People didn’t really decide, an upper class was able to afford automobiles, they hit tons of people in the streets, they worked together with politicians and automakers to push to make streets for the cars for safety, and invented the term jaywalking. The people who owned cars decided streets belonged to them and through mass production and suburban development, they have become completely normalized.

And then people demanded lots of paved raceways for their cars, which filled up, and made things dangerous for everybody, and worthwhile places far apart, and most of the drivers angry and miserable. Now, the world is on fire, mental health and social cohesion has gone to shit, and all those paved raceways are falling apart because nobody can afford to fix them.

But, yeah, the first part of that story is cute.

I wonder, were population centers large enough to be considered “busy” before domesticated horses and carriages were around?

It also sucks for those of us with bad ankles and knees. Almost as bad as sand. All I see on those pictures is pain.

I’m wondering if they feel as horrible on a fully suspended bike. I’m also commenting something just because.

There are workarounds to get cobblestone streets to work. In Groningen, Netherlands, I’ve seen cozy cobblestone streets which had a 50cm (1½ feet?) wide and very even brick strip in the center for bicycles. Looks and works great and it is an easy retrofit for historic cobblestone.

Personal vehicles have a place, and a lot of people really enjoy the hobby of it. But at least what I’m against is how they’ve completely and utterly, fully enveloped our modern Life, paving over the places we have to live in the process. The auto industry has made people addicted to the concept that every place has to be accessable and beholdent to the automobile, making it inaccessible and very unpleasant for anyone who doesn’t buy into that system (pedestrians, disabled people, cyclists etc). It’s honestly a violation of personal freedom that many people can not perform their day-to-day basic functions of socializing, gathering food and working without paying into the micro transactional hell that of the Auto/Oil industry.

Being able to go somewhere and visit worry people without dribble feeding that piggy industry with my hard earned money into gas/electricity is freeing and should be the default. If someone wants to blast down a country road listening to the purr of the engine, power to them. Forcing everyone through deliberately exclusionary infrastructural planning to pilot a few Tons of metal plastic and combustion engines just to perform basic tasks? Fuck off.

(Edit: my bad language is not directed at you, but at the industry, you sound chill)

Biggest thing this community is against is car dependency. Cities should not be designed around cars as default, to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. It actually benefits car people, as I’m pretty sure you don’t want people like me – someone who sucks at and hates driving – clogging up the roads.

There’s this observation – the Downs-Thomson Paradox – that notes that the main thing reduces average traffic is not building more car infrastructure; it’s making better and faster alternatives to cars. When things are built more densely and walkable, when public transit is fast and convenient, you see traffic drop precipitously, as most people just want the fastest, most convenient option for getting places.

That said, I think most in this community don’t really like cars clogging up city streets, due to the simple fact that they are loud, dangerous, and polluting. My ideal city would have park-and-ride at the city limits, then electric microcars (more like glorified golf carts) in the city for those use cases that still need cars, like first responders, physically handicapped people who can’t walk/bike, etc. Rural areas would obviously still need cars, but even they could probably benefit from having better transit access.

Personally, I and most people in this community don’t view you as the enemy so long as you’re not an asshole driver. We view the systemic disinvestment in public transit and car-centric urban design as the primary enemies. After all, how can one blame someone who is just trying to live their life in a broken system? Hate the game, not the player!

Cars are tools. Like all tools, they still have a niche where they are the best option. But cities and urban areas are not one of them and using cars in them is an extremely non-ideal use of the tool, like trying to hammer in a screw.

I think the goal is more to break car dependance, and end up in a similar state to places like Amsterdam. In Amsterdam people still have cars, and there’s still a healthy car culture in the Netherlands . You just aren’t required to have a car to live.

My opinion:

Trucks used pragmatically for farming or legit hauling stuff is perfectly fine.

Cars used in true rural areas are also fine, because by definition, they haven’t been developed yet, so there’s pretty much no other way to get there.

But in populated areas (not just “cities” but also suburbs and other areas that are not truly rural and extremely spread out), spaces should be designed for walkability, and have good mass transit options. If a neighborhood is being built, put a small grocery store right next to it, so all those people can get groceries without driving. And put a bus stop near it, so they can get to other areas of town they actually need to go.

Cars aren’t going away entirely. They serve a specific purpose. But they’re overused.

The way I see it is that I love cars and driving but hate car dependency. People who don’t like that shouldn’t be forced to get a car. This leads to less bad drivers due to people merely putting up with driving rather than focusing on it, meaning a safer world for pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists, and other drivers.

In my mind yes, because of environmental concerns.

You should separate “I am bad” from “what I do is bad”. I can give reasons why I believe driving around a car because it is fun is a bad thing to do. That doesn’t mean I think or want you to believe that you are bad.

Personally I believe “all” cars are bad. In emergency situations they have value, but ultimately I think it would be better if for personal and public transportation there were no cars at all.

