Can a city really ban cars from its streets? (2014)

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140204-can-a-city-really-go-car-free?

by antr • 11 years ago

150 208 11 years ago

polarix• 11 years ago

If this were actually doing as the title suggests, it would demolish the possibility for any personal DIY projects that require heavy equipment/materials. Indeed, bulk home goods and appliance sales companies should be up in arms.

Luckily, they're just trying to make it possible to get around without cars, not illegal to use cars, which is likely to dramatically increase the possibility for lightweight cooperative social interactions.

stuart78• 11 years ago

I'm generally a fan of anything to remove cars from the city center, it is really an improvement and transitions us from the inefficiency of single-occupant transportation to group movements. As you point out, it also introduces logistical complexities for downtown residents, but when everybody is in the same situation it is perhaps easier to build comprehensive solutions.

knorby• 11 years ago

It would be pretty nice if roads were such that things like deliveries, various public transit, and taxi/car sharing options were the only allowed options as far as cars go. If the roads become uncongested, and parking is no long a major use of cities, a lot of the existing uses for cars would disappear.

_delirium• 11 years ago

In most areas, even pedestrianized streets allow delivery and residents' vehicles (sometimes also taxis), at certain times of the day at least. In some cases any vehicle is allowed as long as it watches for pedestrians, and travels at a speed safe for a mixed-use road (meaning 5-20 km/hr or so, depending on road size and congestion). Sometimes the arrangement is called a "living street" if that's the explicit design goal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_street

In central Copenhagen a number of streets are like that, so you often see delivery vehicles slowly making their way through. But most cars that don't need to drive right into the city center will avoid it and take one of the more major roads that bypasses the city center. So it gets most of the cars out of the city center by just incentivizing them to take a faster route, and allows/requires the remaining ones to share the road on an equal basis with other users.

jrs992• 11 years ago

it is hard to imagine right now, but if you made cars completely illegal except for maybe emergency vehicles, i do believe that we would see a lot of creative solutions pop up for transporting bulk items or large items like furniture.

TillE• 11 years ago

In Berlin (where not everybody owns a car), it's quite common to see people walking out of the hardware store with large planks of wood balanced over their shoulder, or sometimes in a bike trailer. People manage.

And yes, obviously you still need to allow commercial delivery vehicles. There's really no alternative to that.

bweitzman• 11 years ago

A plank of wood or two is fine to carry, but what if you need to move something heavier like a refrigerator or a piece of furniture? It's ridiculous to think that people should have to carry that stuff by hand or on bicycles over distances of multiple miles.

I think it's more feasible that we ban personal vehicles in cities while still allowing commercial and emergency vehicles. Even allowing these vehicles, we'd probably be able to reduce most roads to single lane one way streets.

easytiger3• 11 years ago

It is an ambitious idea, but city officials obviously feel that the personal motorcar does not fulfill a function that walking, biking and taking public transport cannot.

Except fucking over the people who actually live there for the benefit of people who exist there transiently.

darkstar9993• 11 years ago

What? The plan provides car-free routes between desitnations, how does that fuck anyone over?

CalRobert7• 11 years ago

Can you explain? I live in the middle of a city and have no car, and would feel delighted, not fucked over, if cars were banned (or made to pay extremely steep usage fees) in the city center.

baddox4• 11 years ago

I live in the middle of a city and have no car, and would feel delighted, not fucked over, if cars were banned

That doesn't seem to contradict the parent claim. You're saying you would be fine with banning something that you already don't use. A more relevant criticism would be if you did have a car in a city but still wouldn't mind cars being banned.

7Z7• 11 years ago

Who in this case is the one living there, and who is the one existing transiently?

