[HN Gopher] People Hate the Idea of Car-Free Cities-Until They L...
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       People Hate the Idea of Car-Free Cities-Until They Live in One
        
       Author : jseliger
       Score  : 82 points
       Date   : 2022-12-26 14:53 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
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       | 2devnull wrote:
       | I suspect people who like to live in cities prefer them to be car
       | free. I equally suspect people who don't like cities do not live
       | in cities.
       | 
       | I suspect therefore that this headline is misleading.
        
         | mushbino wrote:
         | Most people in the US aren't used to car-free cities unless
         | they've traveled abroad. It's not something you realize until
         | you experience it first hand.
        
         | watwut wrote:
         | It is normal for people to change opinions about something
         | after experiencing it - in both ways. Some things look and
         | sound bad ... until you tried it. And other things look and
         | sound great ... until you tried it.
        
       | treis wrote:
       | This is a weird article where they mention a bunch of objections
       | and say nothing about whether or not they're correct.
        
       | barrystaes wrote:
       | If you are from the US and wonder whats up with the bike hippies:
       | All cities you know are car-centric infrastructure, and i'd have
       | a hard time seeing the problem also.
       | 
       | Just watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_SXXTBypIg
       | 
       | Im dutch and despite being able to ride over in 5 minutes and
       | park my beautiful car _right behind_ the stores, i still prefer
       | to use my bike for daily groceries to get there faster and
       | easier. The cities are designed for this. A bike never has to
       | cross a 4-lane road with homes nearby.
        
         | leviathant wrote:
         | Philadelphia reporting in: The core of my city was designed in
         | the 17th century for horses, and grew short on money before
         | that could be completely undone. As someone who used to put
         | 20,000 miles on my car annually, living in the part of Philly
         | where I do, I might drive twice a month.
         | 
         | That said, visiting Amsterdam was still quite the revelation.
         | Having lived and worked in Philadelphia for over a decade,
         | visiting other American cities often isn't as exciting as it
         | used to be for me, and I pick up on patterns that used to be
         | normal for me, like how everything is a fifteen minute drive to
         | anything else.
         | 
         | I do still feel an odd appeal to American suburbia sometimes,
         | but I don't think I'd go back to that kind of living if I
         | didn't have to.
        
       | Proven wrote:
       | [dead]
        
       | sn0w_crash wrote:
       | I never understood why does the bicycle crowd feel the need to
       | push everyone else to ride bicycles? We are happy for them, why
       | do we need to join them?
       | 
       | I personally do not feel safe on a bike in a crowded city. Even
       | if you took cars out of the equation. I also do not want to
       | arrive to work/meetings sweaty and in need of a towel. It's also
       | very cold where I live. My car is warm.
       | 
       | There are numerous reasons I'm not interested in riding a bike.
       | Yet I can't go more than a day without someone from the bicycle
       | church trying to give me a pamphlet.
        
         | voussoir wrote:
         | One of my favorite youtube channels at the moment is Not Just
         | Bikes. And, it's right in the name: it's not just about bikes.
         | It's about trains, busses, pedestrianization, mixed-use zoning,
         | more options for housing density besides single family homes
         | with front lawns. We waste so much potential with car
         | dependency. Bikes are just one of the puzzle pieces.
        
           | hooverd wrote:
           | Dutch cycling is always touted as superior but nobody ever
           | talks about the cost of clogs and blackface needed for the
           | full Dutch experience.
        
         | gumby wrote:
         | > I never understood why does the bicycle crowd feel the need
         | to push everyone else to ride bicycles?
         | 
         | I have never understood why the automobile crowd feel the need
         | to push everyone else to accommodate their desires and their
         | restructuring of towns and landscapes around cars. Not to
         | mention their sacrificing safety for people not in cars!
         | 
         | If you want to be a car person, OK: you be you. But they don't
         | deserve the primacy they have managed to seize.
        
