Services like Doordash, Postmates, and Uber Eats have revolutionized food delivery. By letting you effectively hire a “private taxi for your burrito”, they enabled every local restaurant to reach customers in their own homes. Only, I’ve recently identified a hitch that these apps need to solve, post-haste. I’m going to do something usually forbidden in these pages—I’m calling for a ban on cars.
You’re probably thinking sounds crazy. The whole point of these services is that you can hire someone to go pickup your food and drive it to your door. Obviously, that involves a vehicle; it’s the whole basis for the service. Indeed, in Uber’s case, they established their food service when they realized they already had a bunch of people in cars that they could tell where to go.
Here’s the thing, though. There are places where cars should shudder to go. Places where the very environment strangles them, slowing them to a crawl and trapping them in byzantine loops of asphalt and misery. I talk, of course, of the city.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Cars are great in the suburbs. Your delivery driver can pull up to the restaurant, get out, and go grab your food. They can then place it neatly on their passenger seat, carrying the precious cargo to your door. They then park outside your house, stroll up to the door, drop your food on the porch, and walk away. Maybe if they’re old-fashioned they’ll knock and hand it to you, but COVID largely established this practice as unnecessary and even rude.
That scenario works just fine—but it falls apart in the city. I learned this to my peril today. While I live in a small house, I’m in a dense downtown area. It’s full of retail, tons of offices, and plenty of tasty restaurants. In some ways, it’s a dream—there are so many delicious food outlets to order from when I open up my phone. The hitch is that it’s virtually impossible to park at any of them.
This is typical in most city areas. If you have a car, you might be lucky to park within 300 feet of a given restaurant or retail outlet. Trying to find a viable park can take ages, which surely frustrates these delivery drivers to no end. They then have to walk some distance to the restaurant, and your food is cooling off, all the while. The problem is then replicated when they arrive at your home. If you don’t have street parking outside, good luck getting your food in a timely manner. Add on traffic snarls at dinner time and it only gets worse.
Today, I ordered from a sushi restaurant maybe half a mile from my home. Had I not been under the pump for blogs, I might have walked the distance in ten minutes. Regardless, this is a busy household, so I got delivery for myself and the gang. I ordered at 11:45 AM. The food was ready by 12:00 PM. It then took five full minutes for the driver to loop past the restaurant and find a park. A further five minutes passed as they drove a half mile to my house, and another five minutes again to loop the block three times finding zero parks before they stopped dead in the road to hand me my food.
There is actually a beautiful solution to this problem. It’s called the e-bike.
A great deal of food delivery is done in the inner city using these magnificent machines. They don’t get caught up in peak hour traffic jams; bicycles can glide right by. They’re more nimble, much more able to U-turn and dip and weave to take more direct routes to their target. Plus, you can “park” them anywhere.
When I typically order sushi here, it takes a mere 2 minutes to arrive from the restaurant. It’s fresher than it would be if I walked it home from the place myself. That’s because nine times out of ten, it comes by e-bike, and everyone is happier. Still, every so often, Uber Eats designates a full-sized car to haul my Japanese luncheon through the inner city, and we all suffer the consequences.
The solution is simple. All downtown food deliveries are to be handled by e-bike. Make the change today, and be my sushi’s salvation. Please. For all of us.
Image credits: DoorDash, Capwiuejooh CC BY-SA 4.0
A blanket global ban on 4-wheeled cars for delivery services just isn’t realistic. Bad (especially snow/icy) weather, large orders, likely other use cases I don’t even think about calls for four wheels.
When the services started, I was dismissive of them. “Who,” I thought “can’t get to where they want their food (and/or groceries) from? And then I fell and broke my shoulder. I had a change of heart.
For densely populated areas, an e-bike or pedal-powered bike makes sense. And smart deliverers probably choose them overwhelmingly.
I’ve been following a guy that makes deliveries around a surprisingly large and diverse area around Los Angeles on YouTube. Look up “wilcer” and you’ll see some interesting videos of him delivering stuff on a Honda ADV160 while he is narrating the challenges of the rides and the job itself. He’s already put (as I recall) ~20K miles on that scooter in a little over a year. The Honda is (barely) freeway legal, but on level ground, they will touch 70 mph. So, yeah, ok. And during rush hour around LA, 70 is a dream.
