I'm amazed that so many people who consider themselves inclusive in their thoughts don't realize how exclusionary anti-automobile policies are. As someone who suffers from mild arthritis, the trip to the back of a Wal-Mart can be painful for me, and a walk or bike ride across a city block absolutely foreboding. On the bad days, even standing in line at a checkout for an extended period of time can send my knees and hips into a painful state (and the thought of riding across town standing on a scooter, frankly, horrifies me).
Cars and the point-to-point transit that they offer are a GODSEND for me and many other people who are somewhat mobility restricted, but not so bad that we need wheelchairs or crutches. They enable me to live a very normal life that would be impossible in a heavily pedestrian optimized environment. The fact that you don't even consider some of the alternatives as viable - automated shared cars, electric cars, strong hybrids ... all of which solve the problems you identified (wasted space on parking, pollution, etc.) leads me to believe that you actually just hate cars, and not any of the (solvable) problems that are caused by their current embodiment.
Consider that everyone's circumstances are not the same as yours. Have some compassion for your fellow humans.
EDIT:
To those who are saying that we'll still allow those with disabilities to have cars: many states require that you be able to walk less then 200 feet to get a disabled plate. On most days, I can walk at least 500 ... so by almost all standards, I do not qualify. However, walking 5-600 feet doesn't get you far enough to survive without a car. If the world were to go this route, we would have to reconsider what constitutes 'disabled'.
Another thought that surfaces is that with my 36-37" inseam (I wear 36" pants because that's as big as they sell, but they're really still too short), I do not fit in most public transit, and most cars. Thankfully, because cars are privately owned, I can pick from the 2 or 3 models that I actually fit in. A public transit world is a world that marginalizes peoples who are in the last 5-10% in terms of height/weight.
> A few spots are left, converted into parking for disabled drivers or EV charging, and some streets are open for delivery trucks for a couple of hours in the morning. Emergency vehicles still have access.
Nobody who has thought about this issue for a bit is suggesting that we ban cars like we banned chemical weapons. Simply that the number of cars can be cut by a factor of 5-10 easily, leaving behind only those users who actually need the car, and not using it as a convenience at enormous unaccountable externalities.
Not to mention that the the health of many (but not all) is destroyed by absolute minimum exercise needed in car centric cities. When everyone starts walking 5-10K steps everyday, many mobility related ailments are avoided or controlled or managed sufficiently.
Not to mention the abuse of handicap licenses in the states. I speak to this as witnessing an acquaintance borrowing a handicap permit from a family member and using it for themselves. This kind of behavior would have to be enforced more strictly.
Borrowing handicap permit is already illegal, and AFAIR carries pretty hefty fine. Of course, enforcing it is hard - would you demand a spot physical endurance exam from everybody parking in a handicapped place? How would you even know? I used the temporary handicapped placard once for a while, when I broke my leg. When recovering, on some days, I could walk for a bit. On others, I could only walk with crutches and for a short distance. But maybe I was just faking, who knows? And of course I didn't carry my medical records with me everywhere I went. So how would you know if I'm legitimately hurt or just borrowed the placard?
If you are reluctant to harass legitimately disabled people, some amount of abuse would slip in. I think unless the abuse is so rampant that legitimate users get denied access (e.g. so many fakers are parking in handicap spots that the real ones have no spot) ignoring most of it as the inevitable price of not making lives of legitimately affected people yet harder is the right way to go.
It would be reasonable to spot-check driver's license (which they necessarily have for driving said vehicle). Should be easy enough to verify against the handicap permit.
Where I live, the light rail isn't access controlled, so they send officers around randomly to verify that everyone on the train have a valid pass (and ticket those who don't). Nobody really complains about it or thinks it's invasive.
I am sure there are still people who manage to ride the rail for free. Not many, but there are. And that's ok, some low-level abuse is perfectly tolerable as long as it's low-level.
Completely unreasonable as far as I am concerned. ID checks are done as part of safety checks: drunk driving, speed traps, etc. But they cannot be done without another violation occurring. And that’s more than enough government in my life.
My office is directly in view of all the handicap spots in a large commercial office buildings so watch this everyday. It is crazy how many people abuse the handicap parking permits.
And then you see the people who really need it and would make a difference if they didn't get those very front spots taken up by these folks.
Can confirm. Having a temporary handicapped tag enabled me to get to work when otherwise impossible when I had a broken pelvis. No cast, I could walk a very short distance, and I was a young looking guy driving an SUV in downtown SF. I probably looked like everyone's idea of the problem.
Agreed. I have used scooters in stores on days when my knees are unbearably bad. You'd be amazed how many people will give an otherwise healthly looking, reasonably fit/thin 37 year old guy dirty looks for what they assume is a joy ride.
That's just the thing - you can't tell how blatant they are without knowing the situation. You can merely look and think, "They can walk just fine.."
But you can't see that the person gets fatigued and suddenly can't walk very far. (And we are talking about fatigue that makes folks nearly pass out, not just mere tiredness) Or they have a history of numbness and trouble walking and keep a cane at their desk for this reason.
Like others have said, you cannot tell from the outside. This isn't freaking "entitlement". If you want to hate American culture, there are plenty of other areas to do this that doesn't make one crap on sick folks. I'd suggest focusing on letting folks go without health care or letting folks starve, but there are plenty of other choices.
