free city sounds a lot like you're being hung out to dry by people who don't care what happens to you.
These reactions are a combination of poor messaging by those affecting change and a failure of a imagination by the car-bound. The first, at least, is avoidable.
Cars as virtue signaling? I'm not quite sympathetic to this case. This person's liberty is causing harm to everyone else and I don't care for their symbol of wealth. I'd like to say, "get off my lawn", were the lawn is actually my city. My liberty of not being polluted by noise and fine particles, and of easily and safely moving on as a pedestrian or biker, and of my earth's climate not being harmed is important as well.
People could have their cars outside the city, reachable with good public transport, so it's not even like they couldn't have their symbol of wealth somewhere.
It would also make sense that people don't have their personal cars in cities. We could have car sharing systems like we have for city bikes, which work great. Most cars sleep most of the times, this doesn't make quite sense. We could have fewer cars achieving the same usefulness with better a organization less focused on the individuals.
Maybe a solution is that the car stops being seen as a symbol of wealth and liberty, and more like a liability / necessary evil, because this also doesn't make sense.
Wanting to look wealthy is already a cursed concept. Why should anyone care that anyone looks wealthy? This is not what's important in life. What you think and what you do matters much more.
Of course, this is a very good point, and this needs to be addressed. To be clear, I'm not arguing with you, I'm agreeing.
Ironic given that driving is not a right—you need a license—and is highly regulated (e.g., insurance), while you can walk and cycle without any of those things.
A cop can stop you in an automobile and ask for all sorts of documents, while doing the same walking or on a bus/tram/subway would probably be against most countries' constitutions.
See the Oh the Urbanity video '“15-Minute City” Conspiracies Have It Backwards':
Not in Canada:
* https://ccla.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Know-Your-Rights...
* https://www.jeffreismanlaw.ca/when-do-you-have-to-identify-y...
* https://collettreadllp.com/know-your-rights/can-you-refuse-t...
Further, you don't have to carry ID and can't get into trouble if you don't have any if walking.
A few years ago a driver making a right-on-red bumped me in the crosswalk with his car. It was reckless but whatever no harm no foul. But then he got out, incorrectly thinking he had the right of way, and demanded my "papers." He was incredulous and furious that I didn't have insurance papers to show him, or thought I was refusing to. He ended up calling 911 about it, though they didn't come.
Ever since then I can't get some questions out my head. Is that really how he thought it worked or was he just flustered? Do other people think like this? This was a middle-aged guy in a suit in a major city's business district, so presumably some sort of professional. Is he good at his job?
Thank you very much for this island of sanity inside this topic’s sea of bewilderment. These comment sections always seem to end with someone up asking: “How could anyone like things I don’t like??” and then a bunch of commenters just shake their heads and conclude “Those poor souls, they don’t know how they are suffering.”
I’m ambivalent about cars. I could take ‘em or leave ‘em. What I won’t compromise on is I will never voluntarily live in a dense urban environment or really any structure with shared walls on shared property, including apartments, condos, townhomes, anything like that. Since affordable detached single family homes can’t really be found right next to the places I need to go, like work and shopping, I am forced to have a car. Or more accurately, my strong preference in housing type necessitates a car.
It’s not that I want my car and like to drive 15 minutes to shopping. My car is a pain in the ass that’s always broken down and driving is dangerous. My car is the price I pay to avoid living in a city.
EDIT: And to be perfectly clear: I am not against cities building themselves toward car-freeness. I support citydwellers making their cities bikeable and walkable! I just don’t want to live there.
I particularly appreciate the point you make about prioritization. When I left school and started working, I lived in an apartment downtown, walked to work, hung out afterward at bars and stuff, and loved it. At that point in my life, I didn't need a car, and was fine. I'm older now. I've lived in an apartment, a townhouse with shared walls, and now a single family home. I've loved every place I've lived because, at the time, it was the right place for me. I want a yard for my dog to run in and my kid to play in, and like you, I wish to prioritize my living structure above all else. Unlike you, I do like my car. The beauty is we're both adults who know how to prioritize our lives and make choices that let us do what we want, and similarly let others live their lives.
