Syt's Pictorial Collection of Stuff and Things (image heavy)

[garbon]

Vastly improved public transport, better biking and walking infrastructure, no cars in the city core (beyond the few pedestrianised streets I know about) and possibly something like that Belgian city did so you can't drive from part x of the city to part y directly, instead you have to go via the ring road.

Okay so what does improved public transport look like? More frequent busses? Other forms of transport? What happens when you want to move bulky items (like when I was told off by ticket checker on DLR for moving a dining chair)?

While pathways might encourage biking, we also have to recognise that not everyone will want to bike about and that climate may also further dampen enthusiasm.  While walking paths might make journeys more pleasant, that won't really lower the amount of time it takes to walk from point A to point Z. It'll still be quite a trek, if you aren't living in the city centre.

How would the ring road change things? Wouldn't a person not in city centre still drive their car to closest location and then exit to visit the city centre? I can see how that makes city centre nicer (no cars), that doesn't really solve much of the problem of logistics of getting around.

(I hate Oxford though )

Even the places you hate would need to be factored into your carless eutopia.

[merithyn]

Rather more (on my phone so very bleh)

Everyone is 10 minutes from a station. Mixture of express and local trains to give full access to everyone whilst at the same time minimising how long it takes to travel long distances.


And hey. The best house in the world is no good if it takes you forever to get there and there's no town centre to go to for leisure time.

Dude your entire country + Ireland fits inside one of our states with room to spare. You live in "compact" areas because you literally have to. We have millions of square miles that allow us to have space to breathe. Yes, it requires transportation to make that happen, but in most of the major urban centers and suburbs, there is public transit. It's just if you want to go outside those areas, you need a vehicle. Once you have a vehicle, the convenience is hard to get rid of.

It's a very different mindset. I regularly "day trip" three hours one way to events on a Saturday. That's unconscionable to most Brits I've met. My parents lived six hours from me, and I drove there at least once a month when my kids were little. That's like you driving from London to Edinburough. Mind, I'm from the Midwest, and I'm now learning that our driving long distances isn't so common on the West Coast, but we also don't have mountains to deal with.

[Sheilbh]

Okay so what does improved public transport look like? More frequent busses? Other forms of transport? What happens when you want to move bulky items (like when I was told off by ticket checker on DLR for moving a dining chair)?

Don't know - it'll vary from place to place I imagine.

While pathways might encourage biking, we also have to recognise that not everyone will want to bike about and that climate may also further dampen enthusiasm.

I mean the most cycling heavy and friendly countries I know of are Denmark and the Netherlands which are not particularly different from our climate. There's loads of polling that people want to cycle but the biggest obstacle is fear. Creating cycling infrastructure like they have in other European countries, re-prioritising our street spaces from the tonnes of metal trundling through to the humans makes a big difference. As I say we can see this in the Netherlands and Denmark - their cities looked like ours in the 60s and the 70s but they've made choices over the last 30-40 years to shift the focus and now they don't look like ours and they encourage a lot of people to cycle instead. (I think this was actually caused by the number of kids being hit by cars who were playing in streets - in the UK it led to campaigns to reduce the speed limit, but there they decided to focus on removing cars from a lot of streets).

How would the ring road change things? Wouldn't a person not in city centre still drive their car to closest location and then exit to visit the city centre? I can see how that makes city centre nicer (no cars), that doesn't really solve much of the problem of logistics of getting around.

As I say no cars in the city centre. The ring road thing is different. It's from a Belgian city. Basically if you imagine you've got a city with a ring road and a number of neighbourhoods around the centre. You cannot drive directly from neighbourhood A to neighbourhood B (which are next to each other) on any route you want. You basically have to go out of neighbourhood A onto the ring road, along and then into neighbourhood B. It's more a traffic control measure because you basically funnel people onto a few entry/exit points but the inconvenience also makes people consider if they really need to use the car for the trip and reduces the number of journeys.

I also think this helps address a particular new issue in cities which has been created by Google Maps/Apple Maps/Tom Tom etc. In UK cities the number of journeys on main roads has decreased over the last few years, the number on side roads and residential roads has hugely increased because the GPS has, rightly, identified that it can be quicker to go along these residential roads which aren't really meant for through-traffic than sitting on the main road. I think that's changed our relationship with space in a really unhelpful way (there are a couple of residential streets near me that I can think of that are getting really busy with just Ubers etc on the sat-nav going to somewhere else). I think we should try and funnel cars back onto the main roads and make it unpleasant for them.

Even the places you hate would need to be factored into your carless eutopia.

