City roads should be ‘ripped out completely’ to fight pollution, says government adviser
City roads should be ‘ripped out completely’ to fight pollution, says government adviser
Dr Gary Fuller, who reviewed research supporting the Ulez expansion, has suggested turning cities into ‘green spaces’
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Car brains are out in force for this thread, lol.
Apparently, if you can't transit products by car or truck, directly to the front-door of every business, the city will collapse.
That there are cities that have actually done this doesn't seem to stop them insisting it's impossible.
Something I think is sort of ironic is that in my neighborhood most of the last mile delivery happens on bike. This isn't because of a lack of automobile infrastructure but because there are too many automobiles. Nowhere to park or even idle the van for a short time.
I do also suspect it's more convenient for the delivery person to hop off a bike at each stop than it would be to park a car and get out etc.
If I were a city planner I'd integrate that system into my strategy. Ripping out every road is of course hyperbole and clickbait, but ripping out every other road seems like a no brainer. But I seriously doubt converting 3/4 or more of the roads for autos into pedestrian/bike/tram/greenspace would shake things up too bad. Just make sure to keep main arteries open for automobiles and ensure there's centralized parking garages (street parking is a blight) within a decent walking distance and I think people who need to have a car in the city will get used to it fast.
Hey so I come from a european city from 778, with most of the streets having been the same for over 500 years now.
Heineken truck drivers manage to supply bars and restaurants throughout the city with little to no problems and most of that is pedestrian zoning with exceptions for deliveries and it works quite well.
This is an excellent point too - removing streets for general use doesn't necessarily also exclude commercial delivery use and so forth
Name five, with populations higher than 50,000.
You know there are dozens of major cities that have converted major roads, and entire precincts, to foot traffic only... right?
Turns out it's pretty easy to transport inventory in hand trolleys a few blocks as most major cities, especially business districts, are flat as fuck.
"converted major roads" is very different from "ripped out completely"
entire precincts, to foot traffic only
I actually live next to a few places that have done this... with one or two streets for about 3 blocks in a downtown area... and they all have streets on the backsides to handle cargo delivery and trash pickup... so again, not "ripped out completely".
The great thing about FOOT traffic, is you don't need roads. You only need paths (e.g. the sidewalk) to bike or trolley inventory around.
How about YOU provide evidence of ANYWHERE converting blocks of a suburb or city to parkland, and suddenly facing the supply chain crisis you hypothesise? If you can't, then your argument is imaginary and based on nothing but your own biases... and maybe you should support change until there's reasonable evidence that it doesn't work... and no, a sample size of one is not evidence.
There isn't any township of any appreciable size (>50k pop) that has completely ripped out road infrastructure that I know of. I can't prove a negative.
Do you have an example of a location that has done so?
Point me to where someone is suggesting this? Sounds like a strawman
That's what the article is talking about.
Where does it say all roads? I think it's pretty clear in context that they're not suggesting that
You've bought into a strawman if you believe the intention is to remove all road infrastructure from an entire city. No city on earth would ever do that.
Imagine if every second parallel street were a grass strip, instead of a road. Fire trucks, ambulances, vans, etc could still drive down them as needed, and nowhere would be more than a couple of blocks from a road, but regular traffic capacity would be cut by 50%, and so would pollution.
You’ve bought into a strawman if you believe the intention is to remove all road infrastructure from an entire city.
So did every person who upvoted this article, apparently. And the person who uploaded it.
Imagine if every second parallel street were a grass strip, instead of a road. Fire trucks, ambulances, vans, etc could still drive down them as needed, and nowhere would be more than a couple of blocks from a road, but regular traffic capacity would be cut by 50%, and so would pollution.
This idea is a lot more sensible. It is NOT what is proposed in the article.
What the article proposes is the idea that I am arguing against, not your idea.
Fuck_cars on Lemmy is great, I feel like I'm really fighting for the future every time I come here.
On Reddit it was just people trying to out meme each other
Fuck_cars on Lemmy is great, I feel like I'm really fighting for the future every time I come here.
Lol
These people also forget that "delivery trucks allowed" is common. Cutting out 95% of cars and leaving delivery vehicles is fine.
I worry more about emergency services access...
Emergency services have a lot of problems delivering care in current city traffic.
Sure, but if they don't have any roads to travel on what then?
But I've seen another comment mentioning the distinction between roads and streets so I guess that might explain why I can't imagine how that would be realistic.
I think it's silly to get rid of all roads.
But, a quick, easy solution is have those barricade pole things that can drop down and let a car through If needed in emergency situations.
They even exist with a camera and AI to automatically detect emergency vehicles.
In the Netherlands they use bike lanes.
A two way bike lane is wide enough for emergency vehicles like an ambulance, and bikers get out of the way.
What is your proposed alternative solution for logistics in any moderately dense urban area? Like never mind New York, you couldn't make this work in Little Rock.
Why don't you read the article? It's all spelled out right there.
What? No it isn't.
No part of the article discusses replacing the logistics function of cargo vehicles, but it does propose ripping out the road infrastructure they run on.
Apparently, you are unaware that cargo bikes are a thing.
Right... and how many such bikes would you need to replace the carrying capacity of a single 18-wheeler?
This is not a practical solution.
Also, not discussed in the article and not relevant to my previous comment.
18 wheelers are not last mile delivery vehicles and have no business being in cities to begin with.
Um, yes they are? 18 wheelers deliver goods to stores all the time. How are you even trying to make this argument? What kind of vehicle do you think usually pulls up to a loading dock?
