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Creating Car Free Cities
Silas writes "CarFree.com is a great site that "proposes a delightful solution to the vexing problem of urban automobiles." The site presents a fascinating, detailed proposal for a major city (1 million people in 100 square miles) that doesn't require the use of cars. This isn't a new concept; a lot of the ideas are modeled off of major car free cities in Europe (like Venice)." The page on Morocco is fascinating.
Anything is better than the car-clogged cities we have today. Small trips have big cap fares as it takes longer to get there. I tried walking from one hotel to another in Las Vegas, I thought I was going to die from inhaling all of that pollution. At least Las Vegas is moving in the right direction with mono-rails (yes, MonoRail!)
If only NYC and others followed with some awesome inovations.
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Free your mind.
I was under the impression this is exactly what the Segway HT was designed to accomplish. Cleaning up cars obviously means much less pollution.
It's a great concept in general- people would be more likely to walk to where they had to go, rather than drive half a mile to the store to pick up the ice cream and chocolate syrup.
Don't feel like driving ?
Rent a Segway
Discussion
Using the latest state of the art in city simulations, something like Sim City 4. Build the city, and see how well it does! Save the game and let us play with the results.
sPh
Even with "emission free" cars, you still expend the energy to move the car to being with. Getting rid of pollution is an important goal, but the ultimate goal should be to conserve the environmental resources required to produce and operate cars. By creating a city in which cars are less necessary, you reduce the energy consumption of the average citizen, even after you factor in the energy required to operate the 24-hour mass transit systems.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I did have to make some lifestyle choices to make this happen: I choose to work downtown and chose to live close enough to walk, bike, skate or unicycle there.
they killed the public transport system in Los Angeles in the 30s, 40s and 50s for that exact purpose: force every person to need to own a car.
Boulder is big into trying to dissuade people from driving cars and to use public transit or other means of getting around. People, bicycles, and other man-powered (or small engine-powered) vehicles have the right-of-way and will use and abuse this fact at any opportunity, walking in front of moving cars and riding against red lights. This causes nasty traffic jams, accidents, and generally pisses people off. The roads are quite cozy and not accomodating to any sort of car larger than a Honda Civic, like my pickup truck.
I would love to live in an auto-free town, riding my bike and using monorails or whatever transport the city provides. But trying to adapt existing cities to this mindset is asking for nothing but trouble.
--Chag
On the Discovery Channel there is a show called Extreme Engineering. It looks like Japan is going to have some really cool designs to fix the growing population and urbran sprawl. One design is called Sky City which is a city in a building
Jack Valenti and Orrin Hatch will be first up against the wall when the revolution comes.
i've gone over 800 miles on a segway ht and was able to give up a car and save quite a bit of $ per month. the city of seattle (where i live) has a fleet of segway hts, and after a year long study they're going to double the fleet. the hardest part is the cultural issues, having a car is what everyone does. there will be many posts here that poke fun of my transportation choices, but i also use a bicycle, public transit and car pools, so it's all about choices and having them...something we should all encourage.
first 800 miles
info on city of seattle
and interview i did with the city of seattle
cheers,
pt
No, it's cheap as all get-out. You replace those $20,000 cars by $400 bikes and use all the same road infrastructure. The roads still cost money, but at least they hold up a little better without the cars pounding on it, and less pavement is required to support the same throughput of bike traffic as for car traffic. Plus you can stop spending so much money on parking structures in high-rent downtown areas.
This doesn't solve the problem of inter-city transportation, or deliveries, etc.--motor vehicles still make sense for some things--but most car trips involve just a single car driver going a couple of miles--which you can easily do just as quickly (if not more so) on a bike.
If you want the cheapest, most efficient transportation system money can buy, work on achieving a more balanced mixture of cars, bikes, and peds. Yeah, that means that if you're a car driver you'll occasionally lose a few seconds waiting to pass a slower bike. And if you're a bike rider you'll have to learn to share your space safely with the big stinking automobiles (come on, it's not as hard as you think). Learn to love it. It's the best. And you can do it right now, without waiting for some sort of tremendous revolution in the infrastructure.
--Bruce Fields
OK, I can't RTFA, the host name doesn't even resolve, but...
I guess car free would be OK, as long as:
a. Nobody ever wants to go anywhere public transit doesn't go (another city? countryside?)
b. There's some way to get 50lbs of groceries plus other assorted, bulky, items, to within 10ft of my door while also transporting my wife, two kids and a great-grandparent.
Good luck.
sig fault
But what many people overlook is that a large fraction of the cars are taxis and limousines. And taxis are fairly affordable.
You can get by without a car in NYC because you can just flag down a cab any time, day or night. Widespread availability of taxis is an important part of a city free of (personal) automobiles. If other cities had a taxicab system as good as that in NYC, far fewer people would need cars. As a bonus, it is politically and practically much easier to convert taxi fleets to new standards (natural gas, hydrogen, electricity) than personal automobiles.
