I think cities should become linearly more car hostile every year. No free parking. Single lanes. Large protected bike lanes and walking areas with trees and shade. Prioritize plowing sidewalks and bike ways. Then limit total decibel emissions. Just slowly extricate the parasite from our cities.
It's a pipe dream as long as cities are dependent on areas beyond their rail transit networks for labor.
The infrastructure of every major city would need to be re-worked to make it not a pipe dream. The kind of re-work it would need simply doesn't happen to existing development. There's too many stake holders and too much valuable existing construction would need to be gotten rid of. Cities in Europe still have the original street layouts of their medieval cores that were left mostly intact when trains and then cars came onto the scene. If something displaces cars it will likely result in new development, not re-work of old development.
I live in one of those cities; a street I biked along yesterday was a village path four hundred years ago.
Last Friday, a politician here said that in her opinion, most cars will be banned from the central area in about six years. UPS vans will drive anywhere, taxis will too, plumbers will, you won't. UPS, taxis and plumbers are necessary, justified, you're just loud. Her predictions have been good before.
The set of necessary cars is a small subset of cars. Plumbers need to have a van full of spare parts, but that justifies letting them drive, it doesn't justify letting everyone drive everywhere.
Where do you draw the line? Who "deserves" the freedom of free movement and who does not? Assuming the near-future cars are quiet and tailpipe emission-free EV's, why would you care who does/does not drive?
If you like to walk, walk. If you need to drive, drive. Why try to force everyone into the lifestyle you think is best? Not letting "everyone drive everywhere" is a scary future that I would not like to live in. If I have the means and wish to drive, I will.
The public needs to decide how to allocate public space: for roads, bus lanes, bike paths, or sidewalks. Even if everyone was magically given EVs tomorrow, cities would still be choked with traffic, fights for parking, and dead pedestrians run over by distracted drivers.
Since the 1950's, car centric thinking has dominated US transportation planning. Go to a US city meeting and experience the struggle to simply install a 3ft bike lane on a 4 lane road. You may recoil at restrictions being placed on cars but it's well past time for it to happen.
That is indeed a question, and I observe that the democratic process that decides it is a bit skewed, at least from some people's points of view. AFAICT, a fair summary is that almost everyone wants restrictive rules where they live, but some/many also want permissive rules in other places (to which they can then drive). The suburban voters who want to drive in the inner city are quick to complain if one of the navigation systems starts recommending a shortcut through residential streets in their suburb.
Since voting happens according to where one lives, the suburban voters have next to no say in inner-city matters.
This may be seen as fair or unfair. Unfair, because it means that the most car-unfriendly voters tend to set the rules where it matters most, while the most car-friendly voters don't matter much. Fair, because it depresses the number of cars in the noisiest areas, somewhat equalising the noise/traffic people have to suffer where they live.
Electric bikes could be the game-changer that makes this work. It used to be that most people were opposed to biking due to many issues: safety, arriving sweaty, difficulty riding up hills.
Nowadays with the general easy availability of electric bikes in city bikeshare the main complaint is now safety around cars.
Indeed! NYC has been revolutionized by ebikes and bike lanes: suddenly you can go quite far and it's not a big deal. Food deliveries can come from much further thanks to ebikes, and Amazon prime now/whole foods uses ebikes to haul substantial cargo: https://www.boweryboogie.com/content/uploads/2019/09/Whole-f...
I’m an avid cyclist, but here in Ottawa for half the year it’s -20C and the roads are treacherous. I’d be willing to cycle on the roads when it’s warmish in the winter, when it’s just below zero, but I’m unwilling to have someone who forgot to put winter tires on slide over me and my bike (and I’d need a sacrificial winter bike because the salt water from out streets would eat bikes alive).
> I’m an avid cyclist, but here in Ottawa for half the year it’s -20C and the roads are treacherous.