What kind of vehicle do you think usually pulls up to a loading dock?
Grocery stores inside cities do not have loading docks. Their goods are typically delivered by this type of vehicle to curb-side offloading sites during off-peak hours.
148 E 17th St https://maps.app.goo.gl/a3wp7u1spEN4Vtjm7
Here's a grocery store. It's in downtown Little Rock (pop 204k).
Bet you anything you like all that cardboard got hauled away in an 18 wheeler (or a recycling truck).
To be clear (and reitierate) I'm not talking about heavily urbanized places, I'm talking about moderately urbanized places (which there are a lot more of). Converting a few inner city blocks in super dense cities is entirely meaningless in terms of helping the environment. For a solution/change to be useful, it will need to have wider applicability (to the majority of cities, which have <1m pop).
Most urbanists also despise mega-mart style stores as well, and would rather have smaller stores littered throughout neighborhoods
Reduces the dependence on cars as the stores nearby have what you need without having to drive super far and to buy so much because its so far.
They deliver goods to big box stores, not to the kinds of stores one finds in a dense, walkable downtown core area. I have worked in the delivery industry, and we served the downtown core entirely with 5-ton and 3-ton trucks and cargo vans. It's simply not practical to get a full-sized trailer in there.
I've never even seen an 18 wheeler in UK much less in london
Oh, this lie?
Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of car journeys were under two miles and 60 per cent under five miles. “You could really walk two miles. By the time you get in the car, parked it, you have arrived there in the same time,” said Dr Fuller.
Yeah that's totally going to get people to charge their behavior and not piss them off.
By the time you get in the car, parked it, you have arrived there in the same time,” said Dr Fuller.
This lie?
Speaking solely for myself here: I used to have a mental block that prevented me from calculating travel time by different modes equitably. If it was a 10 minute drive, or a 20 minute walk, my calculation was anchored to the 10-minute drive as the "real" amount of time, and so the 20 minute walk always felt like a waste of 10 minutes. I think it's easy to fall into this trap, especially when our lives are busy and we're trying to save time anywhere we can. But a 20 minute walk is 20 minutes less I have to go to the gym, and 10 minutes less that I have to be hyper alert and driving a 2T vehicle around other people.
Additionally, this mental block existed for me around time spent parking and walking from my car to my destination. Obviously I had to walk from my car, so my brain saw that as +0 minutes. But when I calculated it, I found that I was often spending meaningful amounts of time on this leg:
My urban office is 6 miles from my suburban home (metro area approx 2.5MM people). Even with a highway for half the trip (which gets clogged with commuter and freight traffic during rush hours) the drive is approximately 20-25 minutes during light traffic, or as long as 40 minutes if traffic is particularly heavy. I have to park in a garage, which involves circling for a spot, and then have a 15 min walk to my office. On a good day, 35 minutes. On a bad day, almost an hour.
But taking my ebike (which I only bought because of the many steep hills between me and work) through back roads and sidestreets, it's 35-40 minutes door to door. Now I get 35-40 minutes of exercise without having to go to the gym, and my vehicle is parked right at thr exit to my building. Plus, I can charge the ebike with company electricity instead of having to pay for gas for my car.
Yeah that's totally going to get people to charge their behavior and not piss them off
It pisses a lot of people off when they can't park right next to their destination. But that already happens. There is a limited amount of space at places people want to be, so someone will always have to park farther away. Circling the nearby streets for parking is also annoying as fuck, and a huge waste of time.
Currently, no. But with mixed zoning, it would become more amenable to change over time.
This is a fantasy. It can't be implemented in large scale in any practical sense.
Centralization of distribution and centralization of production is always more efficient. You aren't going to put dairy farms next to apartment buildings next to orchards next to paper manufacturing plants next to microchip fabricators next to restaurants next to family homes next to waste water treatment next to hospitals next to bookstores next to power generators next to garbage incinerators next to grocery stores...
These things get separated from each other for good reason, and running rail lines to all of them will never be practical. There will always be a need to fill the gap with small, independently powered vehicles for cargo transport.
You know, for someone who complains about other people making strawman of them, you sure do seem fond of it yourself.
Someone: "We should reduce our dependency on cars and shift our infrastructure planning toward other modes of transport wherever possible."
You: "SO YOU WANT TO TEAR OUT ALL ROADS EVERYWHERE AND EXECUTE PEOPLE FOR OWNING CARS?!?1!?!1?"
"We should reduce our dependency on cars and shift our infrastructure planning toward other modes of transport wherever possible."
This is not what the article says.
SO YOU WANT TO TEAR OUT ALL ROADS EVERYWHERE
This is closer to what the article says.
A government adviser has called for roads in cities to be “ripped out completely” to combat air pollution.
This is the first paragraph of the article.
...and then you actually read the article past the misleading click bait, right? The Telegraph is a conservative paper, they have an interest in smearing anyone who challenges the status quo.
Up to 80 per cent of people living on arterial routes in urban areas did not own cars, with most of the pollution being caused by motorists driving into and through their communities.
Pointing to the “greening” of city centres such as Seoul and Utrecht, he said: “We should start changing our cities and actually start thinking about ripping out road infrastructure and turning them into green spaces or green transport corridors. We have to look beyond traffic.”
That is not something a reasonable person would interpret as ripping out 100% of roads. Especially since he references real projects like Seoul.
ripping out road infrastructure
K