My idea for a "perfect" urban and sub-urabn living space would be to have higher density living spaces - smaller houses would be a start - with less "backyard" space. However, every few blocks would have greenspace to share with a bigger park not too far away.
I would also eliminate as much as possible the notion of the driveway and make people walk a bit farther to their cars. One big parking lot for everyone. It makes for more enjoyable greenspace. Yes, this does make moving almost impossible so someone has to figure that one out.
Mass transit would be easily accessible - light rail for instance - reasonably close to the living space.
The major problem here though, IMO, is that strip malls and convienice stores are robbing small businesses of their chance to make money. Small businesses would be forced to moved within the cities and not stay in the suburbs. Where I live in the suburbs strip-malls with Business Depots, large electronics chains etc, where I'd rather shop at local businesses - and I have to go well out of my way.
There is a major point overlooked in most (if not all) plans to ban cars from cities (or create new cities without cars in them): People ENJOY driving their cars.
:)
I simply do not want to get wet when it rains, I don't want to wait for any form of public transportation either.
Busses, subways and trains go from some point I'm not at, to a place that I do not need to go. And, usually, at a timepoint I dont need to travel.
For this luxury, I'm quite willing to sacrifice some environmental aspects, and I dont mind taking the risk of being ran over too...
Fortunately, I can choose not to live in a city like this
I really thought that Venice was a really inappropriate example. I've spent a couple of days there, but it seems it's not really much of a real, functioning city. All the businesses I saw there were ice cream shops, jewelry stores, little restaurants, or museums. Just touristy stuff.
As I understand it, the city of Venice is pretty much a tourist town, with modern Venice on the mainland (actually a different city, with a diifferent name that eludes me), an ugly blight of post-industrial wasteland, and a vast contrast to the gorgeous nearby Po river valley.
In summary, Venice is a very poor example of a real city without cars. I really do like the premise of this website, but Venice is a bad example. Venice is for tourists anymore, not regular people living regular lives.
Given a choice, what transit system would you ride?
PRT systems have almost all the advantages of a car.
Every non-PRT public transit system has proven itself a failure. That is, the systems fail to attract significant percentages of commuters. And, they fail to cover operating costs by huge margins, let alone recouping capital cost.
The best public transit models available suggest that PRT systems would attract a significant percentage of commuters, cover operating costs, and eventually recoup the capital costs. It's amazing to me that no one has built such a system yet.
Then again, Atlas Shrugged. The auto industry and rail industry have a pretty entrenched interest in preventing progress. Politicians want to be able to say "it's not my fault that the transit system failed. We used proven technologies." Proven to fail, but proven nonetheless...
Support your local PRT movement.
I used to be a narrator for bad mimes. (wright)
I'm only familiar with 2 cities - St. Louis, MO and San Diego, CA. Both of these cities have neighborhoods that could be converted to "car-free" with a minimum of hassle. In San Diego, Ocean Beach could easily keep cars out of the main strip (which i believe is Voltaire), and then slowly expand the car-free area. I would think that the residents would even be somewhat supportive of such an idea! The problem would then be getting merchandise to the local stores. This could also be done in St. Louis in The Loop (Delmar). There is really no reason why small neighborhoods couldn't do something like this.
Oh, and for all you people that are still talking about Segways - make sure to watch the next episode of American Idol, and also check out the new Britney Spears album. Those are some other products that are worthless but shiny and well-marketed.
-dbc
Some of the city-design ideas on this Carfree.com site echo those advanced over 25 years ago in the influential book A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sara, Ishikawa, Murray Silverstein, and others. This book details a "working alternative to our present ideas about architecture, building, and planning," with over 250 specific advisories starting at the very high overview level ("Independent Regions" instead of our current nation-states) and moving in successive stages down through town design, becoming always more specific ("Mosaic of Subcultures," "Industrial Ribbon," "Nine Percent Parking," placement of food stands and bus stops), and then to low-level details of individual building design ("Sequence of Sitting Spaces," "Light on Two Sides of Every Room," very specific construction details, and "Paving With Cracks Between the Stones").
A Pattern Language is a remarkable book, the principal influence on Stewart Brand's The Whole Earth Catalog and used by the city designers for the upcoming STAR WARS GALAXIES online game. I suspect, but don't know for sure, that its "patterns" concept influenced the current mode of "design patterns" among coders. For other examples of the book's influence, and of the theorists' current work, see their Web site, especially the overview of patterns.
Nobody will read this because I didn't post it in the first 12 seconds the article it up but I'll post anyways.
I'm an American from near Chicago IL, but I live in Montreal QC (that's in Canada) completely without at car. The reason I can do this is that the transit and services is setup to let me do this. The metro/bus system is reliable and affordable, and taxis are plentiful and decently priced. If I want groceries I either carry them with me or I can have them delivered to my apartment by any number of grocery stores.
At home, however...