The Not Just Bikes channel, produced by an ex-pat Canadian, has a video asking why can't people in Canada cycle in the winter if the folks in Finland can?
> When talking about bicycle infrastructure in Canada, the number one excuse I hear is "winter." Many Canadians see the cold and snow as a fundamental barrier to year round cycling. But one city, Oulu in Finland, with winter weather worse than most Canadian cities, shows that winter cycling has nothing to do with the weather, and everything to do with safe cycling infrastructure. […]
> I’m unwilling to have someone who forgot to put winter tires on slide over me and my bike
Part of the argument is that traffic should be segregated[1] and infrastructure for bikes should be well-kept year round, regardless of local conditions[2]. If a car can slide in snow and run you over, a distracted driver can do that on ideal conditions as well. If the roads are not in a ridable condition, that means that bike infrastructure is not being prioritized, usually because it is not considered a valid commuting mechanism.
If cities actually make efforts to accommodate cyclists in winter, it actually ends up being quite practical and the temperature isn't really an issue. Montreal is an example of a city that has made efforts to do just that and has seen a huge increase in winter cycling.
The reality right now for most cities in Canada is that the cyclist is relegated to making their way through slush and snow filling the bike line while cars zoom pass spraying them with more slush - of course, people don't ride their bike in those conditions.
Rain is not as bad as you think it is. With a not-e-bike, I’m generally pretty warm from cycling, and a little cold rain is usually welcome. Fenders are required for a commuter bike if you want to bike in the rain, and you have to clean your bike more often if you bike in the rain often.
Snow is suicidal, not because of your bike, it because of the drivers.
The problem is that you then arrive at work soaking wet, so you have to change clothes and then store your wet stuff somewhere all day. Then change back into the wet stuff for the ride back (which might be in the rain again).
I'm in Toronto, Canada and generally cycle (pre-pandemic) from March to December, rain or shine. I skip January and February mostly because of road conditions. Our urban winters aren't that bad, relatively speaking, so it's reasonable most days.
I do have all the funny looking clothing, but that's mostly because I like to push things a bit to get some cardio. More leisurely pedalling would reduce sweating and probably not need a change.
I shower first thing in the morning at home: it's not the sweat that gets stinky, it's the bacteria, so if you're reasonably clean it won't be a problem.
Of course people own cars today; we prioritize driver interests wherever they conflict with other concerns. But even passive changes to the built environment -- allow more density, upzone urban neighborhoods, eliminate parking requirements -- will in many places result in cities that are far more car-hostile. In my view people will naturally respond to changing incentives.
Car ownership rates should be understood to exist in a context where the alternatives are more or less illegal. If they weren't literally illegal, then they'd be more common.
there's a significant difference between "allow denser construction" and "deliberately ratchet up the pain for drivers each year". a city that's genuinely designed for pedestrians sounds great! having my commute to work be even worse for n years until public transit reaches viability doesn't sound so great.
What's the difference? Is it that "deliberately ratchet up the pain for drivers each year" includes (malicious) intent, an overwrought exaggeration, a victim (gasp!), or a timeframe?
Or is the whole comparison really just not in good faith?
eliminating free parking and parking minimums seems reasonable enough. people who need a car to get to the place where they make money can figure out how to pay for parking. stuff like prioritizing plowing the sidewalk over the road sounds like deliberately pissing drivers off. what it sounds like is important, and most people drive. imagine being a politician outside of maybe NYC and having that as part of your platform.
other people like me have more specific issues. I'd actually love to bike or take public transit to work, but there's no bus/train that goes anywhere near my office, it would take over an hour to bike there, and all the other software companies are also outside the city. why are there no virtually no employers in my field in a major american city? kind of a tangent, but if you don't look at things like this too, you are making my life worse without offering anything.