I think this whole back-and-forth points out that having to give those who need it some special token/permit/allowance necessarily politicises the issue.
The nicest accommodations are those you don't even have to ask for.
While I want able-bodied people to take the stairs, I think it's great when we can afford enough elevators that nobody cares. The situation where they are rationed, whether by needing a special key or just by a sign & dirty looks, is always less pleasant. But when it comes to cities and transport, this is genuinely hard, as cities with so much parking that it's free for everyone are radically different to mostly non-car cities.
I think it's important to recognize, though, that in many cases, heavy road users' road use is subsidized by lighter road users. Roads are expensive both in terms of construction/maintenance and land use, they're mostly not paid for by user fees anymore (gas taxes cover a relatively small share, and same for tolls), and many people benefiting from these subsidies are doing so for lifestyle choice reasons and not out of necessity -- like, they're choosing to live in a rural area far away from infrastructure and then expecting government to build and maintain low-traffic roads to provide them access, or they're choosing to live in an exurb and commute an hour every day, or whatever.
Yours is not that case. You have a medical need, as do many people. But it's still reasonable to move away from the mentality that's common in the US of viewing road use and car use as a human right, and towards one that's about explicitly opting into or out of trade-offs about how best to make use of limited road space and government funds. Specifically: if we're going to subsidize road use, should we subsidize all of it, and if so, all of it at the same rate? I think you make a good case for why people with mobility restrictions should have access to such a subsidy, but I don't think it follows that because they should, everyone should. Maybe people who are able to take the bus or walk should have incentives to do so, or disincentives to not do so.
You use the words "choosing to live far away" but all that generally means is they are poor. Clearly they should just buy a house and move to downtown San Fransisco like everyone who cares about the environment does.
There are many parts of the country where lavish acreages are built in communities far from town (save money on the land, put it into the house), banking on the automobile to commute thirty miles each way.
SF isn't even an anomaly here- look to the coastal mountains above Palo Alto. Lavish houses on large plots of land. Yeah, they are expensive, but you ain't getting no mansion and ten acres in the heart of SF for a paltry $50M.
Actually, I'm going to argue for just the opposite: Let users of cars pay for the infrastructure they use (through gas and plate taxes), let users of public transit pay for the services and infrastructure they use (through ridership fees). Right now, public transit is heavily subsidized by income taxes and use taxes for cars (at least in my area). I think that if all transit users were forced to pay for their share of the cost of the services they use, you would see public transit use decrease in many mid-sized cities, and potentially increase in extremely dense cities.
If you really have a desire to 'stick it to the wealthy' while still enabling all to use the roads, sell access to HOV lanes at some extremely high cost and use it to pay for improvements to the infrastructure as a whole. I honestly think that this is a much better plan than the current (ridiculous) trend of offering HOV access to hybrids and EVs, because getting people into hybrids and EVs does nothing to ease congestion, which is the purpose of HOV lanes. Charging an extremely high tax for single-occupied HOV use would provide additional money to build improved infrastructure for all users, which would achieve the HOV goal of reducing congestion and pollution (because for traditional cars, congestion = horrible MPG).
PS - hybrids and EVs don't make sense in all areas. I have a Fusion Energi which has a plug-in range of about 20 miles, and I live in Michigan. I bought it because I wanted to be able to eat lunch in my car without idling the engine (to save wear and tear), but in general, hybrids and EVs are a complete waste of time in the midwest. 1/3 of the year is spent in arctic conditions below 30 degrees, and another 1/3 of the year is spent in sweltering 85+ degree temperatures ... and in both cases, hybrids and EVs don't do notably better than gas cars (first hand experience here).
As an additional aside, until we build more nuclear plants, and/or provide infrastructure to charge EVs during the day, they are kind of pointless. Solar power is not available at night (when most people charge EVs), so the electricity ends up coming from hyrdocarbon fuels plants. The conversion and transmission losses associated with going from Thermal->Mechanical->Electrical->High Voltage->Transmit->Low Voltage->DC->battery are so high that EVs really are currently not better than gas vehicles in much of the country. In areas where the waste heat from the gasoline is used to provide cabin heat, EVs are significantly worse in terms of overall energy use (especially those that use resistive heating for cabin heat).
To say that public transit is heavily subsidized ignores that the alternative, building new roads, parking, bridges, and other infrastructure is even more expensive. And it ignores how much regular road use is subsidized.
In the UK fuel taxes raise £50Bn for the exchequer every year and the total transport budget is £25Bn. Maybe it’s different in the US but certainly here, the idea that cars are subsidised just isn’t factually true. Drivers pay for all forms of transportation then contribute as much again to e.g. the NHS.
Just a couple of days ago there was a piece reporting research that the UK had the highest fossil fuel subsidies in the EU, to the tune of £10.5bn a year), along with another piece earlier in the week that we have to increase allocation of public funds for subsidising North Sea oil rig decomissioning. Can't quickly dig up a link for the second, but it was around £25bn.
Not to forget that the escalating climate change tax on petrol was paused some years back.
FTA significant part of the UK fossil fuel subsidies identified by the commission is the 5% rate of VAT on domestic gas and electricity, cut from the standard 20%
Taxing something less is not the same as subsidising it and it is disingenuous to claim that it is. Is the government subsidising you by taxing you less than some hypothetical percentage?
