Heavy usage of cars and trucks is detrimental to urban communities; we should implement policies that reduce car-based access to city centers and other densely populated areas. This is mainly focused on the USA.

Some points:

  1. Cars interfere with the movement of pedestrians and small vehicles (bikes, scooters), making dense urban areas less usable.
  2. Cars require a lot of space, both for roads and parking. This competes with housing and green-spaces in cities, making urban areas less accessible and pleasant.
  3. Cars are dangerous and dirty - especially when at high densities, such as in cities.

To address this, a variety of changes may be instituted:

  1. Traffic arteries (e.g. expressways going to the city center) should be slowed and narrowed as it approaches the city center, so that passenger cars/trucks do not use it. Instead, they should be reserved mainly for motorcycles, buses, single-point delivery trucks (e.g. stores or to transfer packages, not trucks that will drive to each residence), and vehicles required for the disabled.
  2. A portion of city roads should be closed to most cars, either by making barriers that they cannot pass through, or resurfacing and shaping them to be pedestrian focused rather than car-focused. It is especially important that side roads do not allow access towards the city center (so that commuters don’t just drive on side roads when main roads are over-capacity).
  3. Space reclaimed from cars should be re-engineered for greenspace, trees, mass-transit (trolleys), and pedestrians.
  4. Cities should stop subsidizing the construction of massive attractions (e.g. pro sports stadiums), or at least move them to more peripheral locations that are accessible from suburbs while assuring good mass transit from the city center.
  5. For situations where individuals feel that cars are essential, congestion fees should be charged and hefty penalties should be levied on traffic violations within dense urban areas – including prohibition on driving in those areas.
  6. Suburban communities will be told that if they wish to enjoy the ammenities of the central city, they will have to support the expansion of mass-transit networks into the suburbs. We will no longer tolerate the double standard where they insist on having access to urban neighborhoods via cars but intentionally block carless urban residents from accessing their neighborhoods.
  • sj_zero
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    fedilink
    12 years ago

    Any plan can’t be cookie cutter. Every city is different, and decisions need to be made based on what locally works.

    Nice bike paths won’t be nearly as useful for daily use in Anchorage as they might be in LA. Most people won’t be ok with riding a little bicycle in -50C in pitch blackness as they go to get groceries for the week.

    Reducing individual transportation options could probably help contribute to a growing distance between the rich and the poor.