Seems more likely that cyclists are local and motorists are not, no?

jessaustin• 11 years ago

'easytiger, when HN voters can't comprehend your writing, they downvote. While it's pretty clear to this somewhat-experienced reader of English-language online fora that "fucking over the people" is an action you ascribe to "the personal motorcar" rather than to "walking, biking and taking public transport", most respondents (thus, presumably, most voters) seem to have whooshed. Often we must be more verbose than we'd like, to communicate with those who are not in the habit of thinking while reading.

jrs992• 11 years ago

or you could just not mind the downvotes whether they are misunderstood, accidental, or random.

peatmoss4• 11 years ago

When you total up the amount of land that we dedicate to cars, it's absolutely staggering. I read a stat a while back (can't find it right now), that something like 33% of the land area of Seattle is paved vehicle surface. I'm sure Seattle isn't more paved-over than most other cities. Then, when you realize how this staggering amount of land is used to separate living, working, and other activity space, you begin to feel that we're living in little islands surrounded by fast-moving rivers of lethal steel--lethal steel that results in toxic gas and water runoff that sickens the remaining population that isn't directly killed at a rate of tens-of-thousands per year.

Gosh I hope we can figure this out in my lifetime.

timjahn2• 11 years ago

Seriously! It's crazy.

We live in such an auto centric society. I often think, why do we have the parking lot in shopping centers go all the way up to the front door (so you have to cross in the path of cars to enter the building)?

Why don't the aisles go directly up to a big sidewalk/walking area in front of the building and that's it? You could have turnarounds every few for picking people up and something dedicated for emergency vehicles, but it's crazy that you have to cross in front of cars to enter the building, when there's 0 reason for those cars to drive right in front of the building!

criley2• 11 years ago

Regardless of design you must let emergency services access the building simply.

No lane in front means Fire Trucks cannot stop in front of the massive building.

I'd bet that front lanes are a building code / safety requirement.

baddox4• 11 years ago

I'm confident that some reduction of paved surface can be achieved in most or all cities, but I think your tone is making the situation seem a bit more ridiculous than it actually is. I would expect a significant portion of any densely populated city to be paved, for the simple reason that people need to be able to get to essentially every part of a city. Short of more fanciful solutions like fully elevated or underground passageways, you're going to need roughly the same grid of roads even if you eliminate cars. Granted, you could theoretically get significant constant factor reduction in the width of roads if you can remove lanes (through banning cars, encouraging carpooling/public transit, or increasing bicyclists and pedestrians).

rayiner• 11 years ago

Of course, wide streets predate cars. Both Chicago's and NYC's street grids, with their wide avenues, predate the era in which everyone had a personal automobile. But take a look at older cities with narrower streets. You can get around Center City Philly, but the streets are so narrow in parts you barely notice crossing them.

eqdw2• 11 years ago

Short of more fanciful solutions like fully elevated or underground passageways, you're going to need roughly the same grid of roads even if you eliminate cars.

Not actually true. Grids come in many different shapes and sizes. As one easy example: the block size. As a city planner, you can choose any block size you like, and this will adjust the ratio of real estate to transportation infrastructure accordingly.

Additionally, and this is fanciful futurism more than anything else: in a city that functions without ubiquitous private vehicle traffic, you can make the roads narrower, which also increases the real estate. To take an example from where I live:

http://sfdpw.org/modules/showdocument.aspx?documentid=3690

Potrero Avenue in SF is 100 feet wide. A hundred feet. If you naievely parceled this land out by drawing a line across the road every 5 feet, the each demarcated space would be worth $2k/mo rent. In a hypothetical future city without cars, you wouldn't need a road to be a hundred feet wide.

More reading re: grid plans

http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/10/14/places-and-non... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grid_plan (specifically this image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Block_Sizes_and_Street_Len...)

avn2109• 11 years ago

Agreed, the trick is to ban parking and narrow the roadways a lot. A few months ago this [0] was on HN and I was very convinced by its arguments pertaining to automobiles and urbanization.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8090190

tigrella2• 11 years ago

Like Venice, Hamburg could use its vast system of waterways for transportation. If it's going to happen in any European city, I think Hamburg is one of the most logical options. It is after all, often referred to as the Venice of the North.

antr• 11 years ago

You should take a look at the Madrid Rio project by Dutch studio West8, it's very similar to the mentioned idea in the BBC article: http://www.west8.nl/projects/madrid_rio/

