Liddle Donnie’s favorite country! We must invade and make it safe for cars again!
Cars should be banned in dense urban centers. They’re absolutely stupid in such an environment. All they do is cause traffic jams and make people who think they’re too good for the subway take longer to get where they’re going.
I visit DC once a year or so, and every time I go there it boggles my mind why I see so many cars. I get anywhere I want to go on public transit. 90% of that is on the subway, the rest on buses. Yes, this means I might have to walk 3 blocks on occasion and you know what? That’s ok.
The last time I was there I was at a conference at a hotel up by the zoo. I had a professional function to get to in downtown, right in the middle of the evening commute. Most people ordered limos because, hey, the company’s paying for it right? A couple of us took the Metro and got there half an hour before anyone else. Driving in high density urban areas just isn’t worth the trouble.
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Not news really, but as cities do this, one should ask the question why are there so many cars driving through the inner city? Seems like there must be a reason for it and maybe that issue should be addressed as well as just banning smelly cars. This is Anti-Car Talk isn’t it?
I remember some years ago a guy was complaining about the lack of jobs and opportunity in the inner city of Minneapolis. I commented that at last count there were 70,000 cars coming into the city each day from the south alone for work so there must be some jobs in the inner city. So I guess if you wanted to reduce the traffic, you would just eliminate those downtown jobs and there’d be no need for the 70,000 cars a day to go down there. Of course the city planners want their cake and eat it too. They want the money but not the people. Silly people.
Glad to see that you agree with enhanced funding for public transportation. 
Cars have their place, and there are also places cars shouldn’t be. If there’s such a thing as Horse Talk, and some dude starts advocating for allowing buggies on the interstate, no one’s going to complain that it’s contrary to the purpose of the forum to point out that horses shouldn’t be wandering around on interstates.
Cars slow things down in the inner city. Heck, even in the relatively small metro area we’re familiar with, Minneapolis, and even with its almost legendarily bad public transit system, the bus still routinely beats a car to almost any destination in rush hour.
Scale that up to Chicago or LA or DC and it really becomes hard to make a serious case that cars in dense urban environments are a good idea.
Like I said, this is not news. Car and Driver had an article called “War on Cars” where they talked about a number of cities in the US that have jumped on the anti-car bandwagon looking to solve their congestion issues. Eliminating parking