Hoopdriver

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/25/o...ng-cities.html

Daniel4

"But the planners had little clout as their bosses — city and state politicians — cowered before the demands of drivers. What we might be seeing, at last, is a shift in the public mood, a rising awareness that simply building more lanes is not the answer."

This is precisely what we are experiencing in Toronto and at that same stretch of road of the tragedy on Monday.

City planners had drawn up a plan to re-design Yonge Street at Finch to make it more of a neighbourhood for residences and cyclists. That meant for cars to give up a lane in each direction to be converted into protected bike lanes. The Mayor and a few Councillors were opposed to the plan citing Yonge Street is an important thoroughfare for cars.

Monday's tragedy has got city planners thinking ways to prevent motorists from jumping curbs and into sidewalks and bike lanes like what also happened in NYC.

The re-design of Yonge Street will slow down drivers (to the displeasure of the Mayor) but that is precisely how to improve safety of pedestrians. Moreover, parked cars will protect cyclists which in turn protect pedestrians.

Marcus_Ti

Ruining? I think past tense is more appropriate.

Jim from Boston

Are cars ruining our cities? Interesting Editorial in NY Times
I couldn’’t open the link, but just about an hour ago I posted to the Living Car Free Forum:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jimfrom Boston

Now that I live in Boston,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim fromBoston

I often tout Boston as the epitome of LCF/LCL in America,not to brag, but illustrate the possibilities. When I take visitors on a 4-5 mile walking tour of downtown Boston, I introduce it with this explanation:

Several years ago, the architectural critic of the Boston Globe, Robert Campbell, was visiting Southfield, Michigan, a town I know well, and described it as the “City of Towers and Cars” (including “busy highways and vast parking lots" [and tall office buildings, and sprawling office and retail parks]).

In his article, he contrasted that to the “City of Outdoor Rooms” (Boston) which is visited as one would visit a person’s home, passing through the various portals, from room to room, admiring the furnishings within.

That’s the motif I use on my tours as we start in the Back Bay, and pass through the Public Garden, Boston Common, Washington St and Quincy Market, the North End, Beacon Hill and back to Back Bay. The walk becomes the destination.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

Some cities never lost those neighborhoods, like Boston. It seems to me that in order to be an attractive place to support a variety of restaurants and shops to which to walk (and not drive to visit that neighborhood…the basic premise of this thread["Car-Free outings for otherwise car-heavies"]) a neighborhood must be a large area with a substantial, dense population living there, likely that evolved in the pre-automotive era.

I think a lot of urban revitalization projects tend to create enclaves as driving destinations to walk around in such large cities like in my native Detroit.

One of my greatest complaints about the automotive industry/culture is that by intent, or just popular acceptance, previously vitalized neighborhoods just whithered away, and deprived the citizens of the choice to Live Car Free.

Location, location, location.

arbee

Quibble -- this is an op-ed, not an editorial.

Which is to say: this isn't The New York Times's editorial opinion.

Rest assured: The New York Times continues to view the world through a windshield.

Cyclist0084

A rose colored one at that.

work4bike

I live in Jacksonville, Fl and all roads are being widened here, as well as new roads added.

The article says this:

"And then there is the odd fact, counterintuitive as it is, that building more roads does not really cure congestion and can even make it worse. The problem, as experts realized starting in the 1930s, is that as soon as you build a highway or add lanes to a freeway, cars show up to fill the available capacity. The phenomenon is so well understood that it has a name: induced traffic demand."

I agree with that, but maybe in some cases that's the point, i.e. build it and they will come...

I think here in Jax, the city is trying to expand and when you are expanding, road infrastructure is one major thing that must be upgraded. I've never lived in a large city like LA or NYC, but maybe one day I will...

Currently our population is still below a million, but Jax is growing and growing... Cars may be ruining some cities, but I don't see any threat to their existence, in the big picture.


BTW, A little trivia: Jacksonville has a total area of 874 square miles, making Jacksonville the largest city in land area in the contiguous United States. There is still a lot of open space here, but I hope is stays that way...




.

Marcus_Ti

The city proper border line...yes. But JAX, like most big cities, has a metro area around it that is filling in and going to merge with it....and that metro area puts you up over 1 million already:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackso...ropolitan_area


For cyclists...it means that your only choice is to ride in the urban jungle...or drive hours to leave it.

The research that more-lanes doesn't solve congestion has been around a long time....but most municipalities and cities still believe widening roads solves problems. Because it appeals to fool voters who don't understand issues like this.

prairiepedaler

Societies seem to be set up to allow for the consumption of petroleum. A girl I knew from Colombia who visited said "you need a car to go everywhere here".