Yes, he does split lanes (legal in CA), but parking on a sidewalk during pickup and drop-off doesn’t seriously inconvenience pedestrians. And those freeway jaunts wouldn’t work on an e-bike.
Drone delivery gives me a Bladerunner vibe.
I have some thoughts about this… Just this past weekend my band had a gig in downtown Beijing, the venue was in a very narrow alleyway and I know my car wouldn’t fit and there is no parking near by so we took a ride share. On the way out, we could only go at a walking pace which prompted one member to comment that this street should be pedestrian only. That made sense if I wasn’t hauling my gear.
As for e-bike deliveries I am all for that, however, the e-bike riders are typically doing everything they can do be as fast as they can- driving the wrong way, not waiting for lights to change and then stopping and leaving their bikes just about anywhere. Last week I was in my car getting ready to pull out of a parking spot and a delivery rider parked his e-bike right in front of my car. I waited patiently for about 5 minutes then moved the bike myself.
There are some streets here in Beijing that really should be pedestrian only, but they also need to make more car parking available. E-bikes are fast and efficient but they need to be more accountable for their actions on the road and in parking.
I typically ride my bicycle when I need to do errands nearby and I feel more afraid of the bikes than I do cars. The cars are more predictable than the bikes. When they are coming down the wrong way I am never sure which way I need to swerve to avoid them.
The ebike has swept all densely populated cities and some less. They make sense in many ways and as long as they are off to the side it works. I think if you want a thiving shopping and dining area a pedestrian street street makes sense. Turning 4 or 6 lane roads to a 2 lane road with a weird bike lane seems to do more harm then good. And the cyclist or ebike users somehow are always out of their area. If there was enough ebike users like in most cities in China the separate lanes make sense. It seems like most us cities just make a mess with civil engineering now and it’s best they don’t touch it .
You don’t even need to go full Paris, and **Ban the Car**. Outside of obvious places, such as large commercial districts in dense environment. You can just build a street that functions for multiple modes of transportation. It’s not even that hard to do. Freaking Montreal got it right. A city, that’s most famous landmark is a stadium that’s falling apart. Like yeah, it cost money. But, idk, maybe our taxes could go to providing active space for us to function in.
This is the thing. A large portion of the population if given a safe place to exist, will just chose to not drive. Portland for example. Really isn’t that dense. Weather is pretty alright. Minor crime is kinda high. And it’s not really flat. On paper, doesn’t seem like it should be as popular to cycle as it is. But, they built options. And smartly build things outside the CBD. People chose to switch over, because the choice was feasible.
This is why, even though dye in the wool New Urbanist. I’m not a big ban guy. It’s a cop out. A way for a city to say we did something, without really doing anything. Making pedestrian spaces you have to drive to is not the move.
In the snow and rain and 110 degree heat the deliverers are gonna love it. This is constantly forgotten in the ‘replace all the cars’ arguements. Heat/AC are nice things.
Maybe not e-bikes but those cute little meter maid 1 person trucks, at least they have heat, and are enclosed so you don’t get pneumonia getting somebody their $30 McDonald’s cheeseburger.
Banning cars for sake of delivery? Not worth the hassle – drones will be taking over light delivery duties in the short to mid term future.
Not sure if they’ll start out autonomous or not, but relatively quickly people won’t be in the loop. The drones will talk to each other and largely follow designated sky lanes, except for whatever the “last mile” equates to in the drone world.
That’s my guess anyway.
Hell yea, drones will reduce congestion too. Now people who want to drive won’t be bothered by deliveries.