Oh yes it is true. As a fellow Brit all the fossil fuel use contributes huge amounts of negative externalities in pollution, health damage and other more subtle environmental impacts. Fuel taxes are not high enough. It should cost much more than 1.20 a litre for the overall damage we do driving.
Subsidies can be very indirect and subtle. E.g. "If you want to build this store, you will have to also build one hundred parking spaces. No, we aren't going to give you any money for it, you figure it out"
How would this work when our cities have been so heavily developed to favor the automobile? I'm for road users paying for the roads or access, but public transit is so lightly used in most of the US and there's so little existing infrastructure that it's at a severe disadvantage and can't take advantage network effects or economies of scale. Instead of a train near my house, there's an interstate highway. Our cities are already so sprawling and NIMBYism so strong. I wonder if it's too late for transit.
Fast HOV lanes would make buses go faster, and if the HOV lane's expensive, most people would find taking a bus to use it most economical. Honestly I think if you instituted congestion pricing, Uber/Lyft would reinvent themselves as bus agencies in many cities.
I think public transit would only be viable in dense urban cores. In other areas, if the city desires to provide transportation assistance, I think it's probably more efficient to provide other forms of transportation to the working poor (who are typically the primary users of public transit in midsized cities). Here in Grand Rapids, the busses are so lightly used that it would probably be cheaper for the city to hand out Uber or Lyft credits for the people that are now using the busses (and it'd provide a better user experience too).
Can one of the people downvoting this into oblivion please explain? If a midsized city with little congestion could provide subsidized point-to-point transit for those who need it at a comparable cost to operating a bus system, what is the possible downside? This would be hugely beneficial to the people actually using the service, since they get all the time back that would have otherwise been spent waiting on transit services.
Don't you think this is relying a bit too much on private corporation like Uber and Lyft? What if they shut down, or leave the city? How long would it take to reorganize public transport?
Also, uber and Lyft would get to decide the prices, that could cost much more to the city.
I think a public transport has to be public, ie publicly owned.
Why does it have to be publicly owned? For example, all of London buses are privately owned, but the bus companies are contracted to operate routes and the city sets the fares, colour scheme etc so that they all look the same.
Everyone at this point is subsidized by general tax revenue; neither transit nor roads pay for themselves, so I'm not sure it makes sense to say one of them is subsidizing the other one. It may be true according to some ways of accounting that transit is more heavily subsidized than driving, depending on the specific transit mode, but if you actually charged rail users what it costs to run a rail system, many fewer people (as you say) would ride the train, and they just wouldn't fit on the roads in major dense metros because cars are so space-inefficient, so you'd need to build way more roads, probably seizing currently-not-road space by eminent domain, and you'd want to account for the loss of economic activity that came out of tearing down a bunch of buildings to replace them with highway. All of which is to say, I'm skeptical that an actual user-pays model would save drivers money over transit riders, at least in dense, transit-heavy cities.
Another way to think about it: you can view drivers paying for transit as a subsidy, but you can also view it as paying for decreased traffic, from which they directly benefit.
Reply to danjayh - thread is too large to comment nest comments anymore lol
Though, one more thing I'd tax is noise from music bumpers. Those people drive me up the f-ing wall. I challenge anyone to think about how much damn awful music pollution is. Then come back in a year, after seriously considering it - if you've become the crazy old guy at the end of the street waving his cane (like me), then you know it's a problem.
Already in place, via mitigations that have been implemented. Fuel injection, multiple catalytic converters, exhaust gas recycling, and closed-loop control all add substantial expense to modern vehicles. They do, however, very effectively reduce/eliminate the smog problems that we had 30 years ago (which is a good thing).
Most modern freeway builds include noise mitigation in their designs. This cost should be passed on to the freeway users via use fees.
You say "already in place". While it's certainly true that smog isn't anywhere near the problem it once was, it's still a problem, and others still pay for the consequences of automobile emissions.
Some quotes from various sources:
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-air-pollution-repo... - "Los Angeles remains the nation's leader in harmful ozone pollution from car tailpipes emissions ... but the report said the nation's second-largest city also achieved its best overall air quality score of all those years."
https://www.livestrong.com/article/156537-facts-of-car-pollu... - "The American Lung Association reports that 30,000 people are killed by car emissions annually in the United States alone. Air pollution also causes numerous respiratory and cardiovascular problems and may exacerbate pre-existing conditions such as asthma. More than half of Americans live in areas that fail to meet federal air quality standards at least several days each year."
https://www.pca.state.mn.us/air/motor-vehicle-pollution - "Motor vehicles give off more than half of all carbon monoxide and hydrocarbon emissions in Minnesota. These emissions, including microscopic particles, can contribute to breathing and heart problems along with an elevated risk of cancer."
https://owl.cwp.org/mdocs-posts/elc_pwp6/ - "Metals can follow many pathways before they become entrained in urban stormwater run off. A recent California study sponsored by the Santa Clara Valley Nonpoint Source Program suggests that cars are the dominant loading source for many metals of concern, such as cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, mercury, and zinc."
Fair enough. In those jurisdictions that still have problems, perhaps regulations requiring hybrid and/or plug-in hybrid vehicles make sense. This can't be done at a national level because the benefit of these vehicles falls off dramatically in areas that experience temperature extremes, making them hardly any better than traditional cars.