Its HELL. You can't go anywhere without a car. Everything is spread very far apart because either it was built during the "hack and slash" all I want is land years, or because it was easier to put a super-megalo-gigantico mart. These ultra-shops are so big you almost need a car to go through them. It takes forever to get what you actually want, and the service/quality stinks.
The US has simply built cities that are too spread apart. For a nice urban environment you need things less spread apart, with adequate services and clean transportation.
I will only get a car again if I absolutly have to. Otherwise I will rent for vacations.
Rob
(a) He did suggest seeing a doctor. We're all human and we're all capable of achieving a basic level of physical fitness. Anyone who says otherwise is as closed minded as someone who claims they could never learn to use a computer. He did put it a bit trollishly, though. I have to work really hard to keep up on the climbs with guys who are 60 lbs lighter than me.
(b) You're absolutely right. I don't know what he's talking about. Something else to consider, though, is that if everyone on the road was riding a bike, the total energy of traffic would be less. On the average it would be safer for everyone. It's fairly rare for a bike-bike crash to be lethal, while car-car crashes tend to be much more dangerous.
(c) Right again, riding on the sidewalk doesn't always make you safer. I've been hit by an SUV pulling into a driveway, a situation similiar to the ones you described. I was hella lucky. In February I got hit for real. My bike was toast. I have a huge nasty 'L'-shaped scar on my arm. Unless I am 100% sure that a driver sees me and is actually giving me the right of way, I stop and make eye contact with the driver before proceeding. It sounds overkill and it slows me down a bit in traffic, but it makes me feel safer.
(d) Biking can be a lot of fun, and can allow one to travel much further than by walking. For example, it is six miles from UCLA to the beach; a bit far for walking but makes for a very comfortable distance bike ride.
Also, I've found it to much safer to be a bicyclist on the road in an area that has a lot of other bicyclists on it --- drivers of cars tend to be much more aware. Also, once the bicyclists get a critical mass, then there's a larger constituency for, and it makes more sense to invest in, bike lanes and bike paths. When I lived in Palo Alto, I rode my bike to work every day --- people with longer commutes could take their bikes on Caltrain.
The number one cause of bicycle-car collisions is the failure of drivers taking left hand turns to yield the right of way. It's going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts the car, so it pays to be very aware of potential turns by unaware drivers.
My indispensable piece of bike safety advice: wear a helmet. Smacking your unprotected head on the pavement hurts way more than you can possibly imagine.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
Well that's cool, but what if you can't afford doormen, deliveries, handymen, restaurants (most of the time), cabs, etc ?
s -tickets-may2003.pdf
I live in Houston, which is alot like Atlanta, but with much better roads. Yes, there are lots of crappy things about a motopia. There are also things that are good and bad, depending on your point of view. For example, it allow the middle class to seperate themselves fully from the lower classes, leaving most (until recently almost all) inner city neighbourhoods in Houston 99% lower class.
I do prefer cities like London with their well developed public transport and a decent population. New York is a very different story, because it has such a massive underclass. You have to ride that train with a bunch of scum and watch your back when you get off. Then, you are much more vulnerable on foot to attack, rape, and murder. No thanks.
What is the actual annual minimal cost for a car? If you can teach yourself how to fix basic problems, and buy a used for $1000 that you can probably keep going for about 2 years, that's $500/year. Insurance at a cut rate place runs _up to_ $60 if you answer the questions correctly (no tickets, no accidents, whatever the truth). That's $720 a year. Then, a liberal estimate of gas costs for a full fledged commute acorss Houston is something like $100 a month, for $1200 per year. Add in $200 a year for parts. What is the total? $3,200 per year, $260 per month.
I was unable to find a yearly total for NY, but a one year pass on London Transport, which includes tube and buses, would run you between $1000 and $2250 depending on what zones you need.
http://www.londontransport.co.uk/tfl/pdfdocs/fare
1 million people in 100 square miles is 2788 square feet per person, TOTAL.
Not all of that space will be available to each person, of course. Some of it MUST be reserved for roadways, or helipads, or whatever, for those times when it is absolutely critical (as in life-and-death critical) to move someone, with equipment, from point A to point B in the absolute minimum possible time. (They're called "ambulance rides to trauma centers". They happen. I've done it. It really was an emergency: I stopped breathing about the time they were rolling me through the ER doors. I woke up, in ICU, on a respirator, a full week later.)
There are still going to be requirements for hospitals. There are still going to be requirements for schools. There are still going to be requirements for entertainment venues.
ALL OF THOSE USES COME OUT OF THAT 2788 sq.ft. per person.
There are still going to be requirements to haul equipment from point A to point B. You will still need roads, and you will still need powered cargo vehicles.
This site makes no mention of emergencies. If someone has a heart attack does a paramedic have to switch between two subway tracks to get to him and let the poor heart attack victim die? To some extent you need cars for "regular (daily) circumstances"... not just for "special situations" like the site says.
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG