
Street by Street, Amsterdam Is Cutting Cars Out of the Picture - gmck
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/10/amsterdam-car-ban-knip-driving-public-transit-zero-emission/599521/
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dkarbayev
As someone who’s interested in living in Amsterdam, I wonder what are options
to commute other than by walking, cycling or taking a public transport? As far
as I know, electric scooters are illegal in the Netherlands. I fancy
motorcycles but I’m not sure if they’ll be banned right after cars (at least
those that use ICE).

~~~
bendyorke
As someone who has lived in Amsterdam for a few years, and have several
friends who were very bike adverse when they moved here, everyone ends up
biking. It’s very convenient, safe, and enjoyable here, and you can get
electric bikes or electric scooters to help if you bike long distances
frequently (or just don’t want to bike).

With weather apps that give you the rainfall down to a few minutes, you can
escape the weather by either biking in the lulls, participating in a e-bike
scooter sharing system, or falling back on public transport when you need.

Very rarely can you get someone faster by driving than you could by biking or
public transport (at least according to google maps) so long as you live
within the ring. Outside of that I don’t think cars are going anywhere, and
there is ample parking near the major public transport hubs. I know plenty of
people who park there and take a quick train or metro to their work and don’t
complain about the hassle.

It’s a different way of living and I miss driving sometimes but it’s really
nice once you acclimate!

~~~
codazoda
I've only spent 3 days in Amsterdam and I enjoyed the ability to walk the
city. I covered quite a bit of ground there and most of the areas were void of
cars. Pretty great for tourists; although I'm not sure how much locals like
the tourists.

I think I was in "the ring", if we're talking about the adjoining canal
systems that circle around the center part of the city.

~~~
cbluth
"the ring" is considered the freeway that encircles the city.

~~~
mcv
And the ring of canals is called the "grachtengordel". I challenge any non-
Dutch-speaker to try to pronounce that.

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yread
They should make the public transport cheaper. At least as cheap so that gas
for driving alone in a car is more expensive. Even among other big cities in
the Netherlands Amsterdam per km rate for public transport (€0.162 p/km) is
quite high.

~~~
CydeWeys
Plenty of people in major cities across the globe are fighting for _free_ mass
transit. It's not that unreasonable at all when you consider that, in many
cities, the per-trip subsidy is already higher than the fare price anyway.

And if you reverse the situation, and imagine a city with free public transit
that is then considering adding a fare to it, said fare would be extremely
regressive and would hit the worst off the hardest.

~~~
zucker42
Most free fare experiments have been failures from what I've seen. City
Beautiful has a video about it. Free fare can attract people who are less
desirable to ride with, even potentially decreasing ridership.

~~~
CydeWeys
Can you provide a link? What major cities have tried free fares?

I'm also really curious to know what "less desirable" means, exactly.

~~~
zucker42
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccxVYborUcU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccxVYborUcU)
was the video I was referencing. It was far more positive than I remember.

[https://ftp.fdot.gov/file/d/FTP/FDOT%20LTS/CO/research/Compl...](https://ftp.fdot.gov/file/d/FTP/FDOT%20LTS/CO/research/Completed_Proj/Summary_PTO/FDOT_BC137_38_FF_rpt.pdf)
is the research I remember that was more critical.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_public_transport)
is also good.

Less desirable means people that other riders are less likely to want to ride
with. From the paper above:

> In the Austin, Texas fare-free demonstration, both anecdotal and official
> data suggest that problem riders increased substantially and drove away
> other riders. Joy-riding youth and inebriated adults, as well as vagrants,
> increased. In addition, in both the Mercer Metro and the Austin, Texas
> experiences, problem riders actually drove away many of the regular bus
> commuters. In none of the experiments did the increase in transit ridership
> include automobile commuters enticed by the fare-free service (Connor, 1979;
> Kounes, 1993; People for Modern Transit Technical Committee, 2001).

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zarro
In the future it seems completely logical that all surface level traffic would
be by walking, scooter or electric bike, etc, and everything else would be
subsurface.

~~~
wolco
It would go up with flying cars before it went down. Down is very expensive
while up is free.

~~~
freehunter
Up is very much not free. It costs a lot of energy to keep something suspended
in mid-air. Airplanes that move hundreds of people are already under scrutiny
for how much energy they use, there's absolutely no way we'd accept personal
flying machines. Personal automobiles that can rest firmly on the ground are
already criticized for their consumption even without having to lift off the
earth.