I drive a PHEV in Michigan, and for around 6-8 months a year, its mileage isn't any better than a standard 4 cylinder due to poor hybrid performance in extremely cold or hot temperatures. You get into the car, the BMS determines that the battery is either baking or freezing, and scales regen/assistance back to minimal levels. You essentially end up with a gas vehicle with an expensive start/stop system (and below about 10-12f, they actually often idle even when stopped to maintain engine temperature).
Are you serious? You think in the US of all places where environmental & air standards regulations are the weakest that all the negative externalities of air pollution from cars is captured in taxes?
> Let users of cars pay for the
> infrastructure they use (through
> gas and plate taxes),
You couldn't. The cost of providing the road structures, lighting, c. 40,000 direct deaths a year, massive numbers of respiratory illnesses, serious injuries, not to mention importing oil and maintaining the largest army in the world to keep that oil flowing in is massive.
Automobile use is insanely subsidized by our society.
I broke my foot and ankle in several places in a rock climbing accident 1.5 years ago, and was put in a similar place to you (unable to stand for more than 20 minutes, unable to walk more than a few hundred yards, etc). This was a huge lifestyle impact to me -- before the injury, if it was less than a 30 minute walk, I almost always walked. If I wasn't in a hurry, up to 60 minutes.
What helped me a lot was getting an e-bike that I'm able to cruise around town at 20mph (32kph) in. I understand that this particular solution doesn't apply to you, since arthritis is triggered by joint movement, whereas my pain is triggered by impact on the damaged foot and ankle (and e-biking is low impact).
But this experience got me thinking a lot about small electric vehicles.
One could imagine a city center where most people walk or bike, and people with a medical permit could drive around in speed-limited, electric golf carts, which are fairly compatible with pedestrian-only areas. Perhaps the city itself would staff the golf carts with drivers who were summonable via app.
So people like us could drive to a parking garage on the outskirts of the city center, and then there would either be rentable golf carts at the garage, or golf carts able to be summoned to go into the city center.
Similar experience: I broke my leg, while I happened to be living both with a car, and in a building with underground parking.
This really made staying independent possible, for the months it took before I could walk properly. Sure it was slower to drive to the supermarket & park underground there, instead of walking... but much quicker than waiting for someone else to have time to help.
I agree that solutions other than a traditional car would be possible. But right now, thinking through other places I've lived fine without a car, they would all have been hell.
I was in Shanghai for work for about 3 weeks a few years back. For the first week, I tried to use mass transit, because everyone said it was the best way around (and in shanghai, their mass transit is absolutely world-class, the best of the best). It was absolute hell - a perfect description; I was in constant pain.
After the first week I broke down and just took cabs everywhere. Perfectly practical, but only when somebody else (in this case, my employer) is paying for it.
I can well imagine! Good on you for going all the same.
In defence of the transit, it has to be said that (in a city that size) those cabs could not work without it. The roads are only passable because 90% of people aren't on them.
Which is to say, the fares have to be out of reach (as a daily expense) for > 90% of people. I imagine most employers would balk at the cost of catching cabs everywhere in Oslo.
This sort of thing only works if the average car is an automatic transmission. In areas where a manual transmission is the norm, breaking a leg means not driving.
>I'm amazed that so many people who consider themselves inclusive in their thoughts don't realize how exclusionary anti-automobile policies are. As someone who suffers from mild arthritis, the trip to the back of a Wal-Mart can be painful for me, and a walk or bike ride across a city block absolutely foreboding.
Oslo, and European cities without or with much less cars, have tons of people with arthritis as well and they're doing just fine. A walkable city will be even more welcoming for things like powered wheelchairs, healthier to breath for everybody, and will have low cost (and in some cases in here, free) mass transportation.
>Consider that everyone's circumstances are not the same as yours. Have some compassion for your fellow humans.
Yeah, because nothing says compassion like car ridden cities, and urban areas designed around driving.
I'd be completely okay with cars for disabled people, deliveries, and people who have to transport a lot of stuff like tools for their job. But >90% of all cars on the road are driven by able-bodied people with nothing but themselves to transport.
Completely agree! I'd love to hop on a bus and watch Netflix on my phone while someone else drives me downtown to work, but it's 3x as slow. It takes me about 25 minutes to drive myself, or 60-70 minutes by bus. That and a lot of the bus stops around me have zero shade from the sun or rain, or one tiny bench so that the majority of folks waiting have to stand. It feels like such an afterthought.
Also, I'd like to point out the economic disadvantage that comes from having to own a vehicle to drive to certain jobs. I've had to turn down jobs back in the day because I couldn't save up enough to purchase a vehicle and maintain it as well. You end up losing a lot of personal time waiting on buses. I remember having to get up at 5:00AM to catch a bus a mile away, and then getting home around 9:00PM too tired to do anything else but sleep and repeat.
When I ride to work, trains are going every 2-3 minutes and it takes me 20 minutes to get to my destination at the other side of the city.
I don't think I world make it through the traffic and all the red lights in the same time. Finding a parking spot would take a significant amount of time again.
I'm sorry that public transport sucks in your city. Plans to reduce car traffic usually include improvements to public transport and bike infrastructure. In cities with good public transport it's usually faster to take a train and a bus than to drive. See for example London and Tokyo.
