
Car-Free Streets Will Soon Be the Norm - jseliger
https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/12/car-free-streets-plans-sf-market-street-new-york-europe-us/603391
======
onreact
Yeah, I live in Berlin and we have an increasing number of car free zones here
where people can move around without being afraid of getting killed.

Even children play outside again in such areas without risking their life. Not
to mention the lack of noise, pollution and clogged up space with parking
cars.

Cafes thrive and people stroll around to spend their time and money.
Businesses return from the outskirts etc. It's a dream for everybody. Also
crime rates drop as drug dealers can't drive through anymore.

~~~
HorstG
This only works in bigger cities, where there is plenty of heavily subsidized
public transport such as Berlin. Most smaller towns that went car free killed
their businesses or made them move to shopping districts on the outskirts
which are still reachable by car. Leading to "dead" inner parts of town and
very unhappy citizens. Oh, and skyrocketing rents in the subsidized cities
such as Berlin...

~~~
Demoneeri
It's funny that you are using "heavily subsidized public transport" while
using the entierly subsidized road system...

~~~
asjw
Disclaimer: I've been car free for the past three years.

I agree that roads are public infrastructure, but car owners are heavily taxed
in Europe, especially some parts of Europe.

In Italy, excluding fuel taxes (which cover 70% of the cost of the fuel BTW)
every car owner pays a mandatory "car owning tax" for each car they own, that
totals around 5-6 billions euros/year. And it's only the main one, there are
several others.

~~~
fragmede
In the US, it's called a car registration fee, but it's the same thing - a tax
on owning a car.

------
thatswrong0
San Francisco had one street block near Union Square closed off for a looong
time because of construction, and they put some fake turf on it. Occasionally
there would be pop-up events, like a little Christmas fair. I would
deliberately walk slightly out of my way to go up that block because it meant
no cars and wayyy more room to walk. I loved it and was so disappointed to see
it turned into a normal street again.

Sidewalks are stupidly narrow here. Two people walking side by side can make
it hard for people going the other way to walk around them. There are poles
and trash cans and store front tables that take up even more room. Walking is
a pretty dreary experience as a result - you feel like a second-class citizen.

I would love it if the city just took even like.. one street going east-west,
and one street going north-south, and convert them to walkable promenades for
a sizable portion. I'm curious why this hasn't happened yet - is there
significant local opposition? For storefronts or restaurants, the direct in-
front parking would be lost yes, but there would definitely be more foot
traffic, and there would still be parking on adjacent streets. I suppose the
main loser would be homeowners that use street parking.

~~~
fragmede
> I'm curious why this hasn't happened yet

There's significant _support_ for drastically changing Market street to be
car-free(er). The Better Market Street SF project was unanimous approved this
past October! Starting January they will be closing Market street to private
vehicles - no Uber/Lyft, only buses, taxis, and commercial vehicles (for eg,
the farmer's market). This $600 million dollar project will add proper bike
lanes, separate from the sidewalk, widen the sidewalk, and turn the boarded up
storefronts into a flourishing urban environment.

[http://www.bettermarketstreetsf.org/](http://www.bettermarketstreetsf.org/)

~~~
riversflow
I used to (stopped within the last year) walk, ride a kick scooter, and bike
down market all the time. The biggest problem with that street isn’t the cars,
but the vagrants. Seeing obviously stolen property for sale on the sidewalk,
across the street from a cop who appears to be there only so you don’t get
mugged, is extremely disconcerting. There’s barely any traffic on it right now
anyway, as someone who also had a car in the city during this period I can
tell you I /never/ turned down market, you can’t turn off of it. That sounds
like a huge waste of $600M if you ask me.

------
NPMaxwell
Part of the change is due to the appearance of alternative powered vehicles.
In Tokyo, it seems like every mother is riding an electric cargo bike with
covered seating for two kids and room for groceries -- the minivan of
bicycles. In Seattle, the morning commute is full of electric skateboards,
scooters, onewheels, and wheelchairs. It looks doable.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
How do those work in winter? We had electric scooters, but they were all
scooped up by their parent companies in October ahead of the coming months of
hell.

~~~
srhngpr
You must be from Calgary! Unfortunately, scooters and bikes won't work when
there is so much snow during the winter.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
That's downright insulting! I'm from Edmonton.

Yeah, I fear we have too much snow - while bicycles can still be used by the
most stubborn, electric vehicles can't summon up that curmudgeonly spirit that
will get them out of every second snow drift.

~~~
srhngpr
I'm very sorry to hear that! coming from a Vancouverite.

I spend a decent chunk of the year in Calgary for work and last year they kept
the Lime bikes during the winter and on non-snow days, it was actually useful
for getting around downtown. But this year they got rid of those too. Car2go
is no longer in Calgary either, so transportation options are super limited.

~~~
SketchySeaBeast
> I'm very sorry to hear that! coming from a Vancouverite.

Not even made - given everything going on, I'm sincerely thinking about
heading out that way myself.

------
Someone
For those claiming this can’t be done in the USA: the article talks about
_streets_ , not _roads_.

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/street](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/street): _" a thoroughfare especially in a city, town,
or village that is wider than an alley or lane and that usually includes
sidewalks”_

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/road](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/road): _" an open way for vehicles, persons, and
animals, especially one lying outside of an urban district”_

Street implies relatively dense building and, historically, implied people
walked and kids played on them.

This doesn’t claim you won’t be able to drive a car between neighbourhoods.

------
greenonions
Iowa City has a pedestrian mall in the heart of downtown and it's the most
charming, lively, interesting place in the city. Not to mention, it's safe,
fun, and pleasant for all ages. There's music, dancing, a playground, food,
etc.

~~~
jroschen
Iowa City and their pedestrian mall is easily one of the best places to spend
a couples days at in the Midwest. Being a college town, it’s a bit of an oasis
in the Midwest for all sorts of fantastic local restaurants, arts, and people.
Without the pedestrian mall, it wouldn’t be half the city it is today.

[https://thinkiowacity.com](https://thinkiowacity.com)

~~~
greenonions
I get an unsecure error viewing that site on mobile.

~~~
jroschen
Sorry about that, for some reason, this site requires www.

[https://www.thinkiowacity.com](https://www.thinkiowacity.com)

------
helen___keller
Currently living car-free. Pedestrian only streets are a godsend for quality
of life. But considering that a couple generations worth of capital went into
building a nation dependent on cars, I don't expect car-free streets to be too
widespread and certainly not in the places I would really want them (e.g. I
would love to have a pedestrian-only path feeding neighborhoods to train
stations, so my morning commute isn't subject to the dangers of the car
commute that I wanted to avoid. But it won't happen.)

Car free streets are mainly in downtown shopping districts where cars never
made sense in the first place (and everyone just goes two blocks over to grab
an Uber so it's not really freeing congestion from roads or anything)

------
tzs
> When asked what they like most about a city they have visited [...]

It's the people who live there you need to ask. People visiting a city
generally have different goals and different constraints than people who live
there.

~~~
ctdonath
If I can't drive to near my destination, I'll not likely visit that city.

~~~
adimitrov
Honest question: why?

It seems patently absurd to me, _especially_ when you're visiting. I'm
visiting Berlin right now. It's a car friendly city in a car friendly country
and I wouldn't want to drive anywhere here if you paid me. Too much of a
hassle. Besides driving is so incredibly boring. If you're visiting, you're
not going to really experience _the city_ from behind the windows of a metal
box. Maybe Northern American cities are different, but I haven't yet visited a
European city where driving would be clearly preferable.

~~~
ctdonath
Public transit, if you're not acclimated to it, is absurd. Coming from outside
the area, I'd have to pay to park (including time spent trying to find a
decent spot), walk a non-trivial distance to the station, coordinate movement
of multiple people (including young children) amid crowds, wait for transit
arrival, board, find seat (!), wait, stop at every station before exit, switch
transit multiple times (repeat wait/board/sit/wait), be in close proximity
with strange/unpleasant/criminal people, finally walk considerable distance to
destination ... never mind cargo issues. If you're acclimated to this, you
don't grasp how repulsive it sounds to many.

That vs what is (to us driving-acclimated): get in car, drive there, get out
... with plenty of cargo space. Take the dog if you like.

There's a reason I live suburban and yearn for rural: I don't want to be
shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers much of the time, transit included. A few
rare cases aside (Munich was nice), I don't want to "experience the city" \-
most are dirty overcrowded bastions of hyper-dependency. A car is a refuge;
transit is exposure.

~~~
AcerbicZero
The comments so far don't seem to be very generous to your position, but
honestly I can agree with at least some of your points. I basically refuse to
ride buses these days due to the experiences I've had on them, as well as
their overcrowded nature since the world has decided to really stick with this
8-5 schedule, and I dislike the idea of being jostled around while the junkie
next to me tries to cook his spoon.

