Why not just simply ban cars from cities in general? Most of the cities in Europe at least have a great public transport setup. Just imagine how much space used by parked cars would be available to public again!
Even without any cars, delivery, trade, construction and transit vehicles add up to a significant fraction of current traffic in big European cities. You can't remove this traffic without functionally harming city life.
London, where I live, has both congestion charging and emissions charging (ULEZ) but still has loads of traffic. I'd estimate about 75% of it is not private vehicles outside rush hour, and probably no more than 50% private during rush hour, in central areas. My estimates come from riding through it by motorcycle daily.
London has already proven, during the month of restrictions around the Olympic Games, that it is possible to massively reduce motorised vehicle traffic within zone 1 and zone 2 during the workday without causing harm to businesses and the functioning of the city. Most people felt that the quality of life in London dramatically improved during the games, and one of the major reasons cited is reduced traffic, cleaner air, pedestrianised zones, increase in cycling, smoother traffic flow for public transport, out of hour deliveries, etc.
It's already been successfully done, there is just a lack of political will to make such measures permanent.
Their point is that the closing a road once doesn't just make all the pollution not happen, it time-shifts some of it to other days when people are driving again.
I expect there are some people who do make other arrangements and take a bus, so it's a net gain, but there are also those who take their car on Monday since they couldn't on Sunday.
So it's not even time-shifting necessarily. People can drive around that and just move the pollution from one street to the next. But yes, the pollution measurements on one of the closed roads would look better that day.
> closing a road once doesn't just make all the pollution not happen
Yes, I know, it was an illustration of how much pollution is caused by traffic in London and how much could be gained by reducing those traffic levels overall. I am baffled that this is causing confusion to people.
You're not considering how much activity was displaced by the Olympics. Many people just went on holiday. Traffic is already lower in summer because of holidays, as well as reduced school runs.
My own commute times nearly doubled with the Olympic lanes. It would have been intolerable permanently.
What's a "significant fraction"? Reducing traffic by, say 70% and eliminating all the parking space that goes along with the millions of cars could massively improve city life. Air pollution, noise pollution, deaths and injuries in accidents, all those things would be dramatically reduced.
BTW, pedestrian zones exist in most cities. The stores there still get their goods delivered and emergency vehicles still have access. Turning most of a city in a pedestrian/cyclist zone doesn't mean that you can't have any car traffic at all.
I just looked out the window of our office and took a quick sample of the traffic. There's no bus route on our road, mind. Out of 10 vehicles, 2 looked private (no livery at least - one Mercedes S-class possibly chauffeured, the other could be Uber but wasn't a Prius so maybe not), 3 were black cabs, 3 were delivery vans and 2 were trade vans.
Eliminate 70% of that traffic, and something will break. Kill taxis and business will suffer. Kill trade vans and basic utilities will be out of action for longer. Kill deliveries and the pace of economic activity will slow down. Deliveries are the best candidate for reduction, but don't forget use of delivery vans is directly related to public transport use - people who use public transport can't carry lots of stuff around, or trek out to centralized pickup hubs, so they need delivery vans instead.
Hasn't London already done quite a bit to reduce private traffic in the city centre? Like you gotta pay 10 pounds to drive into the city center? That may explain why there's a smaller percentage of private vehicles, and quite possibly fewer vehicles being driven altogether.
Awesome, London's got 2.6E6 registered cars according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/314980/licensed-cars-in-.... Since by your estimation, 50% of traffic during rush hour is private, these cars need a space to park. A parked car needs roughly 8sqm. That's 2.6E6 * 0.5 * 8sqm = 10 400 000sqm of parking area (plus commuters which are obviously not included) covered by cars not moved more than a couple of mins/day. And I bet 50% of the traffic wouldn't functionally harm cities, it would simply harm people's selfishness. A car is - in most of the cases - unnecessary and simply used as a status symbol.
Whoa, you're leaping to some conclusions there - most cars owned by Londoners are not used for commuting, they're for shopping, moving kids around, that kind of thing - things that public transport is a poor substitute for. Things like congestion charging apply only to the centre, where the congestion is, and that's where my comments apply. Most of the cars owned by Londoners are not in central London.
This is ridiculous: you're just arguing by assertion. Give some evidence for your assertions, please!
Cars aren't necessary, of course; we could get by with horses and carts. But removing them would not "vastly improve" quality of life.
I live in Greater London, about 12 miles from where I work (35 minutes by scooter, 55 minutes by public transport if you time it perfectly, average 1h20 if you don't). My preferred supermarket is 3.9 miles away by road, about 40 minutes by bus or 12 minutes by car (though I normally go by scooter). Would my life be better without a motorised vehicle? My opinion is it definitely would not!
Either I'd need to severely reduce my choices in purchasing or commit to spending significantly more of my life on and waiting for public transport. Neither of these would vastly improve my quality of life.
> things that public transport is a poor substitute for
Largely because public transport is underfunded in London and, of course, ridiculously hampered by the car traffic.
Try getting a bus down the A2 in peak hours or at the weekend. It's often quicker to walk. That's why people end up getting cars and ... making things worse for everyone.
Delivery services means delegating your choice of fresh produce. Incentives are not aligned; the lowest bidder will not do as good a job as the consumer.
From direct experience: food delivery works well enough for branded, processed and other long shelf life products. It's not bad for meat, as long as you're ordering from a specialist and not a supermarket (and of course there is a price premium). It's not good at all for fruit or vegetables, with current suppliers. Goods are bruised, mouldy, unripe, overripe, etc. It's also useless for bread; you always get yesterday's bread.
Not true in my experience; stuff in the physical shops is often worse best before date wise than the online delivery. All of the online delivery services will instantly refund and produce with no questions ask that you say is bad quality.
This is ridiculous. Most people have cars because they need them. Try raising kids without a car to move them around, its a lot trickier than you can imagine.
And most people need them because most people have them.
I know of families in ecotowns that don't have cars. The tram service covers nearly everything they need, and when they do actually need a car, they get a car-share/rental.
The infrastructure where they live is set up for this, to the extent that owning a car is awkward, because you're not allowed to park it anywhere near the houses, but it's fine because there are such good facilities for people without cars in that area.
The point is that we need cars because we don't have good facilities for not having cars, and we don't have good facilities because we all have cars.
Totally agree. I am of the generation that grew up without a car and life was pretty tough on public transport and it meant we couldn't do things like shop efficiently and price consciously because we had to think how we would carry our purchases home.
I still use public transport as much as I can, and the traffic in London is such that it's often a viable option, but a car is also a necessity.
> Why not just simply ban cars from cities in general?
I think you're over-interpreting your parent. In some cities it is feasible to go without cars. There's a lot of space between cities and a lot of smaller cities and towns where that isn't feasible, at least not currently or without a lot of additional infrastructure.