Our local university develop a restaurant dense area (about 10 different restaurants located in a central area of campus) and has a fleet of robot deliverers. Furthermore, the students can use their meal plan card to place orders. This has put s significant dent in our on campus deliveries. I think more due to the payment type offered over the robots. See, the main housing area is located on the opposite side of 5 lane road from where the food is made. So whenever there is traffic the droids get backed up because they can’t figure out how to cross the road. Each one acts individually, and any movement causes the other robots to make movements that aren’t productive. Sometimes there will be a line of 15 robots on each side of the road (they have to get back, too.) I’ll take multiple deliveries (I’m a delivery driver) and pass by the same line of robots who are frozen by their inability to figure out traffic.
One of the things that confuses me is they have traffic lights that engage for a fixed period of time at two crossings of said road. Why can the robots figure out how to take advantage of the lights to cross 2-4 at a time in a little group?
This scenario desperately calls for a tunnel or pedestrian bridge.
And yes, the robots should talk to each other (and the traffic control system) and go across the road as a group.
Due to the high water table in our area, a tunnel is not practical. Also due to the roads in the area, a pedestrian bridge really isn’t either.
Okay, so how’s this? The robots all load themselves into a van, and the van drives them across the street. Then it lets them out, loads up the ones waiting for the trip back, and repeats an necessary.
Better yet, just fix the stupid crosswalk. Maybe even build a “delivery robot only” crosswalk. We’ve got dedicated bike lanes – this doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch.
First idea isn’t half bad, second idea – I’m not in favor of giving robots right of way over cars driven by humans. Lastly, I’m also opposed to the government (it’s a state school) giving a competitive advantage to companies who pay them extra so they can have locations on campus and utilize a payment system other companies can’t use.
Respectfully, Lewin? No.
DC is being overrun by unregistered delivery scooters that routinely split lanes and completely ignore traffic lights. And every other traffic regulation.
A large percentage sport “49cc” tags – even though they are clearly several times that in displacement.
I’m a cyclist and a motorcyclist. I’m fully aware of the environmental and (less) congestion benefits offered by 2-wheeled transportation. And yet I’m fully in favor of confiscating and crushing 90% of the delivery scooters in DC. They are a safety hazard.
To be fair, completely banning late splitting and filtering is also dumb. Allow it in a regulated fashion and enforce the regulations and it’d be great. Most of Europe and California don’t have problems with it…
This has somewhat naturally happened in my city, Washington, DC. Car delivery isn’t “banned” but moped and e-bike couriers quickly realized that using those vehicles in a city center meant A) cheaper and easier to enter the market B) way less operating cost C) easier to maneuver and park in a somewhat dense urban center.
Today, probably 80% of food deliveries in DC are done by moped or e-bike. Of course, cars still dominate delivery once you reach the less dense suburbs.
The only downside is the moped drivers have an utter disrespect for the rules of traffic. They frequently run red lights, occasionally skirt around traffic on sidewalks, and generally have little regard for the pedestrians and vehicles around them.
This is the Issue I have with with this logic:
While I see the appeal of it, we don’t have the vehicles for it across the board.
For example: I was in the market for a new vehicle that I only needed to be able to transport me, enough cargo space for a decent sized grocery haul (which would be mostly taken up by TP and Paper Towels volume wise), while having access to either 3 peak rated all season and or 3 peak rated snow tires.
I could have went with a new 500e, but I’d only would have saved a few feet in length over the 25 Leaf I got, and more importantly only 4.2 inches in width.
Realistically what I needed could have been achieved with a narrow pickup or narrow van like the Daihatsu Midget 2, but practically they’ve been out of production for years, and you can’t get street legal snow tires for them in the US.
We don’t need a ban on cars for the problem you recognized, we need a new category of cars, ones that could easily share a lane side by side, 2 cars to a parking spot, TANDEM seating if there is more than one seat.
There are modern cars like that produced today like the Tango 600, but it’s $420,000 PER CAR if you want to buy less than 10.
If we had narrower cars you could buy a shed to be it’s garage, and you’d have plenty of room left over, you could park it just about anywhere, it would be glorious!
My Triumph GT6 is so narrow it fits in a shed. I wish we could get small sports car coupes like this made with modern lightweight materials, with either an overpowered EV drive system, inline-6 turbodiesel, or a V8 under the hood. They’re actually quite practical in environments where roads are narrow and/or traffic is dense, are very easy to park, and with modern engine technology plus a focus on aero efficiency would be among the most efficient things you could buy even if it had a big, thirsty engine powering it.
The closest thing we can get is a Miata, and I’ve heard from people who use them for the purpose that they make surprisingly capable urban food delivery vehicles. But I’m thinking smaller and faster than this…
I did intend to use my electric velomobile for food delivery services, but then got my current engineering job, so that was no longer necessary to pursue. This thing would have been PERFECT for the role as long as the cargo wasn’t a pizza. All the best advantages of both a car and an ebike, with a lower operating cost than either.
I have periodically considered if an EV build is the future for my Datsun Roadster. Like your triumph, they are tiny. It is 6 inches narrower than a Miata
In London, almost all food deliveries are done by mopeds or e-bikes. Traffic is so bad here that delivering by car would be terrible for everyone. I have no issue with the moped riders, but the e-bike delivery riders have a deserved reputation for completely ignoring traffic laws and blowing through red lights. It’s dangerous, and as someone who cycles to work occasionally, it makes me angry because it makes other cyclists look bad.
London is somewhere where I’d definitely not own a car, however with how slick it gets and all the roundabouts I wouldn’t want to own a bike there either.
NYC would be the same for me. I always take mass transit, and I get around on the subway or by walking.
I used to live in Brooklyn and had a car. If I had been in Manhattan, I definitely would not have had a car, but in Brooklyn it was handy. It was a pain in the neck to move the car for street cleaning and finding a street parking could be difficult, but it was worth it, especially since we had kids in car seats. We had a car for a year, sold it, and then went without for a year. I tracked all of the costs for Zipcar and other car rentals and it worked out to the same annual cost of owning a car (assuming no major repairs or depreciation). So I bought a 12-year-old Saab 9-3 for $2,700, sold the aftermarket stereo stuff (Bazooka tube and amp) for $300, drove it for a year or so with the only maintenance being an oil change, then sold it for $2,900 before moving to Germany. I think that’s the only time that I did not lose money on a car.
If you live outside of central London, having a car is fine. I’m in Zone 4 and have off street parking for one car. Parking the other one on the surrounding streets is generally easy, and costs about £110 per year for a resident’s permit. Traffic can be horrendous, but it’s still worth having the car, especially if you have an atypical commute (i.e. somewhere other than towards central London).
In 2018, I was staying near the Hounslow West tube station, not far from Heathrow. There was a chip shop nearby where I was waiting for the bus transfer. It was amazing how many scooters were pulling up for pickups; it was almost like the planes landing at LHR.
When not just thinking about urban places, my brain immediately went to incredibly fragile, environmental areas where cars can destroy fragile ecosystems and designated wilderness areas, are nice places to not have cars. I know that people who aren’t as mobile should have access. We should do something for them and somehow stop the people who are hell-bent on destroying wilderness area. I take my jeep out a lot and I stay on trail and only go where I am allowed.
if theres a road then cars should be on the table. want to ban cars get rid of the road.
Maybe I’m too fussy about these things, but I don’t even want people walking on the table, let alone driving.
Real ramble hours: At least for the US I think better zoning laws and reworking existing roads would alleviate unwalkable areas and make places more bike-able would be more effective than car bans.
Having to walk a half mile (or multiple miles in some cases) out of the way to safely cross a main road to get to the store across the street kinda sucks. Spamming spaghetti sub divisions aren’t so great for walking except for walking your dog. Bike lanes that are just lines in the street suck and at least by me there’s entire stretches without sidewalks.
Rivendale. That’s the only place I can think of where banning cars works.
I lived in downtown Ottawa in the late 80’s and early 90’s and got by without a car just fine even in the depths of Eastern Ontario winter. Walking, taxi and rentals when needed. The transit system is acceptable and getting better so I’m told. I’d be fine with banning cars from a ten square block area covering most of the downtown area. Build pedestrian paths, something like the Minneapolis overhead walkways. A fleet of mini EV and delivery buggies would help. The city would be better for it. I currently live in a rural area not served by transit. Cycling, or mopeds might work out here, but it would be a challenge.