I do however, love a good light rail system, although even the best of them
seem to suffer the same 8-5 cattle car problem. The light rail system in
Portland had its fair share of weirdo's and whatnot, but it was easy to plan,
easy to use, and even when crowded pretty friendly. Plus the rest of the city
is "fairly" walkable, so if I didn't feel like getting stuck on a train I
could just take a longer stroll.

~~~
majewsky
> _first paragraph_

It's hilarious how you can tell from those comments which people come from USA
or from Europe. These experiences sound like bad fiction to my German ears
(except for the overcrowding during rush hours, which public transit is
affected by just as much as car traffic).

------
Jamwinner
We get it citylab, you hate cars, and think everyone lives in the downtown of
a metropolis. Meanwhile, the rest of us have places to be, and 99% of my
country has no public transport. While I agree that city centers need more
walking room, the categorical exclusion of longer distant transport options
will just create more parking lots at the border of such areas. The more
modern planning ignores the forest (countries) for the trees (big cities), the
technological and class divide will only widen.

~~~
monknomo
80% of Americans live in an urban area

~~~
ConceitedCode
This is misleading to most people. The US census counts the suburbs as urban.
I don't believe most people referring to urban areas are referring to people
in the suburbs.

"To qualify as an urban area, the territory identified according to criteria
must encompass at least 2,500 people, at least 1,500 of which reside outside
institutional group quarters."

[https://www.census.gov/programs-
surveys/geography/about/faq/...](https://www.census.gov/programs-
surveys/geography/about/faq/2010-urban-area-faq.html#par_textimage_1)

~~~
ghaff
As I tell people, together with my two neighbors I live in the middle of about
100 acres on a road with no sidewalks. This counts as urban as far as the
census is concerned.

The US is big. That the above is urban makes sense in the context that I'm
only about a 15 minute drive from a small city and am only about an hour drive
from a large city. There are lots of places in the US that are 100+ miles from
the nearest Walmart.

------
LarryDarrell
My city of roughly a half million was mostly developed post-WW2. Even the
denser areas are not really walkable. They tried painting bike lanes on
existing roads, but that has just increased the number of bike fatalities.

Maybe expanding bus service 500-1000% and having it run 24/7 would work.
Anything less means low-wagers will still need a car.

Passing a Fair Scheduling Act and giving low wage workers a daily $10 to $20
dollar Uber/Lyft credit would do more to dramatically improve lives than mass
transit spending. But that is less fun to think about.

~~~
noobermin
A lot of research found painted bike lanes don't help without protection.

------
Balanceinfinity
Some cities simply can't do this, such as Los Angeles, Dallas, and Atlanta.
It's not in their DNA. Things are simply too far apart and the infrastructure
couldn't hold it. Other cities are moving toward "no cars" by simply allowing
gridlock to make driving a car worthless. I visit NYC very often, and we used
to take cabs all the time. Now, we never do, unless we have so much luggage we
can't manage - it's a nightmare getting a cab through Manhattan. They might as
well close most of Broadway, it's just a quagmire.

~~~
noobermin
One thing I'll add, the "allowing gridlock" is like "allowing water to fill a
container". It more or less is what an incompressible fluid does which is
essentially what traffic is. That's why road widenings don't neccessarily
decrease congestion, when you take into the non-linear effects (induced
demand).

~~~
Nullabillity
> induced demand

Oh no, more people can get to their destination by their preferred mode of
transportation! How horrible!

------
spats1990
The average U.S. car carries an average of 1.56 people and weighs an average,
for new cars, of almost two tons.

~~~
pif
Yes, and ... ? What's exactly your point?

~~~
spats1990
Just thought I'd toss it in there as a sort of topping or garnish for the
article.

Private cars in urban areas are incredibly inefficient from just about any
direction you choose to view it from.

~~~
peterwwillis
Well they're efficient for use cases that any other transportation option
doesn't work for. Just like a bus is very efficient at moving 80 people in one
direction, a car is efficient at moving one person in 80 directions.

If we didn't have private cars, businesses couldn't efficiently do things like
deliveries, and individual people couldn't make trips that are outside the
scope of public transit. So to replace them entirely we still need to fill
those gaps.

~~~
spats1990
Maybe my British English is hindering communication of my point here, because
by "private car" I meant "car for private personal i.e. non-commercial use"

as I've noted elsewhere, in many areas there is no way around use of private
cars due to the lack of population density.

------
gok
US cities have repeatedly tried this. Around 85% of the time, it has been a
complete failure and they go back to allowing cars. [1]

[1] [https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2013/07/25/16th-
stre...](https://www.bizjournals.com/denver/news/2013/07/25/16th-street-among-
a-rare-breed-most.html)

~~~
jamestimmins
From this article, it looks like pedestrian malls are an important piece, but
they can't do all of the heavy lifting on their own. There has to be adequate
density and multiple purposes so people are organically there at different
times of the day to create a sense of safety. This is addressed extensively in
The Death and Life of Great American Cities.

------
kyeb
I would love to see more streets like this.

------
205guy
The US has tons of car-free business districts, and they're well integrated
into the cities and suburbs. They are surrounded by parking so that people who
must drive can get there, then leave their car to walk around the shops. And
they often has bus transit centers so that people can reach the area by public
transportation.

Except we call them shopping malls, and they're all privatized, meaning
they're owned by big corporations who set the rent, access is controlled (no
homeless), and freedoms are limited (no protests, so no free speech).

------
carapace
In re:

> Heading out west, San Francisco’s government has voted to close Market
> Street to cars. Market Street is one of the main thoroughfares in the city’s
> downtown

It's _not_ closed to cars, just _private_ cars, if I understand correctly.
There will still be cars and buses, and car traffic will still be _crossing_
market street.

[http://www.bettermarketstreetsf.org/docs/bms-vehicle-
circula...](http://www.bettermarketstreetsf.org/docs/bms-vehicle-circulation-
proposed-072619.pdf)

\- - - -

Edit: The more I look into this the worse it seems. I thought I was reading
the picture wrong, but they have bike lanes running _between_ bus stops and
pedestrians:

> At curbside transit stops, the protected bikeway would be placed between the
> transit stop and the pedestrian through zone. Boarding and alighting transit
> customers would be separated from the bikeway with a raised railing-like
> feature and provided a designated place to cross the bikeway. On the
> sidewalk between the bikeway and the pedestrian throughzone, there would be
> the 3-foot buffer zone provided except at the aforementioned designated
> crossing places where there would be crosswalk markings and other features.

~"ResponsesToComments_Vol1_Better Market Street.pdf" from
[https://sfplanning.org/project/better-market-street-
environm...](https://sfplanning.org/project/better-market-street-
environmental-review-process#info)

It seems to me that the new Market St. would _maybe_ be safer, but it will be
much less convenient for each mode of travel. It seems to me to combine all
the right elements but in all the wrong ways.

E.g. the "protected" bike lanes aren't really separate from the pedestrians,
so bike riders are not going to be able to go fast on them, because there will
be people there.

This obviates the bike path: If you can't ride faster than pedestrians
_anyway_ then you might as well just mix the two kinds of traffic and let
people sort it out naturally.

The new plan doesn't seem to me to help people _commute_ by bike.

------
tomphoolery
The only real reason why we don't have car-free side streets in Philly (the
ones that are too skinny for a car to get through anyway, forcing people to
park on one of the sidewalks) is due to handicapped people becoming
immobilized. I like the concept, but I'm curious how it will be implemented
whilst also solving the problems for a large percentage of the population...

~~~
thebean11
I might be way off base, but wouldn't those people have electric wheelchairs
or something similar?

~~~
rtkwe
There's a middle ground where someone isn't wheelchair bound but does have a
lot of trouble moving around where people fall through the cracks without cars
or other vehicular transport.

~~~
triceratops
Electric trike?

~~~
rtkwe
The little mobility scooters? They can help a lot. They're a pain to get from
place to place though in the few time's I've been with people using them.

------
cafard
Washington, DC, has one car-free street: the stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue NW
between 15th and 17th Streets. The odd thing is that the street was closed
after a man crashed an airplane on the White House lawn.

(I except the case of blizzards--with a couple of feet of snow, you can ski or
play tackle football in the middle of a main street.)

------
taborj
_> When asked what they like most about a city they have visited, almost no
one answers: “The cars whizzing by on the streets.” _

Hi from no one. I bet folks interested in cars often mention seeing the
different makes and models as highlights of foreign travel. I know I do.

------
franzmafka
We can only pray. Oh, and petition, comment and vote, too.

------
curioussavage
Not in the suburbs...

cheap automated taxis are a way more realistic idea for reducing traffic. Not
just for last mile either. Switching transportation in the middle of a trip
even once wastes a ton of time and adds hassle.

~~~
maxsilver
> Not in the suburbs...

Which, as a reminder for urbanists, really translates to "Not in the only
place 90% of the nation's population is allowed to live"

~~~
rootusrootus
Basically any city that isn't one of the biggest four or five, and even then
just the core. Lots of mid-size cities, like Portland, are nearly 100% suburb.

~~~
quadrangle
I understand drawing that line there, but the "suburb" of a good portion
(half?) of Portland is the urban, neighborly sort that isn't the post-WWII
culdesac sprawl. I mean, I guess suburban sprawl is the [awful] norm in the
U.S., but then there's the non-sprawl suburb stuff like Portland's walkable
grid with narrow streets…