Right, there's no doubt that this is how American cities are organized today. What I'm advocating for is allowing that to change naturally over the course of a few decades by upzoning urban lots to allow for more density (everywhere, but especially near transit). As traffic increases in the denser zones, more people will choose to live there to avoid the commute (and because we know humans choose to move to densely-developed neighborhoods when they're allowed to), which generates even more density, and so on.
The status quo today is that these alternatives are illegal in most parts of most cities.
I think the rub is that what you propose is not politically feasible. It may or may not be objectively a great idea, but we live in a democracy and the moment you do something overtly that causes pain for enough of the voting population to matter, they will just vote in a different politician who will reverse the policy.
Yes, I'm very pessimistic about democracy's ability to address the most important questions of our age. We're paying an enormous productivity price, locking young people out of access to the best places to live, and we're dealing with it on a timeline that's totally unresponsive to the scale of the problem. And what's so maddening is that it's a totally invented policy problem.
Slowly. If you look at the Netherlands which is the standout example then you will see they didn't change everything overnight. It has been a process that took forty years and they still haven't finished.
One can at least imagine a future in which downtown areas are limited to quiet autonomous electric vehicles that do not have horns and only screech to avoid imminent collision.
Bikes are the best transportation for small trips. No questionning it.
Unless you can't use a bike because something's wrong with your body. Then you need a car. For some people, it's obvious: they have a broken leg, or no legs at all. They'll get a pass (and boy do they need it!).
For other people, like me, it's less obvious. I still have my two legs, my two feet, but some bones are broken, and it hurts to cycle or walk just a few kilometers.
Essentially, as much as I hate it, I need a car. Otherwise each day ends in pain and misery. And public transportation doesn't solve it, since I need to walk to the bus stop.
So yes, cities need to have less cars, but please don't forget about people who don't have another solution.
Better bicycle infrastructure solves this problem too. Sidewalks are okay, but dedicated bike paths are AWESOME for motorized wheelchairs. In addition, the Netherlands came up with a cool system where disabled and elderly persons could use little, enclosed, motor vehicles like the Canta on dedicated use paths.
Being disabled doesn't mean you need a car. In fact, it usually means that you cannot use a car at all and depend on public transit and cycle/ped infrastructure. If you are an alcoholic, epileptic, or blind you absolutely need public transportation.
We need more electric tri/quad-cycles like the Better Bikes PEDL and the Organic Transit ELF. They provide shelter from sun, rain and snow, and have enough battery to not require pedaling. They are also small enough to go on bike lanes and paths yet large enough to been seen by drivers of ICE vehicles.
Or public transport. Or, as in the Netherlands, small golf cart like vehicles that can go on the bike path and the speeds are capped at a level where they are not a threat to everyone around them and they don’t take up inordinate amounts of space.
Improve public transport then take away my car. But what they can do is get rid of all those useless, oversized, bloated SUV's. A car doesn't need to be a status symbol, and in approximately 99.99987% of use cases it does not need to be a Mercedes G-Wagen amg. (there are millions of drivers out there, so i'm not sure if i put in enough 9's)
Taxis are worse because they will be spending time driving around without a passenger. In the worst case they will be doing twice the mileage of a personal vehicle.
Public transit, walk, bike, ...
Nobody bats an eye if you can't get somewhere easily by public transit but the prospect of not being able to drive somewhere is incomprehensible?
Have you never seen folks with walkers or wheelchairs out and about? Sometimes loading a wheelchair into a van and driving to the grocery store is easier than using a wheelchair to go 10 miles to pickup groceries.
I'm not sure about other areas if the world, but mass transit in the US isn't sufficient to fill the gap in the need to get people around with even minimal efficiency.
Parasite? My car is an important part of my life and the lives of most people I know. The alternative is that I would spend significantly more time shuttling humans, getting my weekly shopping done, getting to/from work, and so on. All the infrastructure and amenities that you are suggesting be casually tossed aside, improve my family's life significantly in a way that other modes of transportation simply cannot match. The sheer time savings are worth much more to me than the alleged noise pollution from cars, which isn't really even noticeable.