         | david-gpu wrote:
         | If you don't want to bike, then don't.
         | 
         | But some of us _want_ to bike and find it unnecessarily
         | dangerous at present because of all the privately-owned
         | vehicles driving far too fast, far too close to us. It's not
         | the ambulances or the delivery vans that put us in danger --
         | there aren't enough of them to make a difference. The danger
         | consistently comes from roads that are designed to maximize the
         | speed and convenience of drivers rather than the safety of
         | everybody else.
         | 
         | My kids' school is 3Km (2mi) from where we live, a short bike
         | ride away. However, can my family ride to school in the
         | morning? Not at all, it's too dangerous for kids to ride with
         | all the traffic, but it doesn't have to be this way. With
         | simple traffic calming measures like having narrower
         | residential streets the cars wouldn't be driving much faster
         | than the bikes. This isn't science-fiction, it's how things
         | work in plenty of livable cities around the world.
         | 
         | So, don't drive a bike if you don't want to, but me driving my
         | bike doesn't put you in danger, and I wish I could say the same
         | about your car.
        
         | stickyricky wrote:
         | You should give it a try! It's a lot of fun. In Chicago (as an
         | example) you can drive your car downtown, park it, and rent a
         | bike with the Lyft app. They have bike stations all over the
         | city. Try to rent one near the lakefront and bike up and down
         | on the car-free lakeside trail. Its safe, fun, and you can get
         | around the city really quickly.
         | 
         | If you want to understand what cyclists are upset about, be
         | adventurous. Ride in the urban core and then work your way
         | outwards to the suburbs. You may develop an understanding for
         | their perspective!
        
         | pzone wrote:
         | The bicycle crowd feels unsafe too. The physical risks of
         | cycling are almost entirely due to cars. Even in icy, slippery
         | conditions, a bicycle accident poses almost no risk of
         | dismemberment or death, except when there are cars involved.
         | 
         | For millions of people, cycling is a cheap, convenient, healthy
         | and fun way to get around. This is particularly true since
         | e-bikes became widely available. There is no way to get these
         | riders back into cars. But almost nowhere in the US is there
         | enough biking infrastructure to make them truly safe and
         | separated from car traffic. This lack of infrastructure is why
         | they can come off as a nuisance to drivers and pedestrians.
         | 
         | I'm sorry you feel pressured by cycling advocates to change
         | your lifestyle. Maybe that is not the best way for them to
         | advocate for change.
        
           | u801e wrote:
           | > The bicycle crowd feels unsafe too.
           | 
           | Except their feelings don't correlate with actual safety.
           | Statistically, same direction rear end collisions are the
           | least common type of collision while collisions at
           | intersections are the most common. The bicycle infrastructure
           | solutions the bicycle crowd comes up with increase the risk
           | of collisions at intersections. Specifically, right hooks
           | (where a right turning motorist turns across the path of a
           | cyclist going straight through the intersection), left
           | crosses (where a left turning motorist crosses the path of a
           | cyclist going straight through the intersection), and drive
           | outs (where a motorist entering the road from a side street
           | crosses the path of a cyclist).
           | 
           | The one way to reduce the risk of intersection collisions is
           | to ride in the center of the general purpose lane, but
           | certain members of the bicycle crowd don't feel safe doing
           | that. But feeling safe doesn't correlate with actual safety
           | from a statistical point of view.
        
             | david-gpu wrote:
             | _> The bicycle infrastructure solutions the bicycle crowd
             | comes up with increase the risk of collisions at
             | intersections_
             | 
             | Either cyclists don't know what sort of infrastructure
             | makes them safe, or you have an imperfect understanding of
             | the sort of infrastructure that they would like to see.
             | 
             |  _> The one way to reduce the risk of intersection
             | collisions is_
             | 
             | That is one way, but not "the" one way, nor the best way.
             | Dutch-style intersections are probably the state of the art
             | solution when sharing the road with cars is unavoidable.
             | Car-free cyclepaths are even safer. There are other means
             | as well, including the elimination of right turns on red,
             | which are particularly dangerous to pedestrians as well.
        