In Summary:

- The city of Madrid buried a 6km section of their ring road

- In this buried section, a total of 46km of roads/tunnels have been constructed

- The above area is now a reclaimed riverbank and a huge park

- IMO, a superb public realm initiative, although I'm guessing not cheap

Squallco• 11 years ago

Thank you for this link. This is really impressive.

egypturnash2• 11 years ago

I've lived in multiple cities over the years. Currently it's Seattle. If anything, I'd say Seattle is one of the less paved-over places I've been.

arcadius• 11 years ago

All the bodies of water certainly help.

bduerst• 11 years ago

I seem to remember someone saying that just over half of Los Angeles' land is paved for roads and parking lots. It's pretty ridiculous.

ars5• 11 years ago

Travel is the driver of all human progress and development.

What, you think the amount of roads we have now is a lot? We've always had roads, they were for carts, or horses, or anything else. There is nothing special about cars here.

Gosh I hope we can figure this out in my lifetime.

We did. We made travel cheap and easy and it has benefited us massively.

swayvil2• 11 years ago

Travel is the driver of all human progress and development.

Actually, people with lots of free time and access to drugs is the driver of all human progress and development.

r00fus• 11 years ago

We did. We made travel cheap and easy and it has benefited us massively.

If you're referring to ICE and automobiles, that "cheap" cost is bought by uncountable externalities that aren't on the balance sheet: many lives and wars to secure this cheap fuel, not to mention climate change.

makeitsuckless• 11 years ago

We didn't have roads 4 lanes wide (which is a huge amount of additional land lost), and we didn't have the insane amount of parking space.

Even a not particularly car friendly city like Amsterdam would look dramatically different if you removed the parking space, because it would free up such an insane amount of space.

Cars have multiplied the amount of space dedicated to transport, without actually adding much to human progress and development, what with most of it being used to carry individuals short distances from A to B and back again.

I don't see the massive benefit here. It's a pointless habit we shaped a life/work culture around with a mostly negative impact on the quality of life.

breischl4• 11 years ago

Yes, but carts and horses don't habitually move at 25 MPH or more. It was possible to get run over and killed by a cart, but walking into a busy city street full of cars (without following the signals) is almost certain to get you killed. That's a pretty big difference in how the space can actually be used.

The first section of this article is interesting in this context: http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

wutbrodo4• 11 years ago

This is a hell of a strawman. The proposition isn't to remove the ability to travel, which (as you said) is effectively the removal of geographic barriers to interaction. It's to replace car travel with something that has lower costs in terms of efficiency, health, economics, city planning, fatalities, the environment, etc etc etc etc.

What, you think the amount of roads we have now is a lot? We've always had roads, they were for carts, or horses, or anything else. There is nothing special about cars here.

Not all roads are made equal. There's a huge difference between "space reserved for a mode of travel" and the public spaces that roads[1] (in cities) were before cars became ubiquitous.[2] A good analogue is imagining a path in a park: it's generally used for transit (people walking and occasionally biking), but it's also fully open as a public space for the citizenry to use as they please.

[1] This whole conversation is about roads in cities, so that's what I'm referring to: roads across sparsely populated countryside don't have nearly as high a cost, nor do they have as many viable alternatives.

[2] http://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history

jdietrich• 11 years ago

With the automobile came the invention of 'jaywalking', and the idea that the street belongs primarily to cars rather than people. The nature of public space changed fundamentally.

Many European cities are heavily pedestrianised, with large areas of the centre accessible only for deliveries. There are big public health impacts - walking and cycling becomes more popular, children have safe spaces to play, accident rates fall and the air quality is drastically improved.

megablast2• 11 years ago

There is nothing special about cars here.

Cars kill 1.2 million people a year. I think that is special, and not something that happened before.

eqdw2• 11 years ago

Food for thought:

A ~450 sqft studio apartment in SF costs about $2k/mo in rent.

a ~150 sqft monthly parking spot (as per http://sanfrancisco.bestparking.com/), costs about $400

Three parking spots takes up the same square footage as a studio apartment. It costs a little over half of that.