There are two people "obviously" disabled in my workplace of circa 400. One of them walks to maintain their fitness from a cleverly chosen home in a town of just over 100K. The other drives. Nearly everyone else drives for lifestyle reasons.
Most people do not need to drive. It is a selfish, ultimately stupid choice they have made.
This is important to consider, but even if anti-car policies inadvertently exclude some people, I'd push back against the presumption that they are more exclusionary than pro-car policies. They might still represent an improvement over the status quo in this regard. For instance, anti-car advocates often argue that policies which effectively require people to buy and maintain cars to participate in society are exclusionary of the poor.
For germany, there's a study that estimates that up to 30% of a flats rent in densely populated areas is directly or indirectly caused by car-centric planning. And if I just go round the block and estimate how much space is taken by (toll-free) parking and car lanes, I can quite well imagine that this number might be on the high side, but not entirely unfounded. Just half a block from my flat is a road that is double lane, at intersections 3-4 lanes including turn lanes in each direction, each direction offers a parking along the road and in the middle are two parking lanes 90° to the road. The parking space allocated would be sufficient to create a full house the entire length of the road. All that road space is built and maintained by the city, which receives neither vehicle tax nor any petrol taxes or any of the taxes that car owners pay.
I'm not generally opposed to people owning cars and using them. I'm opposed to people offloading the costs and space requirements of their private property onto the community.
A single parking spot is roughly equivalent to a large room in a flat. Parking spots are about 10m^2 each. Buildings have between three and five stories. At the relatively cheap rent prices here in Berlin, a parking spot should cost its user about 400€/month.
Exclusionary of the elderly, too. What exactly do you do if you live in car-burg where the only way to get around is by automobile, and you lose your license due to declining faculties? You become totally stranded & alone.
The first thing you should realize is that pedestrianized spaces are really nice for traveling in a wheelchair or mobility scooter. The second thing is that there are cars available in Europe, called Cantas, that are conventional gasoline ICE cars with purposely shrunk engine displacement. You'd never take one of those on the highway, but the underpowered engines make them safe (and legal) to take on any sidewalk or bike path.
All in all, a car free space can be far better for the disabled than what we have right now.
Anti-automobile policies need to be careful to accommodate the disabled but it's unfair to label them as "exclusionary" compared to the racist and classist history of automobile adoption and
according public infrastructure support. From Robert Caro's biography of Robert Moses, America's most influential and prolific public planner and builder, The Power Broker:
“Underlying Moses' strikingly strict policing for cleanliness in his parks was, Frances Perkins realized with "shock," deep distaste for the public that was using them. "He doesn't love the people," she was to say. "It used to shock me because he was doing all these things for the welfare of the people. . . . He'd denounce the common people terribly. To him they were lousy, dirty people, throwing bottles all over Jones Beach. 'I'll get them! I'll teach them!'... [...]
Now he began taking measures to limit use of his parks. He had restricted the use of state parks by poor and lower-middle-class families in the first place, by limiting access to the parks by rapid transit; he had vetoed the Long Island Rail Road's proposed construction of a branch spur to Jones Beach for this reason.
Now he began to limit access by buses; he instructed Shapiro to build the bridges across his new parkways low—too low for buses to pass. Bus trips therefore had to be made on local roads, making the trips discouragingly long and arduous.
For Negroes, whom he considered inherently "dirty," there were further measures. Buses needed permits to enter state parks; buses chartered by Negro groups found it very difficult to obtain permits, particularly to Moses' beloved Jones Beach; most were shunted to parks many miles further out on Long Island. And even in these parks, buses carrying Negro groups were shunted to the furthest reaches of the parking areas.”
Also detailed in this book is destruction of poor and minority neighborhoods and communities by the common policy of appropriating their land for roads and highways. The lasting effects of these practices is plainly obvious in so many US cities and will not go away without active efforts to reverse the damage. In comparison, disabled-friendly infrastructure is frankly more easily solved.
You have arthritis, so therefore we should center our urban planning around personal cars?
That is not logical. What is logical, is that if car usage was heavily reduced inside urban areas, it would leave more space for the few cases where cars and lorries are actually needed.
It is a variant of the old argument "but without cars and lorries there would be no food transport" (or ambulances, constuction, or something else where it is easy to see the benefits). That has always been a false premise. The biggest problems with cars in urban areas in cogestion. Fewer cars would mean more space where it's most desperately needed.
You also need to redesign streets around cars, widening them, and making the city less pedestrian friendly in the process. And the less people walk, the younger they die and the more health problems they have along the way. You see your visible problem but don't consider the more diffuse and less visible problems caused by the car subsidies you favour.
What do people with your condition in Paris or Rome do? Most of Europe isn't designed around cars the way the usa is.
And keep in mind, most cities in the USA weren't designed around cars. New York City got it's street plan in 1810. San Francisco did in 1839. Our cities were designed with walkers in mind. The car is invasive.
The only American cities where "it was designed for cars" is an excuse are those built largely after the 1940s, when cars (and air conditioning) became commonplace: LA, Phoenix, Tucson, San Diego, etc.
I think some of us who hate cars (me included) also picture development patterns where cities aren't so sprawling that those with disabilities would have trouble getting around. In your case, a walk/bike ride across town might not be necessary. The market would be nearby, accessible to you via some small electric vehicle that operates on something closer to a human scale than a Ford F150. Heck, even the design of buildings themselves cause you problems because of cars. Instead of a small market, we have big box stores that require one to move significantly further while shopping.