               | u801e wrote:
               | > Either cyclists don't know what sort of infrastructure
               | makes them safe
               | 
               | Many cyclists have had no education, training or
               | classroom instruction on how to cycle safely in traffic
               | and have a distorted view of what infrastructure can do
               | for them in terms of safety. For example, this cyclist[1]
               | ended up in a crash because he failed to foresee the
               | situation that could have easily been avoided. He
               | evidently thought that the protected bike lane he was
               | using made him safer. Yet, he could have easily been run
               | over after being pushed out into the roadway. Someone
               | with education and training would have realized that the
               | motorist was not looking in their direction and they
               | should anticipate that they won't yield to them.
               | 
               | > or you have an imperfect understanding of the sort of
               | infrastructure that they would like to see.
               | 
               | I've seen plenty of examples of infrastructure that
               | increases the risk of the collisions I mentioned earlier
               | because the cyclist is hidden from the motorists' view
               | until shortly before both arrive at the intersection.
               | This doesn't give the motorist or the cyclist enough time
               | to determine which of them should yield.
               | 
               | Infrastructure that relies on traffic lights to provide a
               | protected movement through an intersection is the best
               | solution in those cases, but results in longer wait times
               | for everyone. This leads to non-compliance with traffic
               | control signals and people who will try to beat the light
               | to avoid a several minute wait. Unfortunately, most
               | infrastructure I've seen relies on mutual yielding to
               | work. Mutual yielding will work with both are moving at
               | walking speed, but not at vehicular speed.
               | 
               | > Dutch-style intersections are probably the state of the
               | art solution when sharing the road with cars is
               | unavoidable
               | 
               | This doesn't address the numerous mid-block intersections
               | where there isn't sufficient room to install one. Second,
               | these intersections are geometrically similar to modern
               | roundabouts (from the point of view of a motorist making
               | a right turn at one), yet one study[2] has shown that
               | around 71% of motorists exiting a roundabout yield to
               | pedestrians waiting to cross or within a crosswalk.
               | Presumably, the rate of yielding for cyclists are are
               | moving at 15 to 25 feet per second instead of just 3 to 5
               | feet a second would even be lower because the motorist
               | would be less likely to see them because the cyclist
               | would be further away from crossing the intersection.
               | 
               | > Car-free cyclepaths are even safer.
               | 
               | They are not available in all cases.
               | 
               | > There are other means as well, including the
               | elimination of right turns on red, which are particularly
               | dangerous to pedestrians as well.
               | 
               | But this doesn't address the right on green problem,
               | which is when most right hook collisions happen.
               | 
               | [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k6-AI_X1qE
               | 
               | [2] https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/nchrprpt572.pdf (figure
               | 63 on page 83 in the PDF)
        
               | Beltalowda wrote:
               | > For example, this cyclist[1] ended up in a crash
               | because he failed to foresee the situation that could
               | have easily been avoided
               | 
               | In general I agree that with some defensive cycling (and
               | driving!) you can prevent a lot of accidents, but I'm not
               | sure if I agree with that example; the car seemed to stop
               | for the cyclist, and then it started moving with about a
               | second for the cyclist to react.
               | 
               | Usually "eye contact" is the best bet, but it's near-
               | impossible judge from that video if that was there or
               | seemed like it was there. It's certainly possible the
               | driver looked to the right in the direction of the
               | cyclist and simply missed him due to situational
               | blindness. Cyclist assumed driver saw him, driver didn't
               | really register the cyclist, with the video as a
               | consequence.
               | 
               | What reasonable expectations are also depends on how
               | common cycling is in the location, how common that sort
               | of cycle path is, stuff like that. I don't even know
               | where that video was filmed. It's always easy to judge
               | these things after the fact from a video sipping coffee
               | from behind your desk, but in real life it's very easy to
               | interpret something wrong, make a mistake, or just not
               | pay attention for 3 seconds.
               | 
               | I take some amount of issue with the phrasing "this
               | cyclist ended up in a crash because he failed to foresee
               | the situation". He ended up in a crash because the driver
               | ran in to him. He could perhaps have _prevented_ the
               | crash by correcting for the driver 's mistake - which
               | would clearly have been a better outcome, and is also why
               | these videos are useful so we can all learn from them -
               | but it's still primarily due to the driver's mistake that
               | the crash happened.
        