Weather
I guess one factor that needs to be put into consideration is the weather! Here in northern Ontario, it gets cold and icy out, making two-wheeled transportation both uncomfortable and unsafe. I think last week was the first time I’d seen a motorcycle on the road all year, and pretty much everybody packs in their bikes as well. I mean, I usually bike through the winter, but everyone thinks I’m crazy!
Same weather issues where I live. But we have good cycling infrastructure (relatively), and it gets used a lot in good weather. I think it is about adapting to conditions based on the location. That includes prioritizing non-car options during the season when pedestrians and cyclists are on the streets.
Where I am, the delivery drivers don’t look for parking. They just stop in the street, sometimes in front of an empty parking place.
The number of app-based delivery drivers I’ve seen pull into a handicapped spot is absurd.
Even as someone who lives in a moderate-sized city where parking isn’t a huge problem, this pisses me off. The front curb by every restaurant now is full of cars idling (frequently without anyone in them) while the gig slave waits to pick up an order. Not only is it incredibly wasteful, it also makes it kind of dangerous to get between the restaurant and the parking lot because you’re basically always stepping out from behind a car as you go to cross. And each one of those cars might contain an underpaid driver who is about to race off in hopes of getting a measly tip for getting their delivery there faster.
I think it’s perfectly acceptable to not allow cars once the density reaches a certain level. They really have no place in city centers and areas like that. They just kind of clog everything up and cars pollute the most in stop and go traffic. Obviously I think you could make some exceptions for certain circumstances. Fire/EMS, people that are physically disabled, etc.
I love cars, it’s why I’m on this blog, but I’ve never once been to a dense urban area here or abroad and been like “you know what would make this better? More cars”…but I’ve been to multiple places that would be improved exponentially by having less cars.
I think there is a lot of truth to this take. I think also that once you remove the cars from an area, you no longer need 80% of the asphalt and the parking lots. Take a bunch of that, add more mixed use retail/housing or use the space to further improve public transport, bike lanes, etc. You can increase density in downtown areas (where I think density belongs best), while at the same time vastly increasing viability of travel in those areas, even with the additional density.
While terms like “ban” grab attention, I don’t think it helps the conversation. There are all kinds of places where you can’t drive a car; playgrounds, inside a stadium, over the quad at a college campus, through a parade, etc.
While highways are dedicated to motor vehicles, people must remember that streets were around long before cars, and other transportation modes have just as much right to them as cars. The issue with mixed-use spaces is that cars make them insanely dangerous without proper restrictions. So, in those shared spaces, we need to restrict cars to very low speeds and make the rules prioritize other modes. The rules can shift appropriately as density decreases and other modes become less common.
Generally, cars are currently given far too much leeway in the denser areas where most people spend time.
Plenty of freeways, highways, and rural roads are great for a nice drive or getting from point A to B quickly. Some of the cost of those items is even paid for by user fees. Urban areas, city, and residential streets should prioritize the people who live and work there. After all, they pay for those streets, not the people driving through.
The one asterisk to your last part I’d want to qualify is that zoning allows for more people to live there if demand justifies it. There’s a variant of NIMBYism that’s OK with treating major cities as quaint little villages, that we can’t possibly harm neighbourhood character, but we also can’t find a way to accommodate the people who aren’t able to live there.
Zoning is a tricky puzzle. People move into neighborhoods, and their house is typically their largest investment. It is also a big anchor for work, school, and market changes, making swapping for a new location difficult. If somebody buys a house because they like the neighborhood’s character and don’t want the traffic associated with big apartment buildings, the pushback is reasonable. Change is viewed as a risk, and for most people, a house is their most significant asset. Neighborhoods are often “little villages” within a big city. That is typically why people love them. Some are dense, some less so.
This is happening where I live, and it is a bit of a mess, not necessarily bad, but complicated. A single-family neighborhood from the 20s-30s that is mainly smallish 2-3 bedroom homes on 40’x120′ lots. Access to the freeway is a bit of a pain, but that also means that we have a lot of local retail because people don’t want to bother leaving the area.