Then consider how much parking in SF is free parking. Just straight up free. Parking lots for stores. Street parking on most residential streets. Driveways and garages.

It's fucking insane how much space is wasted on car storage. It's even more fucking insane that so much of this storage is de-facto free (which is implicitly a subsidy from the person providing the space to car owners; in a sense it's a subsidy from renters, since any parking space could be a sorely needed living space instead)

I can't wait, I just can't wait until Uber-like on-demand ride tech + self driving cars means we can massively reduce our vehicle stock. Think of all the things that could be more awesome

BrainInAJar6• 11 years ago

I can't wait, I just can't wait until Uber-like on-demand ride tech + self driving cars means we can massively reduce our vehicle stock. Think of all the things that could be more awesome

First, get rid of the zoning laws that require those spots, then they'll disappear. You can cram (depending on building height restrictions) dozens of apartments in to the same 2 dimensional plane as those 3 parking spots.

Tiktaalik• 11 years ago

I believe SF is ahead of many cities in not requiring their developers to build excessive parking. Cutting parking requirements in buildings is one of the easiest things a city can do to make building construction cheaper and lower housing costs.

dredmorbius• 11 years ago

On demand / driverless vehicles don't necessarily reduce vehicle stock. If the use is for standard travel patterns, they barely reduce it at all. That's where land use, encouraging bikes, and transit fill in -- walking, bikes, busses, trolleys, and subways all have vastly greater capacity per unit street area than single-passenger vehicles do. How they deal with complex routes can vary considerably though.

What such systems do allow is for vehicle storage to be separated from high-density land-use. A self-driving vehicle can be told to go park itself elsewhere, a dispatched vehicle doesn't need to park while the passenger is otherwise occupied.

But both still occupy street space, and require storage space somewhere.

BrainInAJar6• 11 years ago

Gosh I hope we can figure this out in my lifetime.

We can figure it out with pure market forces; currently building codes across the continent require businesses to have a certain amount of off-street parking. That also has the effect of killing small local businesses. Own a restaurant? Doing well? Want to expand? Your 6 table restaurant requires no off street parking, but an 8 table restaurant requires (for example) 6 spaces, meaning you can't just add another couple tables, you need to buy / lease the entire building next to yours, demolish it, and use it for parking.

Get rid of these anti-business pro-car zoning laws, and the problem takes care of itself.

balabaster2• 11 years ago

I'm unfamiliar with this - does it pertain to physical tables or number of seats? If for instance you take an approach such as Bennihana where you have large tables and just add people to the table until it's full, is that counted differently than 8 tables for 4? If two parties of 4 show up, they're both seated at the same table... if the table is for 10, then when another couple show up, they're added to the same table. Does this count as 1 table or 3?

e40• 11 years ago

The flip side is, ignore the problem, remove the building codes, and what will happen? I can tell you: gridlock. Over the last 15 years I've been visiting a suburb of Charlotte, NC. Every year I'm amazed how many forested have been bulldozed and shiny new subdivisions standing in their places. The result is a trip that used to take 10 minutes can take 40, or more. My father, who lives there and has been watching the local politics surrounding this, says everyone is just burying their heads in the sand. More building permits are issued and the problem gets worse and worse. The problem is, there is a lot more building planned, but still no solution to the transportation problems.

When it comes to infrastructure, market forces don't really work.

yellowapple6• 11 years ago

Which continent? At least here in the States (near Lake Tahoe specifically), there are plenty of 8+ table restaurants that don't have their own off-street parking. This has been the case in pretty much every American downtown I've visited; most drivers rely on either roadside parking spaces (usually metered) or dedicated parking garages/lots instead.

The main exception I've noticed is Reno (along with the Nevada side of Tahoe), given that the bigger casinos - even in "downtown" areas - will typically provide parking garages for their guests.

godzilla82• 11 years ago

I feel you should visit any developing country to get a feel of why zoning / building / parking laws are required.

jseliger• 11 years ago

Gosh I hope we can figure this out in my lifetime.

