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Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

It is, though the problem predates the cars. At the time cars were seen as a huge win over the vast piles of horse poop.

Cities do need to be reconsidered for more public transit and more opportunities to walk, but other issues (delivery, emergency, disability, etc) have to figure in.

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There was a time in between, where electric streetcars (trains) were a common mode of transport. But those got torn up for cars. That’s a real tragedy in hindsight.

That's the myth. Streetcars were actually torn up because busses were much cheaper, there was no conspiracy. The streetcars were also old and cold and ppl hated them.

(I lived in a streetcar part of SF, and loved it, fwiw. But the only reason it's still there is a tunnel.)

That is a statement that really needs citation and qualification to back it up. I'd argue that 'cheaper' is used in a vacuum here. By that I mean that the point of mass transit isn't how much it costs, but how much value it provides. By that measure the bus services that replaced streetcars and other mass transit really doesn't stack up. Busses have led to much lower ridership which has led to a massive amount of bad secondary effects. Looking at how congestion pricing in NYC has increased mass transit use AND economic activity it is pretty clear that 'cheaper' has led to secondary effects that far outweigh any narrow operational gains from switching to busses.

So… it kind of made sense at the time (if you ignored a couple of factors which didn’t become obvious until much later, and which ultimately made it a disaster), and it’s not just an American thing. In 1928, Dublin had 28 tramlines. By 1950, it had zero, with the tram routes being replaced by bus routes (many older Dublin Bus routes basically follow old tram routes even today). It didn’t have trams again til 2004; today it has two lines.

But _at the time_, buses were very competitive with trams; there wasn’t all that much other road traffic, so they weren’t really slower (and they could use the tram lines, while they existed, as a right of way), the trams of the time were non-articulated, so buses had similar or higher capacity, and they were more flexible. It’s easy to see how it happened, and it only became apparent that there was a problem when it was far too late to reverse.

There are really two problems with buses vs trams; buses are slow when there is lots of other traffic, and, _with modern articulated trams_, higher total capacities are achievable (one of Dublin’s modern tramlines has trams that take over 400 people with a frequency of under 3 minutes between trams at peak, which is a level of capacity that you just can’t really get with buses). Neither of these were factors when the first-generation trams died.

Very few tram systems worldwide actually survived from the early 20th century to today; while there are lots of trams today, most are second-generation systems put in from the 80s on.

The citation is every American transit system in the 1950s. Even SF only kept the streetcars where they couldn't replace with a bus line.

I think you're making a different argument, where trains attract a more well-heeled commuter. Which is why many cities have brought back LRT as part of a redevelopment plan.

The argument I am making is that you can only say something was cheaper if it provided the same level of service or better for less money. In the case of the bus transition it provided worse service as indicated by utilization dropping. I am also making the argument that evaluating the value of transit shouldn't rest entirely on the cost of that service and ridership but on the value as a whole it brings to a city. I mentioned NYC because the evidence there (and in other cities that have implemented congestion pricing) is that as ridership goes up the economic, environment, and social health of a city also goes up. Point being, the bus transition had a very negative value impact. I will also add a final argument, as your ridership drops things like busses may appear less costly per ride simply because you are loosing volume and low volume routes are likely easier to service by bus so, again, cheaper but not an apples to apples comparison.

Yes, I like trains and wish we had better transit. I'm responding to the claim streetcars were "torn up for cars", which was not really the case (and frequently subject to a conspiracy theory).

Trains are expensive upfront, which might favor buses when expanding into new areas. But if the infrastructure is already there, a train line will always be more economical in the long run than the equivalent bus line.

So ripping out existing serviceable train tracks is stupid (or alternatively: evil) if you think in the long term.

As I said in another post, train tracks don't last forever and are expensive to replace. And trains really only benefit from dedicated ROW, a streetcar is worse than a bus in many respects. (Except appeal.) People back in the 1950s were not stupid or evil, they made a decision which made a lot of sense at the time.

Establishing a new bus service in an area where public transportation had not existed must be indeed much cheaper.

However it is impossible for the operational and maintenance costs for a bus service and for the roads on which the buses go to be cheaper than for an electric streetcar, unless some prices are fake.