I hope you can realise that the issue pointed out here is that the surburban development pattern essentially forces you to take your car to do something as basic as grocery shopping or going to the park.
If your neighborhood was walkable and you had access to shops within walking/cycling distance, you would not need your car for this. It might even be more enjoyable for your family than sitting in a car, stuck in traffic.
Heck, your children could—gasp!—go get ice cream at the corner shop by themselves!
Carless grocery shopping for a family sounds awful. If the kids are too young to ride a bike, you lose cargo space on your bike to haul a kid, or need the other parent to be available to take care of the children while one shops. You can't actually buy as much per trip, so you have to go more often, which means more time per week getting groceries. Bulk buying is basically impossible, so things get more expensive. Maybe you can get bulk delivered, but that means more delivery vehicles and is generally always more expensive, unless you live in an area with venture capital money to burn.
It’s hard to unpack this comment because it’s so completely car centered.
The simplest thing to do here is to point out that the overwhelming majority of the world does not shop for groceries the way Americans do. And they have families. Heck, many of them have bigger families than Americans.
As someone who grew up in Edmonton but live in a big city with lots of local stores now, I will never go back to car centric life if I can help it. I don’t have a car but neither does anyone else. There’s no less than 6 grocery stores within a 500m radius of me with the closest being about 100m away.
Yeah having a pantry full of food is convenient in a way, but local stores in every neighborhood seems more convenient to me and picking up a few things on your way home, a few times a week is less of a chore than one big trip.
Its really not that bad. Part of the reason it sounds rough is because, the way American neighborhoods and cities are set up, grocery shopping is an ordeal, which why most of us restrict it do a once a week thing, and try to buy in bulk. When your grocery store is within walking distance of where you live, it isn't a big deal to pick up some food a couple times a week, buying just what you need for a couple of days. This was my experience living in Japan for a few years, and I'd love to go back to that over my current American setup where I do need a car to buy my groceries every week.
I happen to live a block away from a supermarket. I still don't see how I could do without a car - it just doesn't carry all the items I buy. No shop does.
Those benefits come at a cost, and you're only paying for some of it. If going downtown and parking there had a direct price in keeping with what it costs to supply, then you wouldn't be a parasite. Instead the costs are obfuscated and forced onto people.
If you're driving around somewhere that land is at less of a premium, have fun.
> If going downtown and parking there had a direct price in keeping with what it costs to supply, then you wouldn't be a parasite.
These are amenities that residents and local governments have elected to have, to the benefit of all. Your claim that I'm only paying for some of it is false. I'm paying exactly the required amount for it, because my taxes fund the city and have done so for a long time. Costs are also not "forced" onto people - the newcomers who don't like my car-centric city are the ones forcing themselves upon the city, demanding density beyond what can be reasonably supplied just so they can have the exact price point they want. These same people can just as well live elsewhere and form their own city instead of trying to simultaneously benefit from the community and economy current residents (and infrastructure policies) have built up over years and decades, while they also insist that things be altered drastically to their desire. Who exactly is the parasite in this picture? Hint: not the long-time residents.
Laws about required parking spaces were put into place many years ago, by different people, with incomplete information about the future.
When that information changes, the laws should change too, yes?
For example, as the Boomers age, fewer will be able to drive, making their current independent life in the suburbs unsupportable. Many elderly are able to walk even if they can't drive. But if mandatory minimum parking laws prevent the construction of walkable areas then fewer options are available to them.
These laws, often put into place in the post-war boom, don't reflect current life, so must change.
Hint: retired Boomers are long-time residents.
> I'm paying exactly the required amount for it,
Unless you have metered or paid permit parking set by free market rates, I have a hard time understanding how you can be so certain.
Cities change their tax levels and fee structures often. Surely you don't think that roads and parking happens to be perfectly funded.