Me too. BTW, The High Cost of Free Parking by Shoup is amazing on this issue (http://www.amazon.com/High-Cost-Free-Parking-Updated/dp/1932...). Totally changed my perspective when I read it.

forrestthewoods3• 11 years ago

No way in hell is Seattle 33% paved vehicle surface. Not even remotely possible. City blocks account for more than 66% of surface area in the city core. And there aren't sprawling parking lots everywhere.

You're gonna have to provide a citation for this one.

brenschluss• 11 years ago

"About 27 percent of all land in Seattle is public right-of-way. SDOT manages the land through a permitting process, said Jennifer Wieland, an SDOT program manager." [1](http://realchangenews.org/2013/05/01/parking-spaces-could-be...)

peatmoss4• 11 years ago

27% ROW, minus the parts for pedestrians and the parts designed to protect pedestrians from cars, plus all the off-street parking (including driveways)? 33% sounds pretty darned plausible to me.

But you're right, this is one of those academic stats I should be able to cite properly. Since I can't find it (I swear it was on Seattle Public Utilities website once upon a time), perhaps this will be an afternoon task to validate. Should be doable by carving up the city into grid cells of some appropriate unit and then using orthophotos to aid blocking out car-accessible hardscape in a random sampling of grid cells.

Crito3• 11 years ago

Even if we banned cars from Seattle, I would hope that we wouldn't tear up those roads and put buildings on them. Turning them into elongated parks for pedestrians would be a better option.

Of the arguments against cars in cities, I think that "streets waste space" is the weakest. I rarely drive, but I wouldn't want to be in a city without some sort of streets, that would just be claustrophobic.

BrainInAJar6• 11 years ago

visit old Europe. The tiny little avenues between buildings are quite cozy and beautiful

lmm2• 11 years ago

Have you been to a European city, somewhere built before cars? Open space is good but you don't need the width of American streets, and it's important to get the pedestrian density up high enough that people feel like there's something going on.

chrismealy• 11 years ago

In one picture:

https://urbanful.org/2014/12/12/swedish-artist-captures-impo...

DenisM• 11 years ago

Perhaps we should embrace this view, and extend it just a tiny bit further:

Since the tunnels for cars are already dug up, all we need to do is cover them with concrete slabs, cover the slabs over with asphalt for bikes/pedestrians and vegetation for sitting around, and declare the entire city pedestrian only. The cars can continue to hurry back and forth underground.

cpeterso• 11 years ago

After the Great Seattle Fire in the late 19th century, Seattle had the opposite problem of the one illustrated there: the city rebuilt the streets higher than before to avoid flooding problems, but merchants didn't want raise their buildings. So the city streets were 12–30 feet higher than the sidewalks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground

easytiger3• 11 years ago

When you total up the amount of land that we dedicate to cars, it's absolutely staggering.

What a narrow minded blinkered and oblique view of reality. Without the invention of the internal combustion engine and our ability to efficiently do as we please whenever we please we wouldn't have almost any of the economic freedom we enjoy today. If you wish to be a luddite and which a rural localised way of life on everyone that's another matter

darkstar9993• 11 years ago

Clickbait to the max.

"The city’s proposed Grünes Netz, or “Green Network” will create pedestrian and cycle paths to connect the city’s existing, substantial green spaces, and provide safe, car-free commuter routes for all residents."

That is awesome, but it has nothing to do with banning vehicles.

Filligree• 11 years ago

Of course it does. Their intention is to convert the roads to those paths, which is something they can't possibly do while still supporting cars.

darkstar9993• 11 years ago

Some roads, not all roads.

CalRobert7• 11 years ago

We didn't seem to have any trouble banishing people from the streets, so I hardly see the problem.