A big old industrial site nearby just opened up for development, and the zoning was changed so that “residential/commercial” zones could now have apartments up to 6 stories. Quickly, developers purchased many old businesses, and big apartment buildings were built. Generally, it has been fine, but the people in small 1100sf houses in the neighborhood lots now get almost zero sunlight, their backyards are next to massive mechanical units, and their house values have plummeted.
The new apartments are also not cheap (more expensive than the fewer older units that were above the old retail buildings) may, and the prices of the new business are a lot higher than the ones they replaced. The developer needs to get paid, after all. There often isn’t any difference between “improving density” and gentrification.
Increasing density is fine, but it isn’t easy and must be done gracefully.
I’ll admit I’m speaking very specifically for Toronto, but we’ve been Canada’s largest city for over 50 years, there aren’t many citizens left who would’ve first bought prior to that. We’re a big city, and need to act like it. And yet, we have neighbourhoods in the core that are losing population in spite of demand. I say this as a homeowner – we put far too much emphasis on the comfort of homeowners, and protecting their “investment” (especially for the many who are now millionaires off a house they bought for a 2-4 and some Canadian Tire money dug out of the couch), nevermind that density usually lifts land value (because more people to spread the land costs between), and we don’t ask anything of them for their obstruction. We still get big ugly towers that aren’t great to live in, they just get pushed to busy arterials with fewer people to complain. And of course we also get people in some of these central neighbourhoods pushing back on regional rail or local transit expansion because they might have to see construction or trains or something, but they also don’t want people driving through their perfect walkable neighbourhoods, and can’t piece together that maybe they have to compromise on *something*.
I just want to access things quickly and conveniently, and I resent being blocked from living near things, and blocked from having quick reliable transport options.
Yeah, different situations can call for very different solutions. In my neighborhood (within a metro about half the size of Toronto) lots of people are middle-class and have lived in the neighborhood since they were kids, went to college, and then moved back to have their own kids. Almost all are happy to increase density where it works well but don’t want to become a target for developers pushing them out to put in expensive apartments. Also, the fact that density increases value overall just means that housing for everyone is more expensive. Despite more units being added. The truth is that density follows popularity, and popularity increases value. Adding units isn’t the cause.
Part of the issue is that it isn’t as though people who look like “millionaires” because of their houses can access that money until they decide to move out of the area. While owning a house that is worth a lot is no bad thing it isn’t like it means the person has a huge income. Plus, homeowners are the current citizens of the neighborhoods. The developers who are the biggest winners with rezoning aren’t. If there are areas losing population despite demand, it isn’t existing homeowners who are to blame.
In the ’60s, there was a huge push to “revitalize” areas by rezoning, which led to whole neighborhoods being bulldozed and new trendy urbanization methods by the likes of Robert Moses implemented. Luckily for Manhattan, NIMBY, folks like Jane Jacobs fought back and saved neighborhoods that would have been leveled in the name of getting people to other places more quickly.
Also, consider that density fell dramatically when the New York subway was built. The Subway allowed people to commute further, faster, than they had previously. There are always limits on space and no real inherent benefit to never-ending growth. Natural limits on transportation will happen regardless. Mass transit will reach capacity at some point as well. You can’t build more lanes and tracks forever.
Yeah, I don’t think Jane Jacobs was a virulent NIMBY herself, as she recognized the value of people to a city, but a lot of virulent NIMBYs have latched on to her work to justify being awful. Her house in Toronto is near one of the major subway lines, and within walking distance of downtown. Some of the major fights the neighbourhood has had in the past few years included replacing an iconic but rundown dollar store with affordable rental buildings adjacent to a subway station (even developed by the family that owned said rundown dollar store), and even a little 9-unit building on a residential street. There is no point where NIMBYs actually back down and agree that a building that meets their arbitrary standards is good, and they don’t care about how many of the buildings they claim to like would be illegal under current bylaws. I can’t care about preserving a neighbourhood like that if it doesn’t want me in any capacity.
