Re:Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are s...
by kortilla on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @06:54AM
(#38011444)
Not really. If the city is older than cars it didn’t really convert from a car centric city. It tried to convert to one for a while, but that’s not the same as being built with cars in existence.
Atlanta has interstate interchanges that can fit the entire Vatican in them. Every major city in the west is packed with boulevards 6 lanes across. The US didn’t just accommodate cars, it optimized for them as it was building out. Making that walkable again isn’t a matter of converting a 6 lane road into a pedestrian walkway…
Re:Waymo says insurance data shows its driverless cars are s...
by gambiting on Wednesday October 25, 2023 @07:30AM
(#38011667)
Well yes, the question was if there are any European cities that have done it - and as you said, that's been traditionally possible here because cities were never designed to be car-centric in the first place. In US, it's the opposite - cities were built with cars in mind, so just building parks over highways isn't going to solve anything.
Loads and loads and loads - at least here in the UK, nearly every city centre is converting to be pedestrian only, with cars being pushed further and further out, with councils emphasising that you should really park your car at one of the massive park&ride car parks outside of the city centre then just take a metro or bus in. That's a good thing in my opinion. It's really shocking to look at pictures taken from the city centre just 30 years ago and see that cars basically were prioritized everywhere, the main shopping street in Newcastle for instance used to be a normal road with cars parked on either side - it hasn't been like that for a long time and the city manages just fine.