VLM• 11 years ago

Adding to that insight, I've gone hiking in the backcountry and I've seen the vibrant economy that results from an absence of mobility. (note, the above is extreme sarcasm)

CalRobert7• 11 years ago

Adding to your insight, I've gone cycling on Lincoln and Wilshire (LA) and noted the lack of sheer terror at the thought of being killed at any possible second.

(Also sarcasm. I broke ribs and had a driver who wasn't paying attention nearly flatten me at a red light)

Dewie2• 11 years ago

You're saying that there aren't any photo sharing startups in that backwards backcountry? Gosh darn.

toolslive• 11 years ago

you can: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvain-la-Neuve

qt7• 11 years ago

I am surprised nobody mentioned Venice, the largest car-free city in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venice#In_the_historical_city

tigrella2• 11 years ago

People often forget to mention that Venice is car-less. It was one of the most relaxing and unique things about the city to me and not a single person mentioned it to me before I visited.

matt40773• 11 years ago

Driverless car could take us (almost) there. The coordination would allow traffic to flow incredibly smoothly, meaning a single one-way lane would be enough for most streets. They could more easily be shared, significantly lowering the need for parking. Even privately-owned cars could find their parking spot in i. e. an underground garage a few blocks away. Therefore: no need for parking spaces along the road.

So you go from four lanes (2 driving, 2 parking) to just a single one. Sidewalk area increases from "two-lane width" to four and one lane is free for bicycles.

It's going two be a revolution comparable to the invention of the internet, completely changing the quality of living in cities. And I get to see it, yeah. (Unless I end up being one of the world's last traffic fatalities)

jerf2• 11 years ago

I'd also suggest that efforts to try to "remove cars" prior to this technology are likely to amount to wastes of time. There's a lot of people who want this, which makes me somewhat suspicious that the studies are just finding what they want to find, and I rather suspect what Hamburg is going to discover is that they spend a lot of money making it so cars can't penetrate their "city", only to discover, oops, we can't actually remove them after all.

You may dislike passenger cars (and I detect more than a faint whiff of Puritanism around that whole attitude, but that's a discussion for another day), but to entirely remove roads requires you to also solve the problem that motor vehicles are also the general circulatory system of a city. Now I think there are solutions to that problem... but they're all about 10 years away, minimum. We aren't there yet.

And then, when we do get there, it won't need to be helped along by governments or modern-day Puritans... it'll just happen, faster and better than any premature attempt to make it happen before the tech is there ever could make it happen.

lovemenot2• 11 years ago

Why the ad hominems? Such people may not be to your taste, fine. But theirs is as nothing to the whiff from a tailpipe. Live and let live.

Dewie2• 11 years ago

You may dislike passenger cars (and I detect more than a faint whiff of Puritanism around that whole attitude, but that's a discussion for another day),

Is this how Americans insinuate that they think someone is too old-fashioned and stuck up? heh.

Personally I don't see the connection between Puritanism and wanting to live in an environment with fewer cars.

Houshalter2• 11 years ago

I think that driverless cars would make up for it by increasing the total amount of traffic. If driving has little cost as an activity, people will drive much more and be ok with much longer commutes.

breischl4• 11 years ago

Right now much of the true cost of commuting is spread out in periodic costs like vehicle purchase, maintenance, licensing fees, paying for parking/storage, etc. But all anybody looks at is the time and gas.

If you're taking a car service of some sort, all the other stuff will getg figured into the per-mile cost and presented for payment each day when you get to work. I'm guessing once people are hit in the face with the full cost, they will make different (and arguably more rational) decisions.

ghaff4• 11 years ago

I don't understand why this point isn't obvious to people. If I have a "driver" (actually doesn't matter if it's organic or electronic), of course I'm going to accept a longer commute if I can put my feet up and read a book or work on my laptop. There's a limit of course. At one point, I sometimes had a (long) commute by train and it just ends up being a big chunk out of your day. Likewise, if my driver can deal with city driving (and parking) I'm going to be much more inclined to take a car rather than mass transit unless congestion or other fees really tilt the cost balance.