Maybe. I'd happily concrete over most of the South-EAst 

[merithyn]

That's not a city you're talking about, it's a county.
Horses were a few steps behind cars. They were already on the way out with trams.
In actual cities not many people bar the very wealthy had a horse (and carriage and driver)  in the way people have a car today.

That's absolute bunk. First, it's a city in the US. Second, horses and cars shared the streets for at least two decades. And finally, horses were not a rich man's toy. They were a tool and most middle-class and up people had one, though maybe not specifically with a carriage. Merchants most definitely had a horse and wagon.

Tyr, hon, I say this with all of the love in the world, but the UK is not the whole world. What is "truth" there doesn't necessarily follow to be "truth" everywhere.

[Malthus]

Cycling as a solution isn't going to work universally - it certainly would be a tough sell here in Toronto, because of climate. For several months every year, cycling is not very appealing to the average person, to put it mildly.

The fact that certain solutions work in the Netherlands may have a lot to do with its geographic features (relatively compact, flat, weather not too extreme). The Netherlands has a population of 17 million fitted into 33k square km, mostly very flat; my province of Ontario has a population of 14.5 million fitted into an area of over 1 million square km, and much less flat, with ferocious winter weather - though admittedly, the northern portion of that (the largest portion) is mostly uninhabited wilderness. Though these are just examples, any proposed transportation solution has got to take such differences into account.

[merithyn]

Portland has had a "Bike First" mentality for over a decade now. They've actively advocated for biking, invested in public transit (that has ample bike racks, etc), and created tons of bike lanes throughout the city. They have also refused to widen the highways or build new ones, despite the population growth of 13.5% going on right now, and the extension of the Portland metro area to now be nearly down to Salem (an hour and a half's drive from downtown Portland).

Yes, we have plenty of people on bicycles, but they are competing with all of the additional cars that have nowhere to go given the lack of highways. There are constant vehicle/bicycle collisions, and a bicyclist actually shot a driver last summer for cutting him off in a cycling lane. None of this counts the fact that it rains nine months out of the year here.

In theory, it all works great. The American mindset, in general, isn't so keen on it, though.

[Maladict]

Cycling as a solution isn't going to work universally - it certainly would be a tough sell here in Toronto, because of climate. For several months every year, cycling is not very appealing to the average person, to put it mildly.

The fact that certain solutions work in the Netherlands may have a lot to do with its geographic features (relatively compact, flat, weather not too extreme). The Netherlands has a population of 17 million fitted into 33k square km, mostly very flat; my province of Ontario has a population of 14.5 million fitted into an area of over 1 million square km, and much less flat, with ferocious winter weather - though admittedly, the northern portion of that (the largest portion) is mostly uninhabited wilderness. Though these are just examples, any proposed transportation solution has got to take such differences into account.

The Dutchies I know who moved to Canada (Toronto and Ottawa) never got a car and are happily cycling everywhere year round 

Edit: although I suspect they'll use the excellent public transport as well.

[HVC]

Cycling as a solution isn't going to work universally - it certainly would be a tough sell here in Toronto, because of climate. For several months every year, cycling is not very appealing to the average person, to put it mildly.

The fact that certain solutions work in the Netherlands may have a lot to do with its geographic features (relatively compact, flat, weather not too extreme). The Netherlands has a population of 17 million fitted into 33k square km, mostly very flat; my province of Ontario has a population of 14.5 million fitted into an area of over 1 million square km, and much less flat, with ferocious winter weather - though admittedly, the northern portion of that (the largest portion) is mostly uninhabited wilderness. Though these are just examples, any proposed transportation solution has got to take such differences into account.

The Dutchies I know who moved to Canada (Toronto and Ottawa) never got a car and are happily cycling everywhere year round 

I'm not a driver, but i hate any of your friends that moved to toronto

[Maladict]

Cycling as a solution isn't going to work universally - it certainly would be a tough sell here in Toronto, because of climate. For several months every year, cycling is not very appealing to the average person, to put it mildly.

The fact that certain solutions work in the Netherlands may have a lot to do with its geographic features (relatively compact, flat, weather not too extreme). The Netherlands has a population of 17 million fitted into 33k square km, mostly very flat; my province of Ontario has a population of 14.5 million fitted into an area of over 1 million square km, and much less flat, with ferocious winter weather - though admittedly, the northern portion of that (the largest portion) is mostly uninhabited wilderness. Though these are just examples, any proposed transportation solution has got to take such differences into account.

The Dutchies I know who moved to Canada (Toronto and Ottawa) never got a car and are happily cycling everywhere year round 

I'm not a driver, but i hate any of your friends that moved to toronto

[Sheilbh]

The fact that certain solutions work in the Netherlands may have a lot to do with its geographic features (relatively compact, flat, weather not too extreme). The Netherlands has a population of 17 million fitted into 33k square km, mostly very flat; my province of Ontario has a population of 14.5 million fitted into an area of over 1 million square km, and much less flat, with ferocious winter weather - though admittedly, the northern portion of that (the largest portion) is mostly uninhabited wilderness. Though these are just examples, any proposed transportation solution has got to take such differences into account.