           | mns wrote:
           | I'm living in one of the most cyclist friendly cities in
           | Europe (according to the city officials :) ). I used to ride
           | to work for almost 5 years until I moved too close to work so
           | now I just walk. I love my city, I love how you can cycle,
           | use public transport or just walk and a car is more of a
           | nuisance here. Having said all this, the only group of people
           | that I can't stand and I almost hate is cyclists. They are
           | the most entitled and loud group, even here, and for me, even
           | as I still almost cycle everywhere when the weather allows
           | me, I am more scared of other cyclists than I am of cars.
           | 
           | It is amazing how the majority of cyclists ignore all
           | possible rules, traffic lights, traffic signs, bike paths
           | (and we have them EVERYWHERE). You will always have some
           | asshole on a bike grunting at a pedestrian, another cyclist
           | or at a car, while riding with no lights on the wrong side of
           | the street on the walkway, when there is a proper bike path
           | right next to him. Just this winter the cycling community was
           | outraged that after an ice rain the city didn't clean the
           | paths, which was almost impossible to do, all while they were
           | riding in the winter on ice with no special tires and then
           | complaining that while it was not even recommended to go
           | outside, it is dangerous for them to ride their bikes.
           | 
           | In the end I think there is a lot left to go, especially in
           | educating people, because as e-bikes becomes more popular,
           | more people get access to bikes that run faster than they
           | could ever do (and we now have more accidents because of
           | this), it will get worse before it gets better when it comes
           | to cycling.
        
             | Beltalowda wrote:
             | I'm a careful cyclists, purely out of self-preservation,
             | and also because traffic in general is already stressful
             | enough without me adding to it. Plus, I care about less
             | cars in cities and not adding to the perception of "asshole
             | cyclist" is helpinig, a teeny tiny bit.
             | 
             | Still, you will get a lot of hate. Twice people have tried
             | to run me _off the cycle path_ followed by some unhinged
             | diatribe about how the cycle path should not be there and
             | that it 's all a waste of taxpayer money and a bunch of
             | nonsense. People are free to have that opinion, and I don't
             | even especially mind of they go off on some rant about it,
             | but they're not free to to consciously drive their fucking
             | cars in my direction.
             | 
             | Then, of course, there's all the places where there aren't
             | cycle paths. I've lost count of the number of provocations.
             | Minding your business, cycling how you should be, and
             | someone overtakes you - no way they didn't know you were
             | there - and just veers in to you because "toot toot I'm a
             | car motherfucker imma driving here now".
             | 
             | Then there's the pedestrians who will complain if you cycle
             | on the cycle path because they don't realize it's a cycle
             | path, or because they don't care. Or the cycle paths just
             | ends with nowhere to go and you will get complaints if you
             | go over the footpath because that's literally the only way
             | to go other than the 80mph road (and not doing that).
             | 
             | Basically, you will get hate no matter what you do. Plus
             | everything tends to be extremely car-centric anyway, so if
             | you're not careful it's not _that_ hard to go to  "I get
             | abuse from entitled assholes no matter what I do so fuck
             | you all then".
             | 
             | No saying this as a justification, but there's some pretty
             | bad feedback loops going on here.
        
         | photonbeam wrote:
         | Car free cities should have bicycles as a nice-to-have, walking
         | and transit should be primary
        
         | tinyspacewizard wrote:
         | > I never understood why does the bicycle crowd feel the need
         | to push everyone else to ride bicycles?
         | 
         | Driving a car in a urban area is great for the driver but
         | pretty terrible for everyone else:
         | 
         | - Congestion
         | 
         | - Air pollution
         | 
         | - Noise pollution
         | 
         | - Space taken up by parking
         | 
         | - Danger of being run over
         | 
         | It doesn't really matter if you walk, cycle or get public
         | transport. These have much lower externalities.
         | 
         | > I personally do not feel safe on a bike in a crowded city.
         | Even if you took cars out of the equation
         | 
         | This is a shame because the cars (and other motor traffic) are
         | in fact the main danger. Retirees and children cycle everywhere
         | in NL because it feels safe enough for them to do so.
        