BTW, many cities have gone into debt to fund their growth. What you see is "a modest, short term illusion of wealth in exchange for enormous, long term liabilities" - https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme/ . The current residents are not "paying exactly the required amount for it"; it's been pushed off to future residents.
Except a car has dramatically more useful functionality than meth, so this is a completely disingenuous comment. Nobody is claiming that cars don't have an associated cost, but one side of this discussion constantly glosses over the benefits of a personal car and only talks about the downsides.
The utility of cars would plummet if they were not so subsidized by the government and society itself shrugs off externalities. People casually accept needless death from cars because it's seen as a fact of life. How do you talk about the positives of cars after realizing all of that?
The biggest culprits are Dodge and Ford for putting out massively overpowered 5, 6 and even 700 horse powered super vehicles with exhaust that can be set up to make excessive volumes of noise bypassing or even removing mufflers to make the car even more ridiculous. This may be a southern phenom since I live in Atlanta many of my neighbors have been complaining about late night road racing and other stupid crap like 100s of ATVs running the streets in gangs. Check it out https://youtu.be/xlJAySvoH9M and https://www.cbs46.com/news/caught-on-camera-swarm-of-atv-dir.... I’ve seen this in person and it’s very scary when you’re pinned in a car with these morons running by.
Harley style motorcycles take the cake though, "loud pipes" are such a thing in that part of motorcycle culture. I don't understand the aesthetic of trying to annoy everyone to such a degree, and I don't understand why it's not prosecuted at all.
It's primary reason is image. That's why it's mostly Harley-Davidson, not Indian motorcycles, that roar past. Not that Indian can't be loud, but the former has a reputation that's exacerbated by owners riding at high RPM or modifying the exhaust system.
More to the point, do you believe an exhaust system quiet enough to be legal is still immediately noticeable over highway-speed road and wind noise, sound-deadening, climate-control fans running flat out, and any media playing at any volume?
Absolutely. I can hear those hogs from the other side of the freeway sometimes. The "being heard" part applies mostly in quieter streets, to turn heads.
Some guy on a harley rides by every few days and triggers a car alarm in my neighborhood. I'm sure it gives him a bit of a thrill. Same with those guys who modded their cars.
Err, ok, so Dodge and Ford, and probably Chevrolet (can’t forget that Camaro), and Jaguar (who has become famous for their exhaust sounds in recent years), and Honda - that Type R is quite loud, let’s not forget BMW’s M series, and AMG, and, well, everyone.
It seems almost like the problem is that people like buying loud cars, rather than your assertion that 2 manufacturers are at fault for everything.
And something something ATVs (how does illegal ATV use equate to Ford’s complicity in loud cities?)…
Overpowered for full-range use in the city at night or while passing on a freeway, or overpowered for enjoyment of a hobby in the intended usage setting. You can be right and wrong at the same time here.
I realize this sounds like a BS "guns don't kill people, people do" argument, but in this case the actual problematic outcomes usually really do boil down to the person operating the vehicle and their level or maturity and respect.
It's not limited to Fords and Dodges. Hondas and Toyotas can be quite obnoxiously loud, also. About the ATV thing, there's a 2013 documentary in Baltimore, MD called "12 O'Clock Boys" [0].
You must be using a very creative definition of "biggest culprits"
Those flagship super powerful sedans, trucks and SUVs you are complaining about are a drop in the bucket compared to bog standard commuter sedans, hatches and crossovers.
with any luck Tesla will put them out of business or force them to adapt their business model, and this time no bailouts. surging oil and gas prices will hurt too.
Sounds like the actual problem is in how and where people are using those high powered engines, not the engine themselves. Those noises are actually part of the fun of ownership and a welcome symphony of sound among like-minded people in setting designed for it.
As a resident of Delft (and originally hailing from Mumbai) I can vouch for the subjective difference in average noise levels one would be exposed to - coming from a bustling city filled with "layers" of various sounds (trains, honks, crowd, etc.) to a town where most of the sound seems to come from people, the difference is considerable.