matt40773• 11 years ago

The average speed in a city is probably around 20km/h, at least in the city I am in (Berlin, Germany). With perfect coördination of driverless cars, you could possibly raise that to 60km/h – which is the speed cars drive when they're not in traffic or stopped at traffic lights. That leaves a lot of road usage to disappear even if car usage actually increases.

michaelbuckbee• 11 years ago

I think the big change with driverless cars will be more on demand "right size" vehicles. A two seat smart car or one seat scooter type vehicle makes much more sense for commuting (typically) than a larger vehicle.

nilkn• 11 years ago

Yep, this is definitely the future. In major cities, self-driving cars will be available in fleets to summon on-demand Uber-style at $.50/mile or less (which is similar to the total cost of ownership of an average relatively new vehicle in the city). The value proposition will be so strong that many urban dwellers will no longer need to own cars at all. Roads will be more efficient and safer; parking lots will be smaller and fewer in number.

In sparser areas of the country driverless cars will have less of an effect, but those are also the areas where parkings lots and roads constitute a much smaller percentage of surface area.

gaius• 11 years ago

It's going two be a revolution comparable to the invention of the internet

The funny thing is, the revolution of the internet, being able to click on Amazon and just have a thing delivered (or from a million other websites) assumes a ubiquitous road network. Let's say you cut the number of cars on the road tenfold... Who pays for this now?

Just for some figures, taxes on motorist in the UK, which are mainly fuel, raise about £50Bn/year. Government spending on all forms of transport is about £25Bn/year. So let's say through self-driving cars, carpooling, more working from home, etc etc we do achieve a tenfold reduction, now far from paying for everything twice over, cars only pay for a fifth. Where does the money come from? And if it doesn't, how much of the "internet revolution" still works?

wahsd• 11 years ago

It is amazing how ambitious and progressive Germany has been over the last two decades. It has always been very public transportation and self-locomotion focused, but this is quite impressive. They have curtailed nuclear energy; funded alternative energy production, research, and socialization; curtailed fossil fuel energy production and use; and now are moving towards the future of in this manner. In a way, they are also setting up the city, and maybe even the country, for autonomous vehicles.

As I have been spending significant time on evaluating and analyzing the ramifications of autonomous vehicles, one thing has always been a bit of a challenge, how to make a transition. It's actually relatively easy in Germany and not that much of a leap since a lot of the foundational work had been done and the trajectory has been in a complementary direction. The real challenge will be how the USA makes the transition and doesn't simply sabotage itself out of spite for itself as it has an established reputation for now.

erobbins• 11 years ago

There's nothing "progressive" about eliminating nuclear energy. Especially when the goal is more electrical transportation, not less.

forgotpasswd3x3• 11 years ago

If we can replace nuclear with other clean sources, such as solar and wind, until the time that we can safely dispose of nuclear waste, then yes, I'd say that's progressive.

holri3• 11 years ago

Cars are a huge waste of space:

https://geppbloggt.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/gehzeug1.jpg https://diskussionsgruppespartacus.files.wordpress.com/2012/...

nsxwolf• 11 years ago

Huge use of space. Waste is an opinion.

holri3• 11 years ago

Yes that is my opinion. Allowing this waste is the opposite of a smart city.

Using 1,5 t of mass to transport on average 100 kg is also a massive waste of energy.

wutbrodo4• 11 years ago

Waste isn't an opinion, but rather a shorthand. Nobody (sane) is optimizing for "amount of cars on the road", but rather the benefits that cars bring (economic benefits due to streamlined transportation, etc). Generally when the term "waste" is used, the implication is:

If option A can provide the benefits that option B can provide with less cost (in this case, space), then the incremental space being used is "wasted". It's a pretty fundamental use of the word.

robertnealan• 11 years ago

Hamburg's mentioned plan reminds me of Daniel Burnham's 1905 plan for San Francsico, which would have created Panhandle-like parks running all over the city as well as diagonal avenues connecting major points of interest a-la Paris or Washington DC. The 1906 earthquake would've been the perfect opportunity to make it a reality, but unfortunately it never went anywhere.

