I have no objection to commercial delivery vehicles, mass transit vehicles or emergency vehicles - I solely object to personal vehicles being assumed to have a right to directly access to every store front in a city. If we shifted out cultural view to looking at these vehicles as borrowing the public space of streets - instead of viewing streets as zones prohibited to pedestrians we'd probably all live longer lives without compromising on our deliveries. You can also look at European cities to see how last-mile deliveries to addresses that aren't on car-width roads are handled with cargo and motor bikes.
Then just ban all cars except emergency vehicles? Replace all roads with single lanes and use the road pavement as pedestrian walkway.
Good delivery trucks could only be allowed between 5 and 6am. If shops need something urgent there are always transport bicyles/tricyles (with or without electric support).
I thought we were supposed to be designing cities for people and not vehicles. Isn't the answer for everyone to bike with their bike trailer to a central warehouse and collect their own packages?
In some specific cases, I agree. But life should not be optimized for specific and unusual cases.
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.
A plank of wood or two is fine to carry, but what if you need to move something heavier like a refrigerator or a piece of furniture? It's ridiculous to think that people should have to carry that stuff by hand or on bicycles over distances of multiple miles.
I think it's more feasible that we ban personal vehicles in cities while still allowing commercial and emergency vehicles. Even allowing these vehicles, we'd probably be able to reduce most roads to single lane one way streets.
I wish municipalities put a larger focus on human powered transportation like walking and cycling. So many high tech logistics solutions I see seem to try and cover for the fact that we’ve built our cities to be innavigable for people.
That would also make the city completely inaccessible to people who can't walk those distances. The elderly, the disabled, the temporarily injured, etc. You'd also drastically increase commute times for the average person; a distance that takes 5 minutes to drive can take 30-60 to walk, and that's a huge amount of time wasted. (Not everyone can live within a few minutes walking distance of their workplace.) If you're talking about not having roads at all, you'd also break things like shipping and package delivery, other types of deliveries, trucking in general, many aspects of emergency services, and so on. Or just the ability to go pick up large/bulky items.
I'd love to see designs that rely less on cars as a sole means of transportation. They still have a place in the ecosystem, however, and they serve a useful function.
It would be pretty nice if roads were such that things like deliveries, various public transit, and taxi/car sharing options were the only allowed options as far as cars go. If the roads become uncongested, and parking is no long a major use of cities, a lot of the existing uses for cars would disappear.
You know that you can design pedestrians areas that can accept emergency trafic ? Most European city centers that are closed to individual cars still accept emergency vehicles, buses, and even delivery trucks (generally during a fixed span of time in the day) and taxis.
Bit of a strawman, no? That's obviously a good use case for a van. But I never said we should completely eliminate all roads, did I? I just think the primacy of the automobile is worth questioning - moving people (and goods) is the goal, not moving cars.
I mean, I'd love to see you medevac a gravely wounded person from the middle of Arctic tundra to a hospital 120 miles away on your feet.. except I wouldn't, because we have helicopters for a reason. We don't assume you should have to use a helicopter to get groceries though.
I live in one of those cities; a street I biked along yesterday was a village path four hundred years ago.
Last Friday, a politician here said that in her opinion, most cars will be banned from the central area in about six years. UPS vans will drive anywhere, taxis will too, plumbers will, you won't. UPS, taxis and plumbers are necessary, justified, you're just loud. Her predictions have been good before.
The set of necessary cars is a small subset of cars. Plumbers need to have a van full of spare parts, but that justifies letting them drive, it doesn't justify letting everyone drive everywhere.
Yes, actually. All of those things can be transported by cargo bike.
There is a place for automobiles, and vans, in cities (ambulances come to mind) - just like there is a place for helicopters, but what we have now is a gross distortion that came as a result of more or less legalizing killing people with your car (as long as it was an accident) and giving people ample free asphalt and parking.
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