Naturally, Delft cannot be compared to Mumbai (whose population is more than the entire population of the Netherlands), but having had first-hand experience of spending a considerable amount of time in both places, I simply cannot overstate the peace of mind felt with extremely low noise levels. As far as a good solution to noise levels in cities like Mumbai goes, there's a whole lot to be done - and a Delftian approach certainly wouldn't work.
I’m curious why you think a Delft like approach wouldn’t work.
1) Mumbai is already suffering from massive space constraints and traffic issues. A trip in a car is usually slower than walking that distance (assuming the infrastructure exists and you can walk without falling into an open pothole).
Mumbai desperately needs more public transport, and needs to add safe biking, also because of #2
2) Mumbai has very few roads per person, and further, it doesn’t have space to build anymore. Besides the fact that this means cars are not sustainable at all in the city, it also means there’s not too much quiet asphalt that would be needed to replace the existing road material.
3) Mumbai already has an excellent public transport infrastructure, especially with buses. That system is currently unworkable because of all the cars clogging the road. If you were to have dedicated bus lanes, and increase service drastically, it would solve most of Mumbai’s transit issues.
4) Cars in Mumbai rarely travel over 30km/h anyways. Just moving usa. Welcome miracle for the most part.
In theory, a Delft-like approach would work for any given city - but as far as Mumbai goes, the main problem (apart from bureaucratic/administrative issues) is the sheer density of population - there aren't many places in the world with such space constraints, and that raises unique challenges (even after having Navi Mumbai built in the '70s the burden doesn't seem to have reduced much).
1) Thanks to the north-south alignment of the city (further aggravated by the commercial-residential area distribution along the north-south direction) there is just an extremely high population load involved in mass movement twice a day (of course, in the usual circumstances). Better infrastructure wouldn't help so much as more structural changes like redistribution of these areas or enforcing staggered working hours.
2) I feel this is more of an administrative problem - the current model of tenders does not work very well and there seems to be little or no incentive (or deterrents) for contractors to keep roads in good shape. The current road infrastructure is dismal and would require a major system overhaul to facilitate finances and will required for replacing the existing material with quiet asphalt. But yes, this probably seems more doable.
3) The municipal corp did consider having a BRTS system (a la the Bogota model) but their surveys led to the conclusion that improving the existing suburban rail system with more frequent services was more impactful. In terms of point-to-point connectivity, Mumbai certainly has very good infrastructure (especially compared to Bengaluru and Pune).
4) Don't forget about the honking! There's little or no honking in Delft.
There are definitely degrees to this - engine noise, exhaust noise, tire noise, break noise, etc. Electric cars are very quiet. Motorcycles are usually the other end of the extreme in rattle-your-bones-loud (yeah I know people argue it’s safety).
Sensible regulation that affects all cars/motorcycles used in the city (not just new vehicles) would go a long way to improving quality of life for many many people.
I live in Asia where everyone drives scooters and small motorbikes. They are not that loud - certainly quieter than cars. It's only large bikes with exhausts designed to be loud that rattle your bones. Thankfully they are rare here.
I spent years living in Asia and I found the streets to be incredibly noisy.
The main problem was two-stroke scooters. Not only are two-strokes inherently noisy, but users often remove the mufflers to improve the power (two-strokes hate back pressure).
However in recent times there's been a big change to four-stroke and even electric scooters. Which means that the noise levels have improved somewhat. Still terrible though.
Standard passenger cars are essentially silent compared to trucks, busses and trains, unless you are right up next to traffic and they are going over 40ish which doesn’t happen often in a city.
You say that because you haven’t heard the din of a congested street where cars are moving at an average of 5-10 km/h, with all the engines stop-and-going and the horns blaring (people are desperate to move) in large cities. Can be heard from hundreds of meters away.