Are you willing to pay to account for the externalities that your preferences create? If so, I'm all for it, but let's be real: most folks aren't.
These are definitely preferences that exist, yeah. How do you propose we account for the externalities created by executing on these preferences?
What we need is gradual but rather aggressive pressure against cars that allow cities to adapt their services and layout. Congestion taxes and getting rid of parking are really great first steps.
In the US cars are also a big symbolic thing due to children being pretty much totally incapable of living independent lives until they’re 16 and get a car (or their friends do), also due to aforementioned built environment.
If you try to limit cars without adding better last-mile options (especially in the U.S. where huge portions of the population don't regularly walk even one mile at a time), people can't get anywhere, but if you try to roll out last-mile options without limiting cars, people either don't use them because they can still use cars, or they get hit by cars.
Add to that that everyone seems to feel time-crunched as it is (who do you know who feels like they're getting enough rest and doesn't describe themselves as "busy" any time you ask how things have been?), and the switch from "I could cover a mile in 2 minutes at 30mph vs. 20 mins at 3mph" and no one wants to change.
Getting rid of parking in an area where people need cars is the worst possible early step. If you've ever lived in such an area you'd know the chaos it ensures.
The way to do it is to make alternatives be more attractive. Most people don't actually want to spend the money on cars and insurance and maintenance. So if you build infrastructure to make alternatives be cheaper and easier, lots of people will use them, organically reducing car usage without forcing misery on anyone.
But some people think they need their car because they think they need to move a lot of stuff regularly, for instance between their home and their parents, and their parents don't leave in a place easily reachable without a car. This stuff can include pets, like cats. I think some of these people could do things differently, but maybe some of these people might genuinely have these needs.
Going to work daily to a place that needs a car is another concern. Sometimes at times outside the public transport hours. Very good public transport could mitigate this. But some people might also need to move a lot of stuff (tools, materials) for work, which might be complicated with public transports.
And when you move, public transports won't cut it.
But we could have almost car-free cities that allow these specific cases (possibly with special authorization), addressing most people / most cases with good public transport.
And, precisely, who the f..k are you to think you can JUDGE the needs of other people, and what other people "need" or what they just "think they need"?
That some people having a car could do without is a certitude but I can't know who.
You know, when writing this paragraph, I had a friend in mind for who I think it would be hard. Especially when this friend would prefer not to have one.
Getting to the airport really stood out. I thought of it as a two-hour trip, because I had to walk to a bus, then transfer to a train, then another train, then another bus. It took less than half an hour in a car. As a student, the difference in fare between mass transit and a taxi was enough that I couldn't swing it (dating myself--this was before Uber/Lyft), but I had essentially been trading my time for an extremely low amount of money when I look back at it.
I know a couple who live in SF without a car, as much as a statement as anything else. And I see them making a lot of use of Uber, Zipcar, conventional rentals, and weekend visitors who have a car.
If I booked my flight to campus at the beginning of the school year with a very tight connection somewhere, I could run and make the flight, but my luggage would not. Then they would have to deliver it to me at my dorm in a day or two when it arrived!
I would just pack enough for a couple days in my backpack and wait for my suitcases later!
I wouldn't not want to have access to a car, but if car/truck rental wasn't such a mess, I would be happier without one. (When I bought this place I cut back the 4+ car driveway to two cars and reclaimed a bunch of yard, and it was great. I wish it could've been more!)