           | JimBlackwood wrote:
           | Is driving in an urban area really great for the driver?
           | Genuine question, btw.
           | 
           | Everytime I've driven in EU capitals, I've been more
           | frustrated than ever while driving. In every scenario
           | walking, cycling or a tube would've felt more pleasant and
           | quicker.
           | 
           | Traffic light after traffic light, constant congestion. What
           | a mess. 20 minutes for a few kilometers.
        
             | Beltalowda wrote:
             | Depends a bit on the city, where in the city, etc. Once you
             | go outside of the inner city things usually tend to be
             | better, but not always. Capitals are probably worse than
             | average. "Tube" implies London and London is definitely
             | worse than average.
             | 
             | When I lived in Bristol (England), it wasn't so bad for the
             | most part (not that I had a car). Some smaller cities can
             | still be pretty bad though; e.g. inner city traffic in Cork
             | (Ireland) is just horrible. I was quite a bit faster
             | cycling to the city centre from work than some coworkers
             | were with cars, especially if you take parking in to
             | account.
        
         | Tiktaalik wrote:
         | The bicycle crowd isn't pushing for people to ride bicycles,
         | they're pushing for basic, safe, all ages and abilities cycling
         | infrastructure so they're not killed by a car.
        
         | bratbag wrote:
         | This is the cry of someone who has run out of good arguments.
        
         | numtel wrote:
         | I never understood why does the car crowd feel the need to push
         | everyone else to drive cars?
         | 
         | They make the thoroughfares dangerous and increase the
         | distances between things so much that the only way to exist is
         | to have a car. They require paving huge areas so that
         | temperatures are more extreme since there's so few tree
         | anymore. Driving is extremely stressful, always worrying that
         | someone could die if anyone driving stops paying attention for
         | a second.
         | 
         | There are numerous reasons why I'm not interested in driving.
         | Yet [sic] I can't go more than a day without someone from the
         | car church complaining that their "rights" are being infringed.
        
         | mint2 wrote:
         | >" I never understood why does the bicycle crowd feel the need
         | to push everyone else to ride bicycles?"
         | 
         | Stop and reflect a moment that essentially any development in
         | the US over the past 60 years was built in a manner that
         | REQUIRES cars and assumes cars are the default and that
         | pedestrians and bikers are annoyances that do not belong and
         | were not planned in.
         | 
         | Hmm why in that world would bikers need to advocate loudly for
         | change?
        
         | gfsdgfsdgfds wrote:
         | What does this have to do with the bicycle crowd?
        
       | andrewmcwatters wrote:
       | I've traveled to "car-free" world cities. I've traveled to "car-
       | free" small towns. Having cars is just better.
       | 
       | It's just a preference.
       | 
       | It's super weird to me that this idea is catching on so fast. Do
       | you know what day-to-day life is like in those areas? It's
       | expensive.
       | 
       | Probably because you can't travel to competition.
       | 
       | And you're absolutely renting anywhere "car-free."
       | 
       | For a generation being screwed over by housing, some people sure
       | are asking for it.
        
         | goosedragons wrote:
         | How much money you really saving traveling 10 extra miles to
         | save $5 on groceries in your $30,000 car that costs $2000 a
         | year to insure and $60 a week to fill up?
        
         | belorn wrote:
         | Car-free small town just sounds weird. If it a small town there
         | isn't much cars to begin with, and people who live there likely
         | need a car to travel to other towns for work or finding shops
         | that have the specific inventory that people need.
         | 
         | Living in an small apartment at the city core in a world city
         | is a very different experience. Among other things, those
         | places tend to have subways and people tend to live in quite
         | smaller living space. Unless parking is subsidized, parking
         | costs alone can cost more than rent in a small town, while
         | parking in a small town tend to be free.
        