I am perfectly fine to give people with medical issues an exception. But that doesn't mean that we should build everything around cars. Cars also cause a lot of health issues which should also be accounted for.
Going to the extreme is a good strategy to kill any debate. I am not sure if the GP intended this but I so often hear "Want to make changes to health care/ taxes/ others? Socialism! go to Venezuela!". Debate ended.
Lol definitely agree that this thread is mostly filled with extremeness. I don't think people should be advocating the removal of all cars/vehicles on the planet until there is a reasonable way to replace their functions (how do people, goods and large-scale construction projects get around in in normal and emergency situations). Similarly I don't think providing specific car free zones in small 1 mile blocks is the same as murdering elderly and pregnant people.
Agree. We've really put all our eggs in one basket in the USA... you NEED a car to reasonably participate in most parts of society. Sure public transit or biking are options, but they are much less efficient than driving. This is the problem. We've spent 75 years building this way, now when we want to take small steps towards reversing that, the steps are widely misunderstood. In a sense we've been extremely car oriented for 75 years, so that when anything except ultimate car domination is presented, it appears extreme.
> you NEED a car to reasonably participate
> in most parts of society.
Not for most people. Unless they have a very severe mental or physical disability. Driving is much less efficient than biking and/or public transit in how I have planned my life.
It's not unusual in America to find shopping centers where you have to drive, park your car, and then walk several hundred feet to actually enter the store, thanks to the enormous parking lot, because everybody has to park.
So, I'm not exactly sure how much the car culture is actually working in your favor. The alternative (public transportation) means parking lots can be smaller and closer to the actual destination.
On bad days, I either avoid extremely large stores or wait until I get a good spot. On good days, I walk from whatever spot I get. Either way, it's less walking than I'd do to/from a transit station.
I live in Oslo and have similar mobility issues (Ehlers Danlos syndrome). I am not classified as disabled, but it is hard for me to walk long distances or stay standing for more than about 30 minutes in general. Luckily, almost everywhere I want to go is less than half a kilometer from the nearest bus/tram/metro stop. If I really need to, I can still take a taxi to anywhere in the city center.
All that being said, Oslo is NOT a good city to live in if you need a wheelchair or crutches (which I do, with unfortunate regularity). 500 meters might as well be 100 kilometers if you are on crutches in the winter. Even if where you are going is right next to a train stop, the stops are not very accessible (long ramps way out of the way etc). The curbs do not consistently have ramps at crosswalks. The sidewalks are often covered in ice in the winter. There are stairs everywhere. Even with a car and being able to park near your destination, you still dealt with these issues.
So, I guess my point is, Oslo making the city center mostly car free is not what makes it unfriendly for people with mobility issues. Taking public transportation is still better than parking and walking wherever. But it still sucks if you have crutches.
The number of elderly and disabled who are excluded by the automobile-only neighborhoods in the USA vastly outnumber the people who require an automobile to get around within a city center. The pro-con in helping disabled people isn't even close in how many people would be helped by anti-automobile policies.
Car-dominant policies are also exclusionary, just for a different group. Being effectively required to drive is an enormous burden on the impoverished.
Also it sounds like a mobility scooter is kind of what you want?
Mobility scooters don't work so well in 3 inches of slushy snow (unless they make them with wheelchair sized wheels?) In any case, my area swings from -5f and lower on the cold winter days to 105f+ on the hot summer days, so anything that's not climate controlled is fairly unpleasant. We just hired in some contractors from the west cost, and we're predicted to have 12" of snow on Monday, a full day of sub-0f on Wednesday, and a -10f night the weekend after. They're quickly learning a lot about West Michigan weather :).
There are plenty of handicapped, disabled, elderly people on public transit.
You are fortunate enough to be able to afford cars and think that we should continue to design around what works for you. That simply benefits you - and not the handicapped, disabled people who use public transit every day.
>As someone who suffers from mild arthritis, the trip to the back of a Wal-Mart can be painful for me, and a walk or bike ride across a city block absolutely foreboding.
I've heard this before... and maybe I'm not qualified to speak, as I'm not yet the age where I really have to worry, but from what I know of current technology, I can totally go out and buy a walking speed electric wheelchair that is safe to operate even after my vision and attention degrade... but self-driving capabilities in cars are still quite some ways off.
Personally, my body would have to degrade a lot before I needed that wheelchair to make it a few blocks; but my attention and vision? that wouldn't have to degrade as much before I would not be able to safely operate a car.
This is actually something I've thought a lot about; I mean, I personally am bearish on self-driving cars, and if we don't get self-driving cars? I think I might need to plan on retiring to New York, as that's probably one of the few places I can count on aging without being expected to drive.
I'm in a similar boat, and do not qualify either. It sucks, but that's life.
With that said, I would really hate to not be able to take my car anywhere I need to go, because a good day can turn bad quickly. In fact, it is among the many reasons I am glad to have moved to a rural area.