That sounds lovely. Usually “post-war” is associated with car-dependent design, but it’s nice to hear about post-war designs are are good, actually.

Designing for cars forces alternatives to become worse by physically shoving apart destinations in order to fit in parking lots and more lanes. Nobody wants to walk when they have to traverse shitty parking lots to get anywhere instead of nice places, after all.

The sort of argument you’re making is fundamentally dishonest because it’s based on the presumption that the status quo development pattern is somehow a level playing field when it is, in fact, very much unfairly catering to cars.

See also: The Arrogance of Space

Due to induced demand and other factors, constricting automobile traffic improves public transit and makes getting around by transit and taking a car better in the long run.

Yes, in the short term it would seem negative (30 minutes by car vs. 2hr becomes 1hr vs. 2hr), but more people using transit would spur investment into transit. This would start with better allocation of bus routes to more directly go to desired destinations. In the medium term it would be making other areas easier to use alternatives such as walking and bike paths along state routes like the one you’d take. In the long term it would make good sense to invest in build commuter rail lines into and out of the city, which would be better funded by fares, private and government investment. All of this would reduce traffic from cars in the city as well, without needing to increase the roadway maintenance budget from having bigger roads.

The other thing is that if the light-rail road became pedestrian only, it would have right-of-way through the entire route and wouldn’t have to wait for the cars. Pedestrians wouldn’t block a moving LRV (or they would at their peril).

The Nottingham tram is actually pretty good at avoiding traffic, having it’s own lanes.

Unfortunately it terminates in the arse end of fucking nowhere, leaving me to walk 3 miles across farmer’s fields and railway sidings if I want to get home.

Unsurprisingly, I don’t use it much.

This light rail shared the same road that cars use, so it was subject to all of the same traffic issues that cars suffered.

so make the cars go somewhere else. make more public transit that comes more often. make sure everything that people need to live is within walking distance (i am not saying to confine people to one area, only to make it possible to live in that one area). make more trains, bike paths. and plaxes you can safely walk.

Wdym? These streets are driveable, you just have to go slowly and through limited areas

Urbanism’s whole point is the relative slowness of walking. Cargo can be escalated through hand, bag, backpack, cart, disassembly, re-acquisition.

you can’t bring stuff with you.

Pockets, bags, carts. You can take even more stuff walking than on public transit.

Must have missed them the last time I was in Frankfurt.

Clearly never been to the Arabian Peninsula

Can’t you walk for like 10 minutes to get stuff?

I’m in a fairly dense, walkable neighborhood with grocery stores within a 5-minute walk of me. Stopping by a few times a week and carrying the groceries is very feasible. Else, I sometimes go to another grocery store that’s like a 10-minute bike ride away for certain items, and plenty of people just put pannier bags on their bikes for grocery shopping. I also see plenty of people with wagons for groceries in my neighborhood.

generally places with high enough population density for streets have grocery stores often enough so you rarely have to walk more than 5-10 mins to get there so you dont have to buy enough food for a week on one go

There would still be roads just not everywhere. The roads would connect communities and since these community would be built around walking you would just take public transport.

For convenience, the wagon could be motorized. Perhaps even have a nice, comfy seat or two.

If you have to go long distances, in modern countries, you take a train. Groceries are at a walkable distance, you can go 2 or 3 times a week easily, on the way back from work for example. Also tape water is drinkable there so you don’t need to carry heavy luxury plastic wrapped water.

only if you are in bad fitness and adjusted to sitting around and driving all the time

Found the American :)

I have been on roads like that in Asia in urban areas. Basically mopeds are the answer to every “well what if I have to move a lot of stuff or get somewhere fast” question. It isn’t a perfect solution but it is a decent one.

I’ve seen come crazy people on bikes man, surely that can be used

Many people can’t drive because of disabilities either, and cars make spaces much less safe for many people with certain disabilities as well. For example, my sister dealt with random spells of vertigo for a while, and thus her driver’s license was suspended as a result. Car dependency made life significantly harder for her once she was no longer able to drive because of it. The one thing that ended up being a lifesaver for her was an e-bike, as it could handle the steep hills in her neighborhood and get her to the nearest grocery store a few miles away. Even with that, her neighborhood still has almost no bike infrastructure, which make biking to the store much more hostile than it should or could be.

Similarly, there are plenty of people who can’t walk or bike very far and can’t safely drive (like elderly people) for whom public transit is a great option – provided we as a society choose to build enough public transit to serve them, of course.

Point is, the only transit system that can serve everyone is a multi-modal one, where there is bicycling, walking, public transit, etc. all layered together.

No one here is against disabled people using small motorized vehicles to go around. You don’t need to carry stuff that doesn’t fit in a backpack 99% of the time. I don’t see how the car solves the bathroom issue, we have public toilets and commerces with toilets here.
Car culture pushes people far from their work with no alternative, that’s what we fight precisely.