I think the term NIMBY is problematic because it is used as just an insult that doesn’t get anywhere.
The fundamental issue is, as you mentioned, that growth/density beyond a certain point doesn’t make anything more affordable. The large state college near me has seen blocks of old crappy rental housing get replaced with big new apartment buildings with rents that are twice what students used to pay. The developers, however, made tons of money.
There is little, if any, difference between what you are saying should happen and gentrification. Neither is all good or all bad. Just people fighting over which benefits them personally.
State Street in Santa Barbara makes sense. The main thoroughfare in the part of town full of retail and restaurants and bars is car-free, and it’s quite enjoyable. In this case, it’s a linear space, so cars are allowed on streets to either side of it to access public parking lots, but if it were more of a blob, they could block other streets as well.
I know the place you’re talking about, but I think it is representative of a more broad concept: once a particular area attains a level of density of individual businesses and/or residences, with the resulting pedestrian traffic, such that it bears a stronger resemblance to a town square/piazza/plaza/marketplace/etc than to a transportation route, then no more cars.
The trick is going to be defining that such that it can be codified. “I know it when I see it” doesn’t much work as a legal concept. But I would think that the governing bodies of localities could arbitrarily define these things as they like, provided they can at least articulate a justification to the citizenry enough to keep their jobs.
“Forget the damned motor car and build cities for lovers and friends.”
— Lewis Mumford
Brings back memories of the orange Kozmo.com scooters. More delivery services like Portland Pedal Power that supplied cargo e-bikes to its workers would be pretty cool.
there is aboslutely no circumstance where it is acceptable to ban cars. its about control. not the environment
Mind if I park in your living room then?
Dibs on the front lawn.
Some cities around the world ban cars, for one day, or a weekend, some do that for a local street and turn it to walking and gathering place for the locals, permanent or temporary.
Streets used to belong to people until cars become cheaper to buy, i’m against total car ban, there are is a place and time to ban cars.
As someone who lives in a pretty walkable neighborhood and has some excellent pedestrian malls nearby, sometimes allowing cars is about control. Like we have been fighting for a reduced speed limit in my area – we got it down to 40km/h, but 30km/h would be better on the central street. We also have a pedestrian mall nearby that some city councillors want to open to car traffic.
Why do they want cars to be able to travel faster, or travel there at all? Because they want to ensure they don’t interact with the neighborhood. They want the neighborhoods to bend to their will – actual residents and use cases be damned.
There’s actually a street by the pedestrian mall which should be taken out completely – for safety, not the environment. If it was a park and pedestrian area, it would be amazing for everyone who actually lives and works there. But outsiders want to control how we live.
Cars are great, I love mine, but they are sometimes incompatible with how space is used and the best way to encourage a community. We need to recognize that there are streets that should either be completely closed to automotive traffic or at least have such traffic seriously speed limited.
Those kind of people don’t listen to reason, they have the maturity of a teenager who gets mad about being told what they can do.
Anywhere cars cause more problems than they solve.
I don’t get all these articles (the other car sites have run similar ones) acting like you have to apologize for being a car enthusiast who also thinks cars should be banned in certain places.
I’m an aviation enthusiast but that doesn’t mean I think people should be allowed to park a helicopter at the grocery store.
Most dense urban centers suffer when cars get involved. It makes much more sense to walk or take public transit than it does to drive into a major city. Cars cause air quality problems for one, and perhaps a bigger problem is that they’re a tremendous waste of space.
I live in a small city – Minneapolis, and just in the downtown core there are far more than 20 parking garages. That’s a crapton of space that could be used for retail and residential uses, but instead we’re building giant ramps to store cars.
I travel to DC fairly frequently, and used to live in the region, and don’t miss not having a car at all when I’m there. The Metro goes almost everywhere I need or want to go and deposits me within a few blocks of my destination. When I lived there, I’d drive in to the closest Metro station to my house and take the train in. Why would I want to sit in traffic jams and then spend half an hour trying to find a place to park when I could get get on with my day?