It is true that I have seen enough cases where electric streetcars have been replaced by buses, but I cannot see other explanation except bribes, because it was extremely visible that the buses were more expensive, both because of the fuel consumption and because of the much more frequent repairs both for the buses and for the roads.

It's interesting, in San Francisco, the streetcars got too heavy for the old tracks so they replaced them with about 4 feet deep of concrete. That is actual infrastructure and not "fake". (along with all the stops and handicap ramps and etc. obviously, a paved street is going to exist either way.)

Bribes and the mafia may have been a factor[0], but that's how American cities do things.

[0] eg. https://www2.startribune.com/streetcars-buses-minneapolis-st...

Many other places just... upgraded the trams.

You know, the less radical solution.

A bus is the least radical thing IMO, but yeah it took too long in most of USA to get some mass transit better than streetcars.

Let's be real here, a huge chunk of car traffic in cities is purely for convenience.

Once that's reduced by say, 50%, everything becomes much better, but nobody gives up convenience voluntarily.

The problem is that, among casualties, you create an environment that is hostile for families and disabled people.

> an environment that is hostile for families

I don't understand this part, I read it quite often but... well, we are a family with young children, and although we do have a car we only use it once a week to go to the grand-parents that live 100 km away from here.

A city with less cars is great especially for families (though I would argue that cities themselves are not so great for children, but the comparison here is between cities that are car-centric or that are not). It makes going out easier and more spontaneous.

It's much less of a hassle to hop in the cargo bike and go wherever (including stopping en route if you see something interesting) than having to use the car, sit in traffic, hope you can find parking space at your destination, and pay for it.

I have very two kids, plan to have three. Cargo bikes are not practical, are easily stolen, and are not safe to transport children, especially under 6 years old. Besides, when doing groceries for 5 once a week, I regularly fill my 500L car boot, so an equivalent cargo bike with at least 3 seats and a large boot... would just be a car. Which you have, and use once a week.

Or when you need to go to the doctor. Or when your wife is sick. Or if you have an urgency. So, as a family, you still need a car.

Well I just have the reverse experience. My cargo bike is practical, has not been stolen yet and up to four children under 6 are fine to transport in it. I don't feel it especially unsafe.

I also use it for groceries. Sometimes using both the cargo bike and a bike trailer (on two different bikes). We don't buy nearly at many things though it seems. When I do use my car (doing groceries while the children are with the grandparents) I have to transfer them from the car to the bike anyway because I can rarely park close to my home.

My doctor (and my wife's doctor) is certainly easier to reach by foot than by car. And I guess I never have the kind of urgency that would require me to use a car in the city. If there's something urgent a bike is always faster in this city.

People only look at extremes for this. Using your car less is still a win. We don't need to go to "you shouldn't use your car at all".

In the 60s, Dutch anti-car protestors had the slogan "Stop the child murder!". People were used to traditional cities where children could safely cycle around, but then cars came and started killing them.

If there are fewer cars on the road, there is a lot less traffic, and driving because much easier for those who are car-dependent. Example: the Netherlands.

Netherlands have as many cars as most the developed nations.

Yes, but they're used less frequently. Most middle class people have a car, but they're often only used for irregular trips. Commuting and errands use alternative means at much higher rates than elsewhere.

Point is, they still need cars if they have them. And Netherlands are very far from Paris, infrastructure-wise. In Paris, for instance, leaving your cargo or e-bike outside for the night means finding nothing when you wake up (I got two bikes stolen already, and they were the cheapest available).

The topic of the original post is air pollution. Unused cars don't cause air pollution. The topic of this thread is inconveniencing the disabled. Unused cars don't cause traffic that inconveniences the disabled.

Paris tackled the problem by making it very hard to own a car. It's the same for Amsterdam, too. We all hate pollution, it's just that the solutions available in the Dutch countryside are a bit different than in Paris.

Your "point" doesn't exist. You're essentially attempting to equate the transit situation in the US with the Netherlands, which is plain ridiculous.

That’s not a given. Nobody here is talking about outright bans on all vehicles. Limited access for taxis and commercial use is a thing. Buses can be built with wheelchair access. Etc.

