Ekdog

Not at all surprised to learn about this, as I believe Scandinavia, one the world's most enlightened areas, will be leading the way on this.

Oslo moves to ban cars from city centre within four years | Environment | The Guardian

Walter S

Your "to be car free" is a bit strong IMO for a proposed plan by a brand new city government with no public debate having occurred and not even any detail about how it will be implemented. An intent is certainly good.

Juha

It hit the news here too. A couple of things caught my eye, not having read Guardian's take on it:

- It seems this is part of a larger plan to reduce their carbon footprint. This suggests it's a serious proposal.
- According to our news stories, the proposed car-free area has only 1000 residents, but nearly 100x amount of people work there. I would imagine the proposal would mostly effect the (relatively small number of) residents. Commuters would be using public transportation already - if it's any good.
- They're proposing a full ban on all private cars, no matter what fuel they use. This is somewhat contradictory in relation to their other policies in effect. Norway for example subsidizes e-car ownership heavily at the moment. Go ahead and buy a Tesla, but the central area of the capital will be off-limits to you soon.

--J

Walter S

I wouldn't bank on it. You think the cars they're removing are just cars owned by those thousand residents? The people with the least need to drive and also "the 1 percent"?

Ekdog

I don't see it as contradictory. The message seems to be: If you must drive, do it in a zero-emissions vehicle (ZEV) and leave it outside of the city limits. If need be, the new city government will want to beef up parking outside of the city limits, improve mass transit and implement a bike-share program so that people can travel efficiently to the city center. As you point out, the main reason they're doing this is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but I'm sure they're aware of the ancillary effects of such a ban: reduced deaths and injuries to pedestrians and cyclists, less space dedicated to parked cars, and so on.

B. Carfree

Can we please stop calling electric cars zero emission vehicles. They may not spew their waste out a tail pipe, but they have only moderately lower overall emissions. Sad to say, there is no free lunch.*

Good on the new government of Oslo for reaching high. I hope they achieve it all and then some.

* E-bikes aren't precisely zero emission either, but they do have vastly lower emissions than any car, and my pro-bike bias leads me to give them a total pass. I'd rather see people on e-bikes than not on bikes at all. In fact, I rather enjoy seeing happy people zip along on those things; they are becoming quite popular where I live even as human-powered bikes are disappearing.

Ekdog

I prefer bikes and e-bikes, too, but according to Wikipedia:

Considering the current U.S. energy mix, a ZEV would produce a 30% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.[SUP][12][/SUP][SUP][13][/SUP][SUP][14][/SUP] Given the current energy mixes in other countries, it has been predicted that such emissions would decrease by 40% in the U.K.,[SUP][15][/SUP] and 19% in China.[SUP][16]

[/SUP]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-emissions_vehicle

B. Carfree

In the range of emission profiles of automobiles, a 30% reduction is a moderate emission decrease and is a far cry from ZERO emissions. That would be a very bold round-off.

cooker

I have proposed they be called "displaced emission" vehicles.
It's not just CO2. The electricity is generated partly by coal so there's all the dirt that goes with that.

Roody

This is part of a much bigger picture. The EU plans to have ALL city centers free of petrol and diesel cars by 2050. There is a bit of a race among progressive cities to be among the first.

1. Dublin announced plans for carfree central areas by 2017

2.Madrid, Paris, Chengdu, Hamburg, Helsinki, Milan, and Copenhagen are at various stages in the process of having carfree city centers

Ekdog

We definitely need to move away from fossil fuel-generated electricity, especially coal. There's no doubt about that. Norway's top three sources of electricity are hydroelectric, geothermal and wind.

Countries with 100% renewable energy | Make Wealth History

To be accurate, we'd have to say "reduced and displaced emission" vehicles, wouldn't we? Especially if the country is a big producer of clean electrical power.

Ekdog

Both of those links lead to the article about Dublin. Please fix the second one if you can. I'd like to read that article.

This is definitely exciting news and the wave of the future.

B. Carfree

I'd love to see a city start small, even one squared block, but with a firm schedule for the elimination of cars from and ever-expanding area. It would give people time to plan, but get where we need to go.

Related to that comment, but off-topic, I'd like to see our paltry gas tax dealt with the same way. Add $0.25 or $0.50 per year on a rigid schedule so that people both have a chance to plan around it (to the extent that wildly variable retail pricing allows) and the funds can build out an ever-expanding public transit and human-scaled transportation grid.

Roody

Sorry...I fixed it and here's the correct link:

7 Cities That Are Starting To Go Car-Free

thanks for pointing that out!

tandempower

It makes more sense to tax roads than fuel. Transit lines and bike lanes/paths funded by tolls with congestion pricing would be most effective. If people are stuck in traffic watching their toll rates go up on electronic signs, the option to take transit or bike instead of driving becomes that much more attractive. And if the initial investment in the bike infrastructure and transit hardware is funded by the tolls, there's no lag time between the introduction of the toll system and the availability of car-free options.

Otherwise, you end up with drivers paying taxes and tolls without the option to take transit or bike on many routes, which is sort of unfair, no?

Ekdog

Thank you. Perhaps there are some BF members who live in those seven cities who could give us more details on each case.

kickstart

"Now a growing number of cities are getting rid of cars in certain neighborhoods"

I-Like-To-Bike

Or "Now a growing number of cities have advocacy groups or organizations that are talking about, or proposing plans for getting rid of cars in certain neighborhoods;adaption and implementation of these plans and proposals remains to be seen."

Roody

Yes, usually the city center/principal shopping district. The EU proposal is only for city centers. This has been clear right along. Were you thinking that they were talking about making entire cities carfree? That would be great, but I don't think it will happen for a while yet.

It should be noted that a lot of American cities made their downtowns back in the 1970s. They ripped out the main shopping streets and replaced them with carfree "malls" or "squares". Most of them, AFAIK, have been removed in the last few years and the cars are back. In my city, they did leave the wide sidewalks and diagonal parking. So there are now only two lanes, rather than the four traffic lanes they had back in the olden days. I don't like diagonal parking when I'm riding because cars have often backed out right into me. "Oops, sorry, I didn't see you back there." But the wide sidewalks are very nice for the shoppers.

tandempower

The prospect of a growing gap between LCF and driving-dependency concerns me. Making certain areas more LCF-friendly is good, but if it also turns this lifestyle into an elite privileged reserved for those who can afford it while people who seek more affordable lifestyles end up moving away from LCF-friendly areas where they get stuck driving because the distances are still sprawling and culture is still biased toward driving; then the danger is that progress will stagnate and the automotive culture economy will settle into place as the default basis for the economic growth that funds the high standard of living enjoyed in the LCF-friendly areas.

cooker

Hopefully the opposite will happen - if developers and politicians see a demand for car-free areas in some cities, and a lot of uptake by the public, they will be motivated to try to replicate it. So if it works in Dublin it might get tried in Boston and if it works there, then San Francisco of Seattle next, and eventually, even Burlington might try it.

EDIT: unless that's what's already going on on Jefferson St., where there's no Google street view.

kickstart

Neighborhoods, shopping districts, city centers, and city limits are all very different things. To most people "city center" implies the bulk of the entire downtown area.

Roody

Fine. You're right. Does it make a difference substantively? Can we move on now?