I live in a very car-unfriendly city that invests heavily in public transport. Amongst other things, this implies that they don't invest in things like car parking space. Most residents don't have cars and cannot have cars because there are far fewer parking spaces in apartment blocks than the number of people living there. Problems include:
1. My wife (who runs a small service business) is constantly having customers miss appointments and explaining it as "I spent 30 minutes trying to find somewhere to park, failed, and had to return home". Being unable to actually use a business at all because you can't park anywhere isn't an issue you see in most cities, but here it happens all the time. You might wonder why don't they just park on the outskirts and take public transit the rest of the way, and the answer is that train stations don't have much parking either, and at any rate public transport is usually 2x or worse slower than with cars (best case), so often they just don't have enough time in their lunch breaks or after work to do that. With a car friendly city, people can pop out to a local business and back in the time they have available.
2. The city is also very keen on recycling. Bin bags are extraordinarily expensive because they are heavily taxed and it's illegal to use any other kind of bag. Fine for small objects, but what about when it's time to recycle something large like a TV or a carpet? The actual solution they push on you: there are special trams that a few times a year park at certain stops, and then you are expected to just carry the full recycling load down there with your arms. You could also buy a little trolley and use that. Is it raining that day? Maybe you're traveling and away from home? Too bad, wait another 3-4 months or so and keep the junk in your apartment whilst you do so. With a car: put the stuff in your boot and go to a fixed recycling point that's always open. Easy.
3. Car-free cities become completely dependent upon the goodwill of their public transit unions, who then exploit that dependency to earn themselves vast salaries and perks. Tube drivers in London can earn more than senior software engineers and have final salary pensions, even though the job is mostly automated and on many lines consists of pushing a button to move to the next station.
4. Transit systems are very centralized and prone to widespread system failure due to poor maintenance, e.g. if points or signaling fail at a busy junction half the city can grind to a halt. Roads are more robust because cars can normally pull over if they have problems, and people can drive around the rare car that's got stuck in the middle. Roads degrade much more smoothly than railways do.
5. Public transit systems invariably run at a loss because ticket prices are set too low for the actual overheads involved. Roads usually raise more in taxes than they cost to maintain.
6. Obviously, there's all the practical downsides that come from not having a personal space like sometimes not being able to sit together with your family, or sit at all.
Don't get me wrong, there are many positives and conveniences but it's silly to say there are no disadvantages to going all-in on public transport. There are many serious disadvantages which is why cars caught on to begin with.
1. Have a park-and-ride outside the urban area but with good public transport connections. These can have a lot of parking, and (at least where I live) are encouraged by the parking fee being €1 if you then use public transport into the city where cars are slow anyway.
2. Then have better recycling/rubbish systems. Here there are two options: you can call the city and they'll arrange a pickup, or you can wait until a specific day of the week when they do large items. Also, if you order something large (a new TV say) the supplier is obliged to offer to take the previous one away.
3. If they earn such, then they're clearly in sufficient demand, and are providing an important and safety-critical role. They're arguably doing a lot more good for a city than many software engineers.
4. Better maintenance. Unmaintained roads are also bad.
5. There's no problem running at a loss if it improves the overall life and economy of the city. Some places even set the price at free because of the benefits it brings (sadly not mine.)
All this said, you're not wrong in the sense that everything is about tradeoffs. If there were no tradeoffs there wouldn't be a discussion to be had and everyone would use whatever was obviously the best. For myself, I prefer a more liveable city and happily that's the way where I live leans. There's still plenty of driving (to my annoyance sometimes, cars are big, dangerous, and prone to clogging the place up for other modes of transport) but they discourage it by lowering speed limits and restricting through-traffic. So it's possible but less attractive than going by bike or tram or whatever unless you have a special case.
A quick google search [0][1] seems to prove #5 false, specifically the bit about roads bringing in more in taxes than they cost to maintain. The first article is from 2011 and is about the US.
[0] - https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/do-roads-pay-for-themselve... [1] - https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative...
They're totalitarian ploys that will be used to track your every movement and have the government dictate when and where you can go. They're a plot to create new ghettos for "undesireables". They're to take away your freedom of movement. They're completely antithetical to America! Blah blah blah.