Map: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/Burnham_San_Fr...

100k• 11 years ago

Such a huge lost opportunity. Many cities (Boston, Minneapolis) have very beautiful parks connected by chains of greenways. San Francisco could have built that, but didn't, and the lack of parks in the Eastern part of the city has a major negative effect on livability. Consider how nice South Park seems compared to the rest of SOMA.

panic• 11 years ago

The goal of Hamburg’s project is to replace roads with a “gruenes netz” or a green network of interconnected open areas covering 40% of the city. According to the official website, parks, playgrounds, sports fields, allotments and cemeteries will be connected to form a network, which will allow people to navigate through the city without the use of cars.

Why not just let people walk on the roads? Places like cemeteries and parks can be quite creepy to walk through, especially at night. Roads next to buildings with people in them are a more comfortable place to walk.

balabaster2• 11 years ago

Is that just because that isn't the norm? If it was quite normal to walk through a cemetery or park at night, would it still be as creepy or is it just because of the proliferation of ghost and paranormal stories...?

danielovich• 11 years ago

Zermatt, Switzerland. Car free city.

valvar• 11 years ago

From the photos and Wikipedia description, I'm in love. I want to move there.

prawn2• 11 years ago

There are a few villages in the Swiss alps with no cars or very limited use of cars. In one I visited, a hotel owner picked up guests and their luggage from the gondola using something like a golf cart. It worked well - low speed, smaller, less dangerous, quieter, etc.

ghaff4• 11 years ago

A small car-less resort town that makes its money in no small part by providing tourists with a pleasant experience isn't really a model for cities. (And it's a pretty mobbed place at the popular times of year.) If you just want to move someplace quiet with Internet access there are lots of options.

mpweiher• 11 years ago

This report is false. While Hamburg does plan for a "Green Network", there are no plans to ban cars or become "car free".

Official statement from the city of Hamburg (in German): http://www.hamburg.de/pressearchiv-fhh/4257482/2014-01-24-bs...

qntty• 11 years ago

Something I would love to see in NYC. Not as new of an idea as it might seem either, here's an old pamplet from the 60s about it

http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/goodman-cars.htm

yellowapple6• 11 years ago

Probably not if the headline has to be phrased as a question. :)

Instead of (or perhaps in addition to) the greenspaces Hamburg is proposing, I have an even cooler idea: turn them into lazy rivers[0]. I'd be totally down with commutes involving calm, aimless drifting on flotation devices.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazy_river

researcher88• 11 years ago

A few years ago the EU proposed banning cars in all major European cities by 2050. And they wanted to restrict 50% of all trabel over 186 miles to trains. The plan was rejected by the UK and was criticized as draconian.

wesleyd• 11 years ago

In California, zoning specifies minimum numbers of parking spaces. In UK/Ireland, zoning specifies maximum number of spaces.

tdyen• 11 years ago

Im surprised so few of the comments deal with disabled people or old people or people who cant walk much for injury or other reason. We cant make elitist cities. As I get older and my knees worse I really appreciate those who have to struggle. I love walking but its getting harder and harder. Saying that Id love to get rid of most cars or make em all electric. I train to work and its nicer than driving and Id bike if it was remotely safe but its psycho to bike in Australia.

justincormack2• 11 years ago

Electric bikes seem popular with the elderly in Japan. The British prefer golf carts.

f_allwein• 11 years ago

This is actually a misunderstanding - while Hamburg does plan to connect its green spaces, it does not plan to ban all cars.

See their official statement (in German): http://www.hamburg.de/pressearchiv-fhh/4257482/2014-01-24-bs...

jraedisch• 11 years ago

As a resident of Hamburg I can assure you it will not become a car-free city within the next 20 years. So far, we don't even have an "Umweltzone" (green or environmental friendly zone) where only cars maintaining certain filtering and mileage standards are allowed to drive.

Graham24• 11 years ago

British Thermal Units? Surely that's an obsolete unit.

Can a city really ban cars from its streets? (2014)

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