When I lived near a busy roadway, the worst offenders by far were cars and motorbikes deliberately designed to be obnoxious. Regular traffic noise could be tuned out pretty easily, but then you'd get some jackass who deliberately removed their muffler revving their engine at midnight... Unfortunately people who do this are very rarely punished beyond maybe the occasional traffic ticket.
I live in the center of Berlin and I can hear cars all day and most of the night even though the closest street is ~100 meters away, behind a huge building and limited 30 mph. It's a constant hum and I can guarantee you most of it is from passenger cars
A simple test is to go for a walk in the woods, the loudest noises are tree branches quietly snapping under your feet and the wind on leaves, going back to the city is torture after that. If I'm not listening to music I use earplugs
Ok when you’re outside you can hear large number of anything. I think thats just physics of sound. I was basing my comparison on living in an big city apartment near ish to a busy road and the only noises that ever bothered me inside were trucks shaking the ground, truck engines, air brakes and motorcycles revving. I literally could not detect passenger vehicle traffic without going outside so I couldn’t even tell if the street was busy.
What's the point of this comparison, though? They're still loud. Cities will still be loud, because of cars, even if everything is electric. Road noise (rushing air, rolling tires) is road noise.
I live ~2000 feet from a highway and the noise is significant, and I'm not talking idiots with straight pipes. It's the constant humming and thrum of the vehicles.
My point was this sounds like (I didnt watch) another “squeeze the individual who already has a tiny footprint instead of the biggest offender because they are harder to fix”. I guess air noise from 70+ mph traffic will always be loud, but I was commenting on cities where most highways are either walled, elevated or otherwise separated. Living 2000 feet from an open highway sounds like rural or suburban to me.
I believe this but in a major city most cars are new enough to not be loud. I’ve got an almost 20 year old truck that is older than average and not loud, and I’ve never really heard of mufflers rusting here either.
I live in a city a few hundred feet from a highway where people are going well over 40, possibly as high as 70.
Geometrically, most of a city can't be in the center, no matter the size or arrangement. I'm not sure how this can be overlooked, but it seemingly is, a lot. The edge of the city is next to the suburbs, and that perimeter should be longer than any inner contour, right?
Parklets in U.S. cities can make a significant difference in some areas. There are neighborhoods in SF, LA, NY etc. where restaurants are able to expand into the street area, changing a few parking spaces into outdoor seating.
The outcomes are human-friendly sidewalk-friendly areas, and fewer cars in the areas. There are some parklets that also include bicycle racks and skateboard racks, which tend to also encourage alternative transportation and better health. What's especially nice about parklets is that business owners strongly like them because the parklets bring more customers to the areas.
Due to quarantine restrictions, a number of parklets were created for outdoor seating arrangements here. What I wonder, is how many cities are considering making the arrangement more frequent and common now that it's been done.
My hope is that it happens. I haven't seen a lot of discussion from local officials yet, but I could see the new parklets sticking around this summer as a trial, particularly to help restaurants expand seating en route to recovery.
If you know the channel (the guy hates built-for-cars cities with a passion) he's probably not an advocate for that. But hey if it works, those look like a nifty way to make public space a bit flexible.
The cynic in me just expects that to become an argument for building more parking spots.
Some would say access to restaurants / eateries / other forms of vended food fare establishments are no more fundamental than access to essential means of transport as cars are. No city anywhere makes it a part of its charter to promise its residents ready access to global fare at their doorstep. If personal vehicles are secondary to public transit, then restaurants are secondary to home cooking.
Also restaurants reserve the right to deny or pick who they serve and who they do not and may bar you from dining there if they do not like you or your appearance - so why should they be afforded public spaces in the form of parklets?
Those parked cars generally bring the people providing that tax revenue, or they bring the people working in the shop to have it be open in the first place.
AFAIK porous asphalt (which is often called draining asphalt here) is a very good thing (for rain) and driving (braking/adherence is excellent) but not particularly good for noise.