Banning cars would free up square *miles* of space in such areas which could be used to build more residential buildings – that would go a very long way toward solving the housing crisis.
Of all people, someone from Minneapolis should understand why cars are nice to have, even in a city center. 🙂
Mostly kidding, I know you guys have an okay light rail and your magic pedestrian walkways. Really good public transpo shops negate the need for MOST cars within the citing.
Pre-Covid Minneapolis had the highest percentage of cycling commuters in America. Having grown up there, the cycling infrastructure is so much faster if you live below the 5000 blocks that you just got use to cold. Plus it’s a time honored Minnesota tradition to embrace winter thru nearly freezing to death daily.
I’ve lived in the UP and North Dakota — can confirm that embracing the cold is the way to go!
If I’m honest, the light rail sucks, mainly because Republicans have been blocking extensions to it for years, and NIMBY dickheads have been filling in where the politicians fall short. So we can go between St. Paul and Minneapolis, and Minneapolis and the airport and that’s about it. It was supposed to have been extended to the northwestern and southern suburbs by now but that’s still a long way off if it ever happens.
And the “magic pedestrian walkways” aren’t nearly as magic as they should be because the individual buildings in Minneapolis maintain ownership of the part of the skyway that goes through their buildings. This means when they close, so does that section of the skyway. If you’re trying to get anywhere after hours, you’re probably going to have to go outside. St. Paul does that better – the city controls the skyway and buildings don’t get to block parts of it off, but the irony there is that St. Paul dies after hours so no one cares about using the skyway then.
What saves us is that Minneapolis is very walkable because, despite the natives thinking it’s a mega-metropolis, it’s definitely not. Our downtown is barely larger than Disneyland.
And yet people sit in their cars for literally *hours* after a Twins game because getting out of the downtown area en masse is an absolute logjam (don’t get me started on how stupid it is to have two professional sports stadiums *in* the city core). The one time I did it (I was the passenger and had no choice) we left before the game ended and it still took us 2 hours just to get out of the parking ramp, and even more time to get out of downtown.
If we got rid of just the parking garages next to the baseball stadium, we could add hundreds of units of housing, and we could put the sports fans on buses and the light rail to get home.
We could also divert the money we’re currently spending on car infrastructure to building a more robust public transit system.
Cities with useful mass transit in USA?
I have one hand free to count those.
Most cities have been reducing mass transit since the 1950s and continue.
I took the bus from a major hospital in Memphis to the suburbs, 20 to 30 minute drive.
Eight hours to get there, including a lot of walking.
Transfer waits were so long numerous people asked me if I needed an ambulance.
Likely making sure I wasn’t casing houses.
No offers of a ride.
One person actually brought me water and snacks though.
That’s the state of mass transit in an upscale area with a primary hospital.
Worth saying that not all electric bikes have to be as porky and inefficient as battery cars.
I have a Panasonic with gears for the motor.
However, I live in the woods outside a less urban area now
Biking or walking to the nearest bus link is unsafe on narrow roads, and the buses would be useless anyway.
Well yes, and your problem and the car problem are linked, because the car companies bought up public transit back in the 50s and shut it down to force us to have to buy more cars.
I think it goes without saying that you only ban cars when you also either already have or build a robust public transit system. You can use the money you save building and maintaining car infrastructure to pay for it.
Los Angeles had such excellent mass transit in the past that when relatives lived there for war work, they didn’t even think of having a car.
Cities still need robust mass transit to function.
Few have it.
Phoenix was impressive last time I was there, faster than cabs.
In Memphis, most jobs openly reject applicants without a car, even briefly.
Can’t be good for the tax base.
What do those unable to drive even occasionally do without viable transport?
I had medical care recently and last minute was told I wouldn’t be able to drive home.
I assumed a short wait, but no.
I had to quickly arrange two long distance rides.
I was well aware cars are absolutely mandatory in rural areas.
Anyone not thinking that part through is in for a big shock.
I’m not even particularly remote for a rural location.
It should probably be the app’s policy to know what sort of vehicle is being used by which operators and send the optimal one to make the drop in the least possible time.