I've noticed some strong sentiments in this community about emerging automotive technologies, such as alternate fuels/powertrains and self-driving AI*. I'm not here to disagree with these opinions, but I do want to see if that animosity extends to New Urbanism, a city planning philosophy that aims to design cities to encourage walking, bicycling, and public transit over personal automobile use or ownership. New Urbanists don't typically advocate for an all-out ban on cars, but focus the design of cities to eliminate broad, multi-directional avenues, freeways, and sprawling parking lots from populated areas. Such urban planners are usually at odds with the auto industry and auto lobbyists, but there is a case to be made that they could incidentally improve the general day-to-day driving experience, for instance by reducing traffic congestion. So, what are your thoughts? Could this be for the betterment of the car owner? The detriment? Will it make any meaningful difference at all? *FYI, not the topic of this thread
from what I've seen, most controversy in this area is around urban planning in the US (probably because is among the worst), but a lot of people advocating for change seem to want to turn the whole country into Europe, which is simply not feasible. typically, a large amount of debates that go back and forth seem to be "how many lanes should this main avenue be given?" for example, with the pro-car people saying massive amounts of road capacity are necessary, and pro-walking people say that doesn't help anything, and only makes it more dangerous. But simply distilling individual people down to a percentage of "induced demand" is unhelpful, because a certain base amount of drivers are only driving into the city because it's their only option. If even just the most frequently visited businesses had smaller, more local branches set up in amongst the suburbs, suddenly a decent amount of people can walk to the shop to get their loaves of bread, and even if others do drive, you don't need 3 square miles of parking to accommodate half the entire city. In effect, you want to make it so that people can actually get all the things they need for daily life within a walking distance of their house. It's only at that point that you can cut the 6-lane avenue down to a 4-lane avenue, because you're cutting down what is now far less necessary traffic.
I loved living right in the middle of a city and walking to many of the places I was going to (I'll be moving back there when I can). However, my country is only populated half as densely as the US so you can imagine our public transport is inadequate or non-existent for most trips. So I certainly still needed my car there as well. The problem here is that they work towards redesigning the cities like this, but the train lines to support it are too lacking.
I’m all for having more people walk, ride bikes, and use public transport in larger cities, but you’re definitely right, it’s not feasible to do that for the whole country. Rural parts of the country would not have any cost effective solutions for public transport (because everything is spread out), nor would it make any practical sense for the people living there. Imagine having to wait for maybe an hour or more just to sit on a bus that takes 3 hours to return to reach your destination and then another hour to get back home. That would be awful. This is great for cities but apparently some of the main advocates have forgotten that rural areas exist.
Yeah, I can’t imagine that, (well I can imagine it, but…) waiting for a bus or biking to town (I live about a half an hour from the nearest town, besides a village with like 15 houses, a grain mill, and a post office lol). In cities, yes I can see why it would be desirable for some, but definitely not for everyone.
Sometimes privately-owned cars are being used as personal spaces in addition to a mean of transportation, like having a private discussion with your family members during a trip
I think this system would work for cities, (ex: Manchester, NH), but rural areas such as my town would allow those to drive vehicles. Then, when you want to go to a city, you would park your car at a park-and-ride, and the bus would go on the highway. On the highway, there would be 2 designated lanes. One for buses, and one for delivery vehicles like semis and company vans. You would need a license showing proof you had permission in either of these lanes. It would help with congestion, and it would also promote reducing your carbon footprint.