And with less space reserved for cars and only cars, there’s more space for wide/accessible sidewalks. Less chance of being run over by a car. Less air and noise pollution.

Well if you have less space for cars, parking spots are more expensive as a result. In Paris it's around a year of living wage. And currently, sidewalks are getting smaller due to the need to build bicycle lanes.

My initial post was that in Paris, they removed cars but did not improve public transports, so buses are overcrowded and hostile to strollers.

People with disabilities gets a special pass that allow them to park on special parking places that are reserved for them.

i'm not sure this is true, for instance NYC ranks as the second most disabled-friendly city

https://www.amny.com/lifestyle/new-york-city-ranks-2nd-in-a-...

Surprising, considering the NYC subway has been ignoring the ADA as much as possible.

What else do you expect when elevators are 100M apiece

In Paris, 90% of the metro transportation system isn't accessible to wheelchairs and strollers. Buses are overcrowded and slow. Who doesn't enjoy to see someone cough on their newborn while fighting for a space for their stoller ?

Buses are perfectly accessible in Paris. They are crowded but acceptably so for a city of 10 millions. It’s not fair to expect the collectivity to accept the externalities of cars so rich people can avoid some slight discomfort.

Paris is not a city of 10 millions, it has only two million habitants. And cars are not reserved to rich people, why would they be? I grew up in Paris, my parents weren't rich, we were living in public housing and we had a car.

Families are not second-tier citizens, and currently the public transports are not suited for them. On top of the other problems, such as the pleasure of having to deal with crackheads and various homeless people in the metro when you have a baby.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris

When it comes to traffic and urban planning, Paris is best understood as a city of 10+ million people. The administrative subdivision called Paris has only ~2 million people, but the city doesn't end at its borders.

Yes, however there is little urban planning for whole metro, and the administrative level we are talking about here is the intra-muros one. When the mayor decided to reduce the speed on the outer loop, she didn't notify nor discussed with the rest of the metro, for instance. And the measures discussed in the article are specific to Paris.

> Yes, however there is little urban planning for whole metro

Paris biggest infrastructure project for the past 20 years is called "Grand Paris" and revolve entirely around the whole metro. Actually there is literally no urban planning not involving the whole metro. And yes, lowering the speed limit involved multiple consultations with the prefect and the region because it impacts the whole metro.

Considering Paris without its metropole doesn’t make sense. Paris intra-muros is ridiculously small, one eightieth of London, 80% of San Francisco.

Le Grand Paris...mostly doesn't involve Paris, as it's a new metro loop around it.

Besides, what your say about the speed limit is false, the mayor didn't wait for the State's answer and decided unilaterally. The State and the region didn't agree with her: https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2024/09/09/anne-hid... https://www.lepoint.fr/politique/la-region-ile-de-france-ref...

You can consider as much as you want, it is not unified. The result is that Paris has an anti-car policy, but the neighboring towns are very pro-car, creating a system where Parisians can't own one, but have to bear their neighbor's who use them to get into the city.

Le Grand Paris is the loop and the prolongation of all the inner lines deserving it. It very much involves Paris as its name implies.

> Besides, what your say about the speed limit is false, the mayor didn't wait for the State's answer and decided unilaterally. The State and the region didn't agree with her: https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2024/09/09/anne-hid...

The article you quote says the opposite of what you pretend. I invite you to read the paragraph "Une décision sous le contrôle de l’Etat, rappelle le ministère". It explains in details than the mayor could do nothing without the state agreeing to it.

> You can consider as much as you want, it is not unified.

It is unified. The city and its suburb are one economic unit. Where do you think all the service workers live? You have to be an extremely narrow minded inner city dweller to fail to see this.

> creating a system where Parisians can't own one, but have to bear their neighbor's who use them to get into the city.

I kindly invite you to check the average salary of Paris inhabitants vs the one in the suburbs then take a minute to think about what you just wrote.

> Families are not second-tier citizens, and currently the public transports are not suited for them.

My family and the dozens I see every day in the Paris public transports beg to differ.

I suggest you might be a bit prejudiced (well more than a bit to be fair).

Only if you just remove the cars without replacing them with good public transportation (family friendly, accessible, with special modes for disabled people).