Absolutely - and I think it's really important for public transport too. I am not saying everywhere can or should try to become the Netherlands. My point is the Netherlands is the result of political choices and everywhere can make political choices. There is nothing natural about people relying on cars (in most of the world - over 50% of the world now lives in "urban areas"), there's also nothing natural about the Dutch or the Danes cycling. They are products of our society not some sort of biological imperative, so we can shift them and change them.

[Maladict]

Sheilbh, you were probably thinking about Ghent. I looked it up because it sounded familiar, they probably took their cue from my old town of Groningen
In the 70s the city council implemented one way streets overnight, without warning. The roughly circular city centre was divided into four parts, with no possible connection between them for cars. So cars had to go outside the city centre, drive around the city and back in. It's literally faster to walk. Nobody in their right mind takes their car into the city anymore, unless they live there.

[garbon]

The fact that certain solutions work in the Netherlands may have a lot to do with its geographic features (relatively compact, flat, weather not too extreme). The Netherlands has a population of 17 million fitted into 33k square km, mostly very flat; my province of Ontario has a population of 14.5 million fitted into an area of over 1 million square km, and much less flat, with ferocious winter weather - though admittedly, the northern portion of that (the largest portion) is mostly uninhabited wilderness. Though these are just examples, any proposed transportation solution has got to take such differences into account.

Absolutely - and I think it's really important for public transport too. I am not saying everywhere can or should try to become the Netherlands. My point is the Netherlands is the result of political choices and everywhere can make political choices. There is nothing natural about people relying on cars (in most of the world - over 50% of the world now lives in "urban areas"), there's also nothing natural about the Dutch or the Danes cycling. They are products of our society not some sort of biological imperative, so we can shift them and change them.

If you want to effect real change, you need to be realistic about what you can actually achieve. Nothing you've suggested so far suggests anything remotely like a carless society except for perhaps residents of city centres (many of whom already don't have cars).

[Razgovory]

Okay, I'm confused by Tyr's county/city thing.

America throws around the title of city willy nilly. Practically any settlement can be a city. If its a strip of land full of farms and scattered clusters of houses then it isn't a city in my book.
I saw this kind of thing a lot in Japan. There's been a huge trend, especially this century, to merge towns and villages into "cities" for ease of administration despite them really just being a collection of towns scattered over hundreds of square kilometers. Perhaps more famously China has also done that a lot in modern times, effectively just counting a city as a non agricultural county.
When we are comparing cities in the US and in Europe we should try to compare like with like, comparing the true cities of each rather than semi rural areas.

What American cities do you consider farms?

Denver and Phoenix were the two you mentioned.

Well okay...

[garbon]

The fact that certain solutions work in the Netherlands may have a lot to do with its geographic features (relatively compact, flat, weather not too extreme). The Netherlands has a population of 17 million fitted into 33k square km, mostly very flat; my province of Ontario has a population of 14.5 million fitted into an area of over 1 million square km, and much less flat, with ferocious winter weather - though admittedly, the northern portion of that (the largest portion) is mostly uninhabited wilderness. Though these are just examples, any proposed transportation solution has got to take such differences into account.

Absolutely - and I think it's really important for public transport too. I am not saying everywhere can or should try to become the Netherlands. My point is the Netherlands is the result of political choices and everywhere can make political choices. There is nothing natural about people relying on cars (in most of the world - over 50% of the world now lives in "urban areas"), there's also nothing natural about the Dutch or the Danes cycling. They are products of our society not some sort of biological imperative, so we can shift them and change them.

I'm also uncertain about this statement given it must then cover many areas where cars are needed.

[merithyn]

Okay, I'm confused by Tyr's county/city thing.

America throws around the title of city willy nilly. Practically any settlement can be a city. If its a strip of land full of farms and scattered clusters of houses then it isn't a city in my book.
I saw this kind of thing a lot in Japan. There's been a huge trend, especially this century, to merge towns and villages into "cities" for ease of administration despite them really just being a collection of towns scattered over hundreds of square kilometers. Perhaps more famously China has also done that a lot in modern times, effectively just counting a city as a non agricultural county.
When we are comparing cities in the US and in Europe we should try to compare like with like, comparing the true cities of each rather than semi rural areas.

What American cities do you consider farms?

Denver and Phoenix were the two you mentioned.

Well okay...

Give up, Raz. Tyr clearly has no idea what he's talking about.