People, predominantly children or the elderly, are literally dying from auto pollution in urban areas. I’m sorry for your medical conditions, but driving is not worth the cost to others. As you say - have some compassion for your fellow humans.
you seem to be a very unlucky edge case, falling through the cracks like that, and in a car-reduced city your case definitely would have to be reconsidered. that said, having a city that is designed for cars is exclusionary to a lot more people - people who can't drive or own cars.
the difference between newer cities built for cars and old pre-car inner cities is quite extreme in that regard. i've got a supermarket 150m and a smallish shopping centre 500m away, which might be too far for you, but an elderly or visually impaired person could still get their shopping done on their own.
the shopping centers at the edge of the city - which are pretty much only reachable by car and you seem to depend on - have a disastrous and self reinforcing effect on inner city QOL (at least that's true for all the smaller cities around here, where cars are required to get around), as they cause most of the small local shops to die off, increasing the distance you have to walk to get to the remaining ones. removing cars from the equation brings those back, which also means the distances are getting smaller. that said, i doubt i cover a much smaller distance on foot when i drive out to the big shopping centers at the city pheriphery, as the distances from most parking spots to the destination inside a huge box store are at least as big as what i'd cover walking to my usual local shop.
of course this doesn't help you much if the distances are to big no matter what - i could see you getting around on a motorized scooter around here without problems though (as a few of my neighbors do).
so, from the perspective of an european inner city dweller, getting rid of cars would be much more inclusionary than the other way round.
I would honestly hope that this would facilitate a move to a more even distribution of businesses in neighborhoods. Perhaps making local deliveries cheaper and more feasible. Might make lighter transportation such as smaller, short range electric vehicles more of an option and cheaper as well.
This is probably one of the most insightful comments in this entire thread. Density isn't the problem - zoning is. Even in a suburban area, if there was a corner store, you could just take a golf cart, provided that you live someplace with a climate like the West Coast. I live in an area that swings from -5f in the winter to +105f in the summer, so for many months out of the year any transport without HVAC is not something you'd actually want to use.
Worst case is that 99% of the rest of the city is still accessible by automobile. High density areas like city downtowns should cater to pedestrians more due to that being the more humane overall.
As other people mentioned, there'd be workarounds for people with mobility issues for sure.
Well, Calgary for example has a Land area of 825.56 km2 or an Urban area of 586.08 km2, and a downtown area of 1.8 km2. Which means it has less than 0.3% area for the downtown.
I suppose there are pockets of high density that aren't counted for. Also Calgary is probably unusually spread out for the given population compared to larger cities like New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco.
Electric wheelchairs typically go 3-4 mph. They are not a replacement for point-to-point transit. My area also swings from -5f in the winter to +105f in the summer, so anything that's not climate controlled is quite unpleasant.
I think an electric wheelchair makes perfect sense when compared to walking, and using public transport. There are small foldable ones that can fit in a taxi or Uber as well.
> a walk or bike ride across a city block absolutely foreboding
i can't imagine taking a car to get to a bodega on the other side of the block or across the street is easier than just walking to the bodega directly.
I have considerable sympathy for you, especially since my mother has chronic back pain and similar shopping trips can be a nightmare on her bad days. However, I think there is considerable room for win-win on these things.
Just consider the trip to the Wal-Mart. I haven't lived in North America for a long time, but in my recent trip to Canada to visit my parents, we went to Wal-Mart. Look at those sprawling mall complexes with their massive parking lots. We had to drive from parking lot to parking lot, just to visit another store!
And the Wal-Mart itself was this behemoth structure with football field after football field of space under its roof. I mean it's half a kilometer from the frozen pizza to the checkout line. If you can't walk 200 meters, you can't shop in Wal-Mart without using their motorised carts (which are admittedly very cool).
Imagine a completely different situation (one which I thankfully live in every day). Imagine that you had stores that were close to where you lived. So close, in fact, that you could walk there if you were abled bodied. But if you were not, you could take an electric bicycle (which many elderly people use where I live) or even an electric cart similar to the one that you can find at Wal-Mart (these are really rare where I live -- most people are quite happy with their electric bicycles, but I've seen them frequently in the UK where I used to live).
Imagine that instead of several square kilometers of parking lots to contend with, you had hundreds of small shops. You had butchers that are just big enough to house the meat it sells. You go up to a counter, which is less than 10 feet from the door and you get your meat and -- lo and behold! There's the cash register, not 3 feet from where you are standing.
I could go on, but the biggest thing that makes this hard for people in North America to imagine is that it is so different. The lifestyle is completely different. Instead of going once a week or once a month to some massive discount store and buying a van full of goods, you go every other day and buy enough to fit in a basket on your bike. It seems like a lot of time, but instead of driving for 30 minutes to the store and spending 20 minutes fining a parking space, you walk 5 or 10 minutes to the store. That's what it means to build cities that are good for walking.
I write this with the full knowledge that my words are not good enough to explain this concept. Even my parents don't understand. When I stayed with them, I discovered that there was a shopping centre only a 20 minute walk from their house. I started walking there to pick up small things for dinner every day (hey 40 minutes of walking a day is not bad). They thought I was insane. Why would you walk to the store when you can drive? Why would you spend 40 minutes when you could send 10? They couldn't understand that the walk was the point.
