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City roads should be ‘ripped out completely’ to fight pollution, says government adviser
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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What is your proposed alternative solution for logistics in any moderately dense urban area? Like never mind New York, you couldn't make this work in Little Rock.
Why don't you read the article? It's all spelled out right there.
What? No it isn't.
No part of the article discusses replacing the logistics function of cargo vehicles, but it does propose ripping out the road infrastructure they run on.
Apparently, you are unaware that cargo bikes are a thing.
Right... and how many such bikes would you need to replace the carrying capacity of a single 18-wheeler?
This is not a practical solution.
Also, not discussed in the article and not relevant to my previous comment.
18 wheelers are not last mile delivery vehicles and have no business being in cities to begin with.
Um, yes they are? 18 wheelers deliver goods to stores all the time. How are you even trying to make this argument? What kind of vehicle do you think usually pulls up to a loading dock?
Grocery stores inside cities do not have loading docks. Their goods are typically delivered by this type of vehicle to curb-side offloading sites during off-peak hours.
148 E 17th St https://maps.app.goo.gl/a3wp7u1spEN4Vtjm7
Here's a grocery store. It's in downtown Little Rock (pop 204k).
Bet you anything you like all that cardboard got hauled away in an 18 wheeler (or a recycling truck).
To be clear (and reitierate) I'm not talking about heavily urbanized places, I'm talking about moderately urbanized places (which there are a lot more of). Converting a few inner city blocks in super dense cities is entirely meaningless in terms of helping the environment. For a solution/change to be useful, it will need to have wider applicability (to the majority of cities, which have <1m pop).
Such places exist as a direct consequence of car culture. Their existence is not a universal constant; they can and must be turned into heavily urbanized areas.
Their existence is far more constant than heavily urbanized areas.
This is highly unrealistic. Most people do not want to be packed in tighter with other people, they want more space not less.
Certainly not. Moderately urbanized areas are a historical footnote. They came into existence less than a century ago, with the emergence of automobilism and cheap fuel.
Heavily urbanized areas have existed for millenia.
The alternative is that they stop existing altogether when personal automobiles become too expensive for the average consumer to own and operate.
There are more people that do than you would think. Young people that are tired of being forced to live the antisocial lifestyle inherent to suburbia. People that recognize they don't need all that much space or material things, that don't mind sharing their outdoor green spaces with the public in exchange for not having to maintain it and having access to much more diverse businesses and entertainment, but cant afford to move to a big city because the demand for housing in them far outweighs the supply.
Why do you think American cities are so expensive to live in, anyways? It can't be because nobody wants to live in them.
There are only a handful of cities around the country with tax revenue and infrastructure that hasn't been wholly cannibalized by surrounding suburbs, as suburban infrastructure simply cannot fully support itself. Suburbs frequently must dip into revenue from areas with more density, and mixed use zoning that is more supportive of small businesses and takes more efficient advantage of sales tax revenue. The roads that all those cars and big box stores and winding neighborhoods rely on don't fix themselves, you know, and that certainly is not a cheap task. Roads that were literally paved in the middle of cities over entire city blocks and still divide them to this day. That is why our cities have largely shrunk since the 50s, not some universal american attitude towards density.
Most urbanists also despise mega-mart style stores as well, and would rather have smaller stores littered throughout neighborhoods
Reduces the dependence on cars as the stores nearby have what you need without having to drive super far and to buy so much because its so far.
They deliver goods to big box stores, not to the kinds of stores one finds in a dense, walkable downtown core area. I have worked in the delivery industry, and we served the downtown core entirely with 5-ton and 3-ton trucks and cargo vans. It's simply not practical to get a full-sized trailer in there.
I've never even seen an 18 wheeler in UK much less in london
Oh, this lie?
Yeah that's totally going to get people to charge their behavior and not piss them off.
Speaking solely for myself here: I used to have a mental block that prevented me from calculating travel time by different modes equitably. If it was a 10 minute drive, or a 20 minute walk, my calculation was anchored to the 10-minute drive as the "real" amount of time, and so the 20 minute walk always felt like a waste of 10 minutes. I think it's easy to fall into this trap, especially when our lives are busy and we're trying to save time anywhere we can. But a 20 minute walk is 20 minutes less I have to go to the gym, and 10 minutes less that I have to be hyper alert and driving a 2T vehicle around other people.
Additionally, this mental block existed for me around time spent parking and walking from my car to my destination. Obviously I had to walk from my car, so my brain saw that as +0 minutes. But when I calculated it, I found that I was often spending meaningful amounts of time on this leg:
My urban office is 6 miles from my suburban home (metro area approx 2.5MM people). Even with a highway for half the trip (which gets clogged with commuter and freight traffic during rush hours) the drive is approximately 20-25 minutes during light traffic, or as long as 40 minutes if traffic is particularly heavy. I have to park in a garage, which involves circling for a spot, and then have a 15 min walk to my office. On a good day, 35 minutes. On a bad day, almost an hour.
But taking my ebike (which I only bought because of the many steep hills between me and work) through back roads and sidestreets, it's 35-40 minutes door to door. Now I get 35-40 minutes of exercise without having to go to the gym, and my vehicle is parked right at thr exit to my building. Plus, I can charge the ebike with company electricity instead of having to pay for gas for my car.
It pisses a lot of people off when they can't park right next to their destination. But that already happens. There is a limited amount of space at places people want to be, so someone will always have to park farther away. Circling the nearby streets for parking is also annoying as fuck, and a huge waste of time.
Currently, no. But with mixed zoning, it would become more amenable to change over time.
This is a fantasy. It can't be implemented in large scale in any practical sense.
Centralization of distribution and centralization of production is always more efficient. You aren't going to put dairy farms next to apartment buildings next to orchards next to paper manufacturing plants next to microchip fabricators next to restaurants next to family homes next to waste water treatment next to hospitals next to bookstores next to power generators next to garbage incinerators next to grocery stores...
These things get separated from each other for good reason, and running rail lines to all of them will never be practical. There will always be a need to fill the gap with small, independently powered vehicles for cargo transport.
You know, for someone who complains about other people making strawman of them, you sure do seem fond of it yourself.
Someone: "We should reduce our dependency on cars and shift our infrastructure planning toward other modes of transport wherever possible."
You: "SO YOU WANT TO TEAR OUT ALL ROADS EVERYWHERE AND EXECUTE PEOPLE FOR OWNING CARS?!?1!?!1?"
This is not what the article says.
This is closer to what the article says.
This is the first paragraph of the article.
...and then you actually read the article past the misleading click bait, right? The Telegraph is a conservative paper, they have an interest in smearing anyone who challenges the status quo.
That is not something a reasonable person would interpret as ripping out 100% of roads. Especially since he references real projects like Seoul.
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