Words of an interesting engineering guy with an equally interesting perspective:

" Diesel is a precious commodity, used in the transportation industry (by trucks, locomotives and ships), and in construction equipment, with no alternative that is feasible. A cousin of diesel fuel is jet fuel—another petroleum distillate—that is used to power jet engines, again, with no alternative that is feasible. And then there is a fuel that is only really useful as a small engine fuel: gasoline, that is. Gasoline engines beyond a certain size become much more trouble than they are worth.

Daniel4

If anybody wants to see ttaffic behaviour in action, just go to any major grocery store, Walmart or Costco on a Saturday.

When a new cashier opens, the line up there fills up real fast. It temporarily relieves the existing lineups but over the long run, has imperceivable effect.

The difference between retail stores and the city is that retail stores can close their cashiers during the slow hours or reserve them as express aisles.

You don't close down lanes on major roads during the slow hours but you still get angry motorists yelling at cyclists who use them to get out of the way.

From what I gather regarding Jacksonville and probably many other growing cities, is that they are NOT learning from other cities and that they will be heading towards making the same mistakes along with the same arguments heard over and over again.

Maelochs

it isn't just gasoline ... it is the entire petroleum industry.

Farmers used to make methanol for free from scrap vegetable matter, and used it liberally as an energy source ... but all the tractor manufacturers were induced by the petroleum industry to start offering diesel engines ..... which cannot be tuned to run on methanol, as a gasoline engine could.

At this point, gasoline is as much a profit center as diesel or more for the petroleum industry ...

But that whole bit about people being convinced to buy cars to sell gasoline ... yeah, no. The auto industry grew because people wanted cars, not because they were told to want cars. People wanted cars because horses were expensive and slow and took a lot of care.

"And so people were sold on the idea of driving their own car, whether they needed to or not, and spending lots of time stuck in traffic—all so that they would pay for gasoline." This simply doesn't make sense. People Liked the idea of personal transportation ... they just wanted to shift from horses to a faster, more powerful mode of transport.

Also, people have Always wanted personal transport because ... it is personal freedom. People like to be able to go where and when they want. No one needs to convince them of that.

As for cities ... a lot of people in NYC don't own cars ... but they still need cars, they just hire them. Mass transit limits transport options. Maybe some folks don't mind carrying heavy loads several blocks in pouring freezing rain ... but most people do, which is why they take cabs.

A lot of people use buses and trains ion most cities, and not all cities have good mass transit, which might cut down on traffic ... but people still want cars.

For instance ... what happens when people want to go somewhere outside city limits? cab to Greyhound or Amtrac? Hitch-hike?

Sorry for the conspiracy theorists, but people wanted cars because they were better than horses and better than walking.

Shoot ... the ad industry really wasn't that powerful when cars started going mainstream.

work4bike

That "metropolitan area" your link is referring to includes four other counties. Jacksonville is only one county, Duval, and its population according to your link is under a million, albeit it's creeping towards a million. The four other counties included in your link encompasses an area of nearly 3,700 sq/miles for 1.6-million people.

Nothing compared to the population densities (or just the populations, period) of places like NYC or LA.

My family is from the DC metropolitan area, just outside the Washington D.C. border. So I do know what it's like to live in a highly populated area and Jacksonville traffic (at its worse) has nothing on the Washington area traffic (at its least heaviest).

I do have to ride in an urban jungle here in Jacksonville, but it would not take me hours to get out of it; however, it would take me hours, if not days, to get out of the Washington area traffic.




.

InOmaha

Are cars ruining the city? Or did they build the city? Cars may have accelerated the change from rural to urban living, helped build the city, and the added people are what ruined it.


Had our communications technology been developed and advanced before our transportation technology, cities may have never grown to their current sizes. I only live in this one because my work wants me to come into a physical building. But I don't work with any one here. I work with other people spread out all over the country. If they didn't require I come in, and let me work from home, my home would not be in this city.


All our major cities in the US were developed because they were transportation hubs for shipping and distribution. But the work paradigm is shifting enough that maybe the city model itself is what's outdated. More small and medium sized population centers instead of fewer multi-million mega cities.

Cyclist0108

All the news that's print to fit.

Stadjer

True, cars were actually welcomed because they were so much cleaner than horses. Gasoline is great because it's easy to distribute and take with you, and offers a lot of power for little weight, but it was only after the invention of the starter motor that it beat the electric car and the steam car. The pollution of the car is a problem of course, but the problem with the car is that it's symbol and a sing of individual freedom and collective progress and everybody wants one and feels entitled to one. That makes it a problem of space, and it's the space cars need that has transformed cities to the point you can question whether they are still what they were 'supposed' to be.
Good question, but it can't have done more than accelerating urbanization. Urbanization has been going on for tenths of centuries because almost all economic activity that came on top of agriculture originates from cities or depends on cities. In my opinion the value the success of cities lies in the density, lots of people close to eachother and therefore efficient for meeting people, for trade, for organizing themselves into larger businesses, to specialize, finding money for investment, things like that, and that's just the economic part. For leisure and culture it's about the same. Tech marketing slogans like 'connecting people' or 'bringing the world together' is what cities have been doing for centuries, by physical presence through short easy travel. That's why cars and cities don't match. Either the jam it or they spread it out over huge distances, at the expense of the main quality of a city, short and easy travel within. They spoil leasure and culture in cities in many other ways too. You can build cities to accomodate the car but then you'll miss out on a lot of other travel modes and ways people meet. Cars are great, they've liberated the country side and connected it with cities, but they've made cities less efficient and less enjoyable.