Which doesn't exist and is hardly possible in Paris.

I can assure you that there are disabled people who really don’t like car oriented environments since so many disabilities preclude driving.

Shocker, both disabled people and families are easily identifiable and can be exempt from such measures.

Well, they aren't exempt. Many French greens will tell you anyway that having children is bad for the planet and that you should abstain. And, as our population grows older, the accessibility problem will be larger and larger.

The Greens have less than 7% of the places in the French Parliament.

A lot of car drivers will respond with “good” and Darwinian arguments about their lack of fitness for the harshness of life.

Emergency response times go down in almost any case where car use is restricted. In the Netherlands emergency vehicles take bike lane shortcuts because people on bikes can move out of the way more easily. In New York, congestion pricing reduced the response times of emergency services.

Disability needs an annotations for only specific disabilities that don't inhibit driving. Which is a small subset of disabilities.

Delivery of most things can be done with small cars/trucks.

Just like the promise of EVs to replace the exhaust from ICE cars is seen as a win.

Those "other issues" are all worse with private cars than without.

Not just horse poop, but dead horses that were quite the chore to remove back in the day, and the danger posed to pedestrians by a bunch of quite large and easily panicked animals.

We still have that danger. But the animals are homo sapiens and they are surrounded by 2 tonnes of metal. :)

One of the early examples of the Poisson distribution was the rate at which soldiers in the Prussian army would be fatally kicked by horses.

Translates to a little over 30 deaths per year per million, so not a lot, though I suspect the number would have been much greater adjusted for distance travelled and even without that it's more than some countries achieve with their traffic.

This is true, but from the perspective of the time, automobiles were far from "2 tons of metal" and quite a bit slower. They were also a rich man's conveyance, even more so than a nice carriage, and I doubt people understood early on just how widely adopted the automobile would become.

A lack of foresight is also very human.

>A lack of foresight is also very human.

Let's call it what it really is. The stubborn unwillingness to consider scalability in our designs and planning — even in an era where a machine can do calculation for us.

They were also seen as a safety win [1][2]. Horses and horse drawn carts were a lot more dangerous than most people here probably think they were.

From the second link:

> It is easy to imagine that a hundred years ago, when cars were first appearing on our roads, they replaced previously peaceful, gentle and safe forms of travel. In fact, motor vehicles were welcomed as the answer to a desperate state of affairs. In 1900 it was calculated that in England and Wales there were around 100,000 horse drawn public passenger vehicles, half a million trade vehicles and about half a million private carriages. Towns in England had to cope with over 100 million tons of horse droppings a year (much of it was dumped at night in the slums) and countless gallons of urine. Men wore spats and women favoured outdoor ankle-length coats not out of a sense of fashion but because of the splash of liquified manure; and it was so noisy that straw had to be put down outside hospitals to muffle the clatter of horses’ hooves. Worst of all, with horses and carriages locked in immovable traffic jams, transport was grinding to a halt in London and other cities.

> Moreover, horse-drawn transport was not safe. Road traffic deaths from horse-drawn vehicles in England and Wales between 1901 and 1905 were about 2,500 a year. This works out as about 70 road traffic deaths per million population per year which is close to the annual rate of 80 to 100 deaths per million for road traffic accidents in the 1980s and 1990s, although we must not forget that many people who died from injuries sustained in road accidents in 1900 would probably have survived today thanks to our A&E departments.

> Motor vehicles were welcomed because they were faster, safer, unlikely to swerve or bolt, better able brake in an emergency, and took up less room: a single large lorry could pull a load that would take several teams of horses and wagons – and do so without producing any dung. By World War One industry had become dependent on lorries, traffic cruised freely down Oxford Street and Piccadilly, specialists parked their expensive cars ouside their houses in Harley and Wimpole Street, and the lives of general practitioners were transformed. By using even the cheapest of cars doctors no longer had to wake the stable lad and harness the horse to attend a night call. Instead it was ‘one pull of the handle and they were off’. Further, general practitioners could visit nearly twice as many patients in a day than they could in the days of the horse and trap.

[1] https://legallysociable.com/2012/09/07/figures-more-deaths-p...

[2]https://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/10/31/cars-and-horse...

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