       | squaredot wrote:
       | I hope that in the future, with autonomous public transportation
       | service more like cabs, we can lessen the impact of cars in
       | cities.
       | 
       | Currently I can imagine that it is not always easy to solve the
       | problem with one solution, as people tend to change jobs more
       | often than they change homes, and sometimes connections by public
       | transportation are very inconvenient.
        
         | watwut wrote:
         | Building convenient public transport is doable. It does not
         | requires new technology either.
        
           | techhazard wrote:
           | Exactly, self-driving cars do not solve the car problem; Good
           | public transportation does.
        
       | Manuel_D wrote:
       | "car free city" is a bit of an oxymoron. How do ambulances and
       | fire engines access buildings to administer emergency services?
       | How do deliveries to stores work? No city can actually function
       | without automobiles.
       | 
       | The reality is that there's sections of the city that are
       | pedestrian only. I lived in Barcelona for two years, and that's
       | how it worked. There are some pedestrian roads that have benches
       | and storefronts, but there's automobile traffic one street over.
       | The article describes the superblock system: basically the
       | interior of the block is pedestrian only, but the larger exterior
       | streets have car traffic. No one is more than a block away from
       | car traffic at any time.
        
         | carapace wrote:
         | > No city can actually function without automobiles.
         | 
         | C'mon, cities predate cars by thousands of years.
        
           | Manuel_D wrote:
           | Right, and those cities were miniscule by today's standards,
           | and their municipal services were terrible. How many times
           | did London burn down before the 20th century? How effective
           | was medieval London's emergency medical services?
        
             | JCharante wrote:
             | > those cities were miniscule by today's standards
             | 
             | Rome had a million people in it 100 BC. There were still
             | large cities. Also most large cities today (Tokyo,
             | Shanghai, London, Paris, New York) have strong public
             | transport systems and most people don't need cars. So you
             | can have large cities where most people live a car-free
             | lifestyle.
             | 
             | > How many times did London burn down before the 20th
             | century?
             | 
             | I think fire codes being enforced & developments in
             | building techniques helped reduced fires, not just that we
             | can drive fire trucks to situations.
        
           | Nomentatus wrote:
           | On the one hand, by the principle of charity, what was meant
           | was that modern cities can't function without automobiles,
           | not that ancient Sumeria required automobiles. Straw man.
           | 
           | On the other hand, by the principle of charity, what's being
           | argued is that modern cities can't dump all automobiles
           | immediately; not the idea that modern technology is too
           | feeble to allow a city design without automobiles to function
           | at all. Straw woman.
           | 
           | On the third hand, by the principle of charity, what is being
           | argued is that most automobiles can be dropped from large
           | parts of modern cities with more gain than loss; not that
           | entire metropolitan and suburban areas can drop cars without
           | inconvenience. Straw pronoun of your choice.
           | 
           | In other words, none of the arguments here are what they
           | appear to be about superficially. They're really about degree
           | of difficulty - is that underestimated or over-estimated? vs
           | the benefits: more or less than you'd think. To argue that,
           | you need details, which are in short supply until the
           | experiments get not just to your city but to your block.
           | 
           | It's in good part an argument about network effects - and we
           | aren't used to taking those into account properly.
           | 
           | Where I live, the standard argument as bike lanes/routes were
           | being (expensively!) built downtown was: "Nobody even uses
           | them!" Which was true as long as the bike routes were all
           | less than a couple kilometers long. Now bike traffic is
           | picking up as routes lengthen and multiply; so I rarely if
           | ever hear that argument. Now what I hear is "you still need a
           | car" because few bike routes are very long as yet, rather
           | than objections to bike lanes in the middle of streets (or
           | displacing streets) existing at all. Soon it will be "where I
           | live you still need a car." Finally, when the lanes are built
           | out, which they will be, the argument will be "I just like
           | the convenience of a car."
           | 
           | My own view now: "I didn't expect this, but I really like
           | that my neighborhood is quieter; which it is because there's
           | now a pocket park right where an intersection used to be, one
           | block from me. Just that change has made a remarkable
           | difference. Damned nice to sit there in relative silence.
           | Watching bikes hum by from time to time."
        