Maelochs

Yup. I am not speaking in favor of cars (nor really against them, either) but I wanted to make sure that some ideas were expressed because a lot of the things people seemed to think about how and why cars spread and how cities developed were ... not in keeping with the best information I had come across.

As you note, people tended to gather for commerce (periodic central markets, which people would visit weekly or monthly, taking a day off from their work,) concentrations of people eventually became permanent when enough people came often enough, vendors and artisans were attracted because of business opportunities, or something like that, I guess.

Cars really aren't ruining cities any more than horses did (and horses were really hurting cities, because of the huge volumes of dung they produce ... ) but it is Size that hurts cities. People can only go so far and so fast, and people can only carry so much weight. Vendors need wares, artisans need supplies, everyone needs food ... At some point there weren't enough people to carry all that by hand, so people could pull or push carts or wagons ... but draft animals were even better for that.

As cities got even bigger, draft animals were too slow, loads got too large. Trains could do some of the hauling, but took too much space--trains couldn't service all the small small businesses.

There is some optimal size for cities based on transport options .... but transport options themselves are not integral to cities 'working.' Most of the exchanges of ideas, the "networking" which expands opportunity and accelerates the growth of ideas, happen After transport---like-minded people go to gatherings, events, the various specialized business districts ... it isn't like people are randomly hooking up on subways and just happening to find finance and such.

Cars, or some such form or personal transport operating on personal schedules, are almost essential ... buses would be insufficient or inefficient, because either they would (and often are) empty a lot of the time, or don't service all the areas at all hours, or people would have to walk too far from bus stops.

Where is the optimal size? At what size is there sufficient population density that enough people of like mind can get together and exchange ideas, without the needed space being so large that walking isn't a viable transport option? Is there such a size?

Given the size of cities, I think cleaner transport options are the best bet. trying to get rid of personal transportation might have a limiting effect.

I have long favored cars like the Helio (or whatever it is)---microcars, not capable of high speeds or big loads, carrying only two passengers---basically, city cars---being available for rent at all mass-transit hubs. That way mass trnasit doesn't become the choke point but neither does automobile traffic.

But .... answers? I don't have any.

friday1970

Here's something that I could add to this thread to make it more interesting.
Detroit was built to hold an infrastructure of over 2 million. The city has lost so much of its population, many of the large, widened streets barely have any traffic. And city planners have taken many of the unused lanes and converted them to bike lanes.

I recently rode a tour there and was amazed by how bike friendly Detroit has become. However, because growing gentrification of Detroit, this might only be as good as it gets for us cyclists. More people, a younger crowd, are moving back into Detroit. Traffic will rise, cyclists will lose their lanes, and we're back to the same problem other cities will have.

Oneder

To go outside a city with reasonable expense and convenience you need a car. You also need at a minimum to be able to move people's stuff in and out of their apartments.

prairiepedaler

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ad-margin-goal

Have you driven a Ford lately? Ford seems to be pulling out of the domestic car market.

InOmaha

Ford is focusing on the most profitable US market. It's trucks. It makes sense to build cars where their cars sales are higher to avoid tariffs. If other manufacturers follow suit, that's an indication that "cars" on US roads will get bigger. My father in law is a contractor and his new 4 door F150 crew cab with an eco-engine gets better gas mileage then his last car; even loaded down with his tools. They traded the car for a Ford SUV that gets even better mileage then the truck. SUVs will only grow in sales as baby boomers age because they are easier to get in and out of then a lower to the ground car if you're older. So it makes sense that Ford is focusing on them. Hybrid versions will probably sell really well and bring in larger margins.

Stadjer

I'm rather fond of the car too, but that's one of the things that makes it much more than just the successor to the cart. Carts and horses were hardly used for personal transportation within cities. Not everybody had one, not everybody wanted one, owners didn't feel entitled to two parking spots and owners weren't entitled to having parts of the city flattened to make more lanes for carts. On the contrary, a lot of cities kept streets narrow to discourage carts. The wisdom that making space for vehicles would only invite more of them and isn't solving any problem is much older than the car, alltough the car is showing that problem quicker and more clearly than ever.