Since several years they are experimenting in various EU cities, particularly for roads restricted to buses, a type of asphalt that incorporates (recycled) rubber which reduces effectively a part of the noise and vibrations, but is seemingly used in US too:
The video partially contradicts that. Electric motors are quieter than engines, but tire noise tends to be higher, since EVs tend to be heavier than their gas equivalents.
I would, though, definitely like to banish the sound of idling diesel engines from cities. Replace diesel buses and garbage trucks, and fine the operators of ships, trains, and heavy industrial equipment based on the amount of noise they generate in an urban area.
But as the video states, 'rolling noise' becomes louder than ICE engine noise at 50km\h or higher. Tesla's driving by still make noise parting air and creating friction on the road.
Anecdata but my house is near a road that has a particularly bad section where sound bounces and I can tell you we can’t hear the EVs that drive by but standard ICE rumble a lot.
At 7m30s the video states that rolling noise (tires) starts being same/louder than propulsion noise at 30 kph. Reducing speeds from 50 kph to 30 kph reduces noise by 6 dB (a change of 3 dB is halving/doubling).
So yes, it's not surprising that 0-10/15 kph you hear the engine more.
Which is insignificant in the context. The noises that video author discusses comes almost purely from tires rolling, at speeds where ICEs are basically silent compared to it.
I think part of the problem is that car manufacturers do an extremely good job of reducing noise inside the car. When I'm driving my car, I scarcely hear the noise around me. If I'm running alongside the same street, though, I need noise-cancelling headphones just to hear a podcast. As long as manufacturers can limit the effects of the noise on the driver, there is little incentive for them to limit the noise to the environment in general.
Ocean drive was the street you drove your lambo down slowly with the speakers blasting so you could make a lot of noise and have a good time. It was a scene. A good chunk of the time it's cordoned off for street parties anyway. It has absolutely nothing to do with how people get from A to B in Miami Beach.
It was only after owning a Tesla that I realized how much of the noise from a car comes from its engine, and not the tires. I'd ballpark around 80%, especially at city speeds (less than 50 km/h).
Before you convince yourself that you are doing the world a favor by driving a “quiet” car you should probably watch the video where he explicitly debunks this.
Could you link this video? My experience has been that electric vehicles are significantly quieter than ice vehicles.
Edit: Are you referring to this video? He mentions electric cars being too quiet at low speeds and reasonably noisy at high speeds. I would imagine that speeds inside a city should be low, no?
In his small scale test (which I admit is far from perfect at isolating sources of sound), he shows that both ICE and electric cars are both way louder than bikes. And both types of cars still have extremely loud horns. His thesis is that high background noise of cities makes people agitated and make cities uncomfortable places to live. So, yes, while electric cars do have no engine noise they still contribute massively to noise pollution and that awful constant hum of tires that engulf cities.
I’m talking about my own experience comparing an electric car and a gasoline car at low speeds. EVs being significantly quieter is already well established and we have laws for EVs to make extra noise to alert pedestrians.
I just want to point out that the title is completely wrong. Cities are loud, even the places in Europe that have no cars in the core of the city. Music, drunk people, homeless people screaming, roadwork, other construction, etc.
Cities are loud because there are a lot of people in a small area.
True, but I think you underestimate how loud traffic is. A lively pedestrian area (which there aren't many of) is probably nowhere near a busy street. It could also easily have 5 times as many people per area.
Edit: Also if you watch the video there's a scene where he steps off a train in Delft and it's very quiet. Obviously densely settled areas must be louder, but perhaps not always loud.
I don't think NJB is arguing against the use of cars outside the city (although he's a big fan of trains, naturally). But also don't forget it's not just bougies living in the city, it's working-class people too, who often can't afford to have a car in the city and so need properly working public transport.
This is a channel mostly about city layout and urban development. What he really argues for is changing cities and providing alternatives, not flat out banning cars.