And so, while it is unreasonable to expect North America to become Asia or Europe suddenly, I think there is a lot of things that can be done to improve the situation dramatically -- like rezoning areas so that shops can be build where people live. Things like mandating that parking lots have pedestrian paths that allow you to walk to the store without being driven over by a mini van. Things like having down town cores which are already mixed use to have walking only areas. Things like building safe public transit. Things like not approving large box malls in the middle of nowhere surrounded by seas of parking lots and no access to public transit.
I don't have a disability, but the non-car accessible vehicles seem to enable a lot more freedom than cars, because they don't have the same restrictions as cars.
Nice strawman. The topic is no cars in the downtown area. You are walking over 500ft downtown from your parking spot to your destination, and there is no Walmart downtown.
Car-centric planning is horrible for children, the elderly, disabled people, sick people, and the poor.
It makes them heavily dependent on able-bodied drivers (family members, taxis, hired helpers, ...) to move about.
Children are much more independently mobile in cities with good transit. In car-centric suburbs parents or other caretakers are responsible for personally carting their children from place to place, with huge negative impact on children’s quality of life. Children end up sheltered, over-scheduled, over-controlled, and dramatically delayed in learning to live for themselves.
It is for good reason that many college campuses and retirement homes are organized as little self-contained car-free villages.
In my opinion car-centric suburbs are optimized for healthy, wealthy 30–50 year-old full-time workers, and increasingly hostile as people get further from matching that.
My grandma never had a car in a major pedestrianized city. She lived independently until the age of 92. She took buses and walked everywhere. My other grandmother mostly walked around town.
My parents have a car but mostly walk around town.
Would I be right in thinking that you come from a car centric area where people don't walk and this lose their ability to get around at a younger age? Perhaps you have difficulty conceiving of life in a pedestrian friendly city.
If so, I don't blame you, there are almost none in the us.
When my father was diagnosed with a terminal illness one of the first things the doctor did was to submit revocation paperwork to the DMV. Unfortunately he lived in a very automobile-addicted area and being unable to drive proved very isolating for him.
The solution, of course, wasn't to figure out how to get him behind the wheel. The solution is weaning communities off of their car dependence.
I often visit a pedestrian friendly small community in Queens. The number of very old people I see walking around is amazing. Tragically, the intersections are dangerous and people drive fast through the narrow streets. There's little traffic enforcement and, since Americans don't think about this stuff, nobody seems to care. Walkability is being developed away in the surrounding areas. It's so sad.
I have medical issues that are completely unrelated to lifestyle. Unfortunately, autoimmune issues often don't respond to anything but drugs with horrible side effects.
That's very unfortunate and I'm sorry you have to deal with that.
But what of Rome, and Paris? Do people with your condition live in them? Those cities aren't built around cars, yet have millions of people from all walks of live.
If we make cities built around cars, and people don't walk, then people get more health problems and die younger. That has to be considered alongside cases like yours.
Yeah, grow up. Be a wheel in the machine. Waste your life away sitting in traffic. Breathe in that toxic air. Risk life and lim every day so the trip to Walmart is a little shorter. This guy has arthritis and this guy is out of shape and has a kid, so let’s continue this insane dance to make it easier for them.
That doesn't match the people advocating for less cars around me at all. Children and elderly are massive users of good public transport networks, where they exist, because they can't or don't want to use cars if it can be avoided. (And places where cars are absolutely not an option are very rare, so less cars can often benefit people who absolutely need cars)
Children who live closer to busy streets are more like to get asthma. They also radically change how parents feel about just any street of modest traffic, or biking in general. With children more dependent on parents to set play dates, children have more difficulty getting anywhere.
Also, think of the people who can't drive and for whom getting someone else to drive them is too expensive. That’s a lot of elderly.
Cars kill a lot of people every year. We need AI cars before something changes there, and when that comes, the conversation on exclusion will be very different.
most of the people in my apartment building are retired people, none of them use car, i have two small children and consider cars in city nuisance, we have 200m walk to tram stop (subway maybe 800m) which can take us anywhere in city, why would i bother with car. it takes me 5 or 8 minutes by tram to reach two different shopping malls, 4 minutes by tram to pretty big supermarket or have 3 other supermarkets within 900m radius
Cars and the point-to-point transit that they offer are a GODSEND for me and many other people who are somewhat mobility restricted, but not so bad that we need wheelchairs or crutches. They enable me to live a very normal life that would be impossible in a heavily pedestrian optimized environment. The fact that you don't even consider some of the alternatives as viable - automated shared cars, electric cars, strong hybrids ... all of which solve the problems you identified (wasted space on parking, pollution, etc.) leads me to believe that you actually just hate cars, and not any of the (solvable) problems that are caused by their current embodiment.
Consider that everyone's circumstances are not the same as yours. Have some compassion for your fellow humans.
EDIT:
To those who are saying that we'll still allow those with disabilities to have cars: many states require that you be able to walk less then 200 feet to get a disabled plate. On most days, I can walk at least 500 ... so by almost all standards, I do not qualify. However, walking 5-600 feet doesn't get you far enough to survive without a car. If the world were to go this route, we would have to reconsider what constitutes 'disabled'.
Another thought that surfaces is that with my 36-37" inseam (I wear 36" pants because that's as big as they sell, but they're really still too short), I do not fit in most public transit, and most cars. Thankfully, because cars are privately owned, I can pick from the 2 or 3 models that I actually fit in. A public transit world is a world that marginalizes peoples who are in the last 5-10% in terms of height/weight.