Down is _much_ cheaper.

~~~
wolco
Not sure what the future holds but if we could just remove this gravity effect
they could float.

What if they were more like balloons?

I think in the far future we will be able to transport and it will be the
cleanest method of travel.

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elliekelly
I recently needed to commute to the airport in Amsterdam during rush hour and,
in trying to figure out how bad traffic would be, stumbled upon this[1]
YouTube video.

It's incredible how many people are able to commute at once using the bike
lanes.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXWKQCavjck](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXWKQCavjck)

~~~
mc32
I know it’s fast forwarded but it’s hard to ignore the cyclists/riders
sneaking into the car lane to get to the head of the pack. That said the great
majority observe traffic safety rules.

~~~
btrettel
In many instances a cyclist riding in the "car lane" is not illegal. It's not
in Texas, in fact, it's legally required in some instances. I'm a cyclist, and
recently I had a driver road rage at me because I was using the left turn
lane, which is _required by law_ when turning left!

I don't know specifically about Amsterdam, for what it's worth.

Also, a cyclist riding in the road is not necessarily unsafe either. Many bike
lanes are poorly designed and contribute to safety problems.

~~~
scrumbledober
the amount of times i've been yelled at to "get out of the middle of the road"
when trying to turn left...

~~~
travisporter
It’s reassuring to me when drivers honk at me on my bike because I know they
see me.

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JayQP
Hopefully other city centres built before the advent of the automobile will
follow suit. Edinburgh (Scotland), I’m looking at you ...

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matty22
This 'knip' idea is exactly what my town needs to implement. We're a small
town with a small population of folks who actually live there, but our two
main roads connect the freeway and large towns south of us. From about 3-7pm,
the town is just one giant thoroughfare.

One or two knips would solve the entire issue.

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djohnston
I wonder if there will be statically significant health benefits

~~~
jacquesm
Just look around and you'll have a hard time finding the combination of obese
people and cyclists.

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throwawaysea
There seem to be articles from citylab (and other 'urbanist' outlets) flooding
Hacker News daily. Somehow they all end up on the front page. This article's
submitter
([https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gmck](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gmck))
is a 5-month old account that submits almost entirely just citylab articles.

Clearly there are people looking to influence the HN crowd one way, especially
with the anti-car narratives. Here's a different narrative about cars that
shows the other side:

Cars are fast, and in areas that are not ultra high-density, they save time
relative to ANY alternative (walking, biking, buses, trains) and therefore
drastically improve your quality of life. They don't require you to wait on
someone else's schedule, especially given the often inconsistent timing of
buses. They work in all weather (such as rain) and in all terrain (such as
hills) and are viable for older folks who may not be comfortable riding a bike
everywhere. They don't require you to risk sitting down on dirty seats
(6-year-old girl stabbed by uncapped needle on bus:
[https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/08/girl-6-injected-needle-
hidden...](https://metro.co.uk/2019/06/08/girl-6-injected-needle-hidden-two-
bus-seats-9873386/)). They don't require you to expose yourself to violence
(40 to 60 teens rob BART train: [https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BART-
takeover-robbery-5...](https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/BART-takeover-
robbery-50-to-60-teens-swarm-11094745.php)). They let you travel all over the
land, including away from cities, and therefore give you a greater degree of
freedom than the reach of fixed rails or transit systems that are limited to
cities.

It seems most of these anti-car articles conveniently ignore the massive
benefits we get from fast, private, point-to-point motorized vehicular
transport.

PS: literally less than 10 seconds after I posted this comment, it was down-
voted. No one reads that fast, and this is clearly a spiteful downvote from
someone who doesn't want any visible challenge to the prevailing narrative.
That's unfortunate and a sign of degradation in discourse within the Hacker
News community.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Cars _were_ fast, in the sixties and seventies. There was space on roads. I
used to enjoy the "freedom of the _open road "._ Miles of twisty roads with
just a few roadblocks to navigate around. Even better on a motorbike...

Not any more. Now a car is an expensive pain in the ass and aside from in the
early hours, roads are pretty much constantly full. Full enough that even a
motorcycle isn't quite the fun or freedom it was when I passed my test 40
years ago.

Anything that reverses the trend to a car (self-driven or not) being a
necessity is good in my book. I'd far rather have an infrastructure that
promotes public transport and cycling like the Netherlands does.

The sooner we get back to streets safe for children to play in, the better.

I won't play tit-for-tat with equally emotive and useless links to stories
about people having watches and wallets lifted at lights etc.

~~~
kodablah
You make general conclusions based on your non-general results. For many the
car is not expensive, is not a pain, and their roads aren't constantly full.
What trends you might want to reverse may be based on an even narrower view of
reality than what makes them persist.

~~~
baroffoos
I am interested where this place you are talking about where cars are not
expensive. Where I am in a smallish city, cars are a massive expense with the
purchase cost, registration and insurance, fuel, maintenance and for a lot of
people parking costs.

~~~
kodablah
What is and isn't expensive is subjective. That's the whole point of my
comment, don't make generalizations on what other people think about
convenience or cost using your own opinion. My vehicle is not expensive in my
view compared to its utility.

~~~
baroffoos
I would think expensive would be in terms of the cost of other transport
options. A car is very very expensive when compared to public transport,
cycling, motorbikes, walking.

Other than air travel, a car is probably the most expensive transport option
there is.

~~~
throwawaysea
A car is often cheaper than other alternatives when you consider time or
convenience.