           | x86x87 wrote:
           | Just because something is possible at a certain scale or used
           | to be done in a specific way does not mean it's a good idead.
           | 
           | A city with 1000 people is a conmpletely differeny
           | proposition than a city with 100k people.
        
         | tinyspacewizard wrote:
         | How it works in Amsterdam, for example, is that you can still
         | drive most places, however:
         | 
         | 1. The motor vehicle route is extremely indirect, so walking is
         | typically quicker
         | 
         | 2. There is no free parking
         | 
         | 3. Store loading happens only at certain times
         | 
         | 4. There are shortcuts that emergency services can unlock with
         | special keys
        
           | throwthroyaboat wrote:
           | As an addendum to 4., I believe emergency service vehicles
           | are also allowed to use the tram tracks.
        
         | Ekaros wrote:
         | And for some reason they are not banning taxis or
         | "ridesharing". Just the poor have to suffer.
        
         | MrDresden wrote:
         | Clearly you did not read the article, as it revolves around the
         | ways many cities have reduced car traffic by offering
         | alternatives.
         | 
         | Cars will not be removed, but they should not be the primary
         | transportation mechanism by which we design our cities going
         | forward.
        
           | Manuel_D wrote:
           | My point exactly: the term "car free city" is click bait.
           | "Car free cities" are not even remotely car free, I'm glad
           | you agree.
           | 
           | Also how do you conclude that I didn't read the article when
           | I refer to Barcelona's super block system, and reference it's
           | mention in the article? Do a better job reading comments.
        
             | throwbadubadu wrote:
             | No not your point.. that point was already made in the
             | article, noone is saying here (and no reasonable person
             | would think?!?) that car-free means 100% car free, you are
             | overly nit picking at a term for unknown reason.
        
             | JCharante wrote:
             | Well if that's your standard then "serverless" isn't really
             | "server less" but we still call it that.
        
               | Manuel_D wrote:
               | Severless refers to the fact that someone else is
               | provisioning the server. By that standard, my friend that
               | never uses public transit or bicycles, and Ubers
               | everywhere is "car-free".
        
               | blep_ wrote:
               | In fairness, a lot of us have been grumbling about that
               | word since it caught on.
        
         | tshaddox wrote:
         | I saw a horse at a fancy wedding once too, but it's still fair
         | to call most cities "horse-free" in this context.
        
           | Manuel_D wrote:
           | Even in "car-free" cities you'll see cars every other block,
           | at least. It's nowhere near comparable to calling cities
           | "horse-free".
        
       | inamberclad wrote:
       | One of the best times I spent working is when I lived a 15 minute
       | Caltrain ride, and a 15 minute walk from my work in Mountain
       | View. I could, and often did, make the drive in half the the time
       | for less money, but not driving also meant no time lost in
       | traffic, waiting for other people, or dealing with all the risks
       | of driving. Afterwards, I moved to Houston where driving is
       | mandatory. Even though my commute wasn't as long and I worked
       | more remotely, my mood and life satisfaction took a fairly large
       | downturn.
        
       | Seanambers wrote:
       | I don't know where this romanticizing of car free cities & no
       | cars comes from, but it has gotten a hold in the eco /
       | environmentalist camp and is being spread like shit on a farm.
       | 
       | It's false advertising. Copenhagen for instance has a very nice
       | climate and is a compact and flat city which lends itself nicely
       | to bicycle transport, not all cities are equal by a long shot.
        
         | barbazoo wrote:
         | Many are though, so we probably shouldn't dismiss a solution
         | only because it doesn't apply to a subset of cities.
        
         | the_only_law wrote:
         | > I don't know where this romanticizing of car free cities & no
         | cars comes from
         | 
         | You can't possible imagine any of the things they often loudly
         | shout about?
        
         | germinalphrase wrote:
         | Fewer cars on the road is better for drivers too. You're not
         | just stuck in traffic; you are traffic.
        
         | vagrantJin wrote:
         | I don't think anyone has ever said they are against cars
         | outright, just hinting at transport being a utility and
         | personal cars being more of a luxury in cases where better
         | public transport would suffice.
        
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