The idea that everyone should be able to take more stuff through a city themselves than they could carry came with the car. In car low cities like Amsterdam or my hometown people don't buy groceries for a month, they buy their groceries a few times a week or everyday. It's not neccessary to own a vehicle for that or for larger more rare purchases. Of course cities need car access, for deliveries but also for police, ambulance and fire brigade, but that's entirely different from the inhabitants and people who work there owning and using a car for personal transport within the city.

No, but a lot happens because people can go places within the city very easily, networking isn't all planned ahead. Not just for art, music and leisure, but a lot of the job market is happening in social networks. Walking distances within cities is what brought us the wealth that led to the invention of the car.

You can have taxi's as a form of public transport, trams, buses and subways that leave every 5 or 10 minutes, there can be mopeds, bikes, cargo bikes, delivery services, and walking of course. Anything goes, but not the full size car for personal transport because it takes too much space. If you're able to organize enough space for the car, the city sprawls and looses it's density, and that ruins the 5 or 10 minutes of public transport, the cycling and the walking. The ideal city would have the shortest travel times possible so it can be really busy and the car is increasing them allthough the individual driver might not notice, smaller cars would make that problem smaller but they still need parking space and lanes and still contribute to the sprawl.

InOmaha

You have to realize that sprawl isn't entirely due to the car. A significant portion of the human population does not want to live in your ideal densly populated city. That's why almost every single urban population center is surrounded by less dense population centers. The urban area typically has around 25%-35% of the metorpolitan population. Basically, you're model isn't all that popular with people.

There's no way I'd ever live in a place like NYC. Everytime I go there, it smells terrible, everything is overpriced, it's horribly crowded, and the people don't seem all that happy. If I want to be alone and isolated, living in the crowded city is the way to go, they'll gladly leave you to yourself.

There's also nothing in cities for me to do other than work (almost all of my work occurs outside of any population center due to it's nature anyway). I don't do the leisure time activities you would describe as a city's benefit. I don't eat out, I don't go to plays, I rarely go to movies, don't go to concerts, don't go look at art, etc. I garden (flower and vegetable), run, walk, and ride bikes. All are easier and much more enjoyable the further I get from urban areas. Crime goes down, schools get better, living expenses are cheaper, people are friendlier, we hang out with neighbors and friends and grill or swim at someone's pool, there's significantly more nature, etc., etc., etc. We live where we live because we don't want to live where you live. You can optimize it all you want but that won't change the simple fact a majority of people don't want to (or can't afford to) live there.

My metro area is pushing 1 million enhabitants with around 400,000 in the largest city. So 60% of the people actively chose to live somewhere else. The ratio would be higher but the city itself isn't very dense with 3,218 people per square mile. I'm lucky in the fact the place I work isn't located downtown. It's headquartered close to where I live so I don't have to go into the city at all. And I can take the MUP to it. A city in a city, so to speak. So I don't consider where I live sprawl. Just another city 25 miles away from downtown.

Stadjer

It's not my model and it's not about the popularity of the living conditions but about the popularity of jobs. For the sake of argument I ignored the edges of cities and metropolitan area's because that's not where cars are ruining cities. And it doesn't change the fact that concentration of people and therefore density is the essential quality of a city. That's what distinquishes cities from the country side. Cars not only need sprawl, they also make sprawl more attractive, but I don't believe cities would have sprawled without the car. In fact, I don't believe they really did before the car.

Cars don't make it a nicer place. But there are people who like living and working in crowded places en people who don't. I don't know how many don't like it, but it's where most jobs are. People got to compromise unless they're extremely rich. If you don't like living in the city you'll have to spend time on the commute and hopefully work from home more often in the future, if you like to live in the (inner) city you probably have to give up gardening and owning a car.

I know, people are different, and there's a lot about villages and suburbs I like too. I don't want who don't like cities to be forced to live in cities. But you can't make cities into something they essientially aren't just because everybody would like to drive their car right up to their destination. That's one of those things that just doesn't work when everybody wants it.

With continuing urbanization density will only increase. Then you can still have nice surrounding metropolitan area's, but if the car stays the mode of transport for traffic to the (inner) city, it will get jammed in an even more unpleasant way and lose it's essential quality of connecting people. That will of course affect the whole metropolitan area.

CliffordK

Many European cities have a vibrant night life with people roaming the streets at night walking. Of course a different population density there than we have here.

And, in the USA, they'd probably be arrested for walking in the streets, loitering, or vagrancy.

Jim from Boston

Just yesterday I posted to a thread on the Living Car Free Forum,

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jim from Boston

A paraphrased quote I like about city living is "Though I may not go to the Opera, I like knowing it is available."

Actually, I live in densely populated downtown Boston and work in an outer suburb 14 miles distant. I have a convenient, pleasant reverse commute, usually by bicycle or Commuter Rail, enjoying the best of both worlds. Not to brag but illustrate the possibilities.