Yes, many city-dwellers can live without a car. But not everyone lives in a city, or has any desire to live in a city (especially during a time of decline and perpetual crisis of one form or another)
Those who wage such vitriolic war on the car rarely consider small towns and rural areas, where public transport isn't efficient/practical, where no car often means no job.
But while we're on the topic of rural areas having terrible public transportation, I think that's a really important one. Switzerland has a smaller rural-urban divide (which is really where this whole "war on cars" thing comes in), in part because it is actually practical to move between rural and urban spaces on a regular basis. That isn't because the cities are more driveable, or because they build a highway through Bern: it's because they invested in public transit that actually works. This kind of talk benefits everyone.
Not just emergency services - more mundane things like, getting food and care to the elderly, getting workers and tools where they need to be to maintain infrastructure, produce food, and much more.
Making things worse for car owners isn't the right strategy.
And BTW, public transport is not good enough, not even in places like NY, you need something better.
I just freaking can NOT. Cognitive dissonance, self delusional and denial, what is it? Whatever it takes to avoid realizing how utterly stupid so many day-to-day aspects of American life are due to larger decisions about social welfare, including basic public transit.
Shout out, never seen a +13 flagged into oblivion, I'll take that as a compliment.
Walking is also nice for shorter distances. Or bikes.
I'd guess you've lived in NY for a long time and have forgotten (or never had to suffer through) how bad public transit is in most US cities.
It's called walking, biking, transit. These things all work. If you don't wanna walk a couple blocks to your car, sorry but that's not worth killing the planet and your neighbors. Cars have SO many externalities: air pollution that affects climate change, pollution that makes the air less breathable, noise, danger to others, takes up far more space leaving less room for other modes, etc.
Very few people in Barcelona own cars. Residents will have access to drop off things, but not parking.
> I'm really tired of anti-car advocates that have just a single idea: Make people too miserable to use a car, and maybe then there will be less cars
European cities tend to be pretty miserable places for cars by default, for the anti-car advocates it would generally be enough to stop subsidising cars.
Europeans have cars hidden somewhere. I’ll find where eventually.
It's worth remembering that this two block walk is much more pleasant in a superblock: you're not fighting cars along the way.
I can't help but form a terrible impression of anyone not willing to walk two goddamn blocks to their car. Even carrying bags or whatever. It's a short walk!
Wow. Two blocks is nothing. To me this reads as someone complaining they cannot drive a car from their kitchen to their bedroom.
I've transported bulky cargo further than two blocks, by the way. I'd rather suffer in those cases, but keep the streets relatively free of cars for the more common cases, like pedestrian quality of life.
Many people in BCN do not own a car. If they do own one, it is used almost exclusively for getting out of the city at weekends. For journeys within the city, the public transport system is excellent, and the climate lends itself to walking, cycling, and scooters. As such, parking two blocks away is not much of an issue.
Finally, as a resident you are still allowed to drive within the superillas to access your building’s car park, if it has one, and also for loading/unloading.
The superillas were controversial at first but now they are very popular the people who live within them.
No thank you indeed; I normally stay far away from the cores of cities precisely because of that atmosphere, and if stuff like this keeps happening to them, it looks like I'll remain so for the forseeable future.
Agreed. Trying to drive change by making others miserable is hardly ever a winning strategy.
Instead, we need to make it easy, convenient and fun to both get around without a car and to reduce how far one needs to go in day to day situations (i.e. have lots of small shops near housing).
That will make many people prefer to not use cars (most people don't actually love driving) and those who want to drive can still do whatever they like but it'll be a much smaller population.
They want to somehow have every single person in a 3 block radius park on the perimeter of that area? And this is somehow supposed to make things better?
I also have zero interest in walking 2 blocks to my car when I need it, nor do I want to carry my items that far from my car.
I especially like: "or reducing the number of parking spaces or the number of traffic lanes, for example—actions that might catalyze bigger, more permanent changes in the future."
Yes, let's make people miserable now, because it might possibly make some change later.
The concept of first make things better seems to have escaped them.
I'm really tired of anti-car advocates that have just a single idea: Make people too miserable to use a car, and maybe then there will be less cars.
Making people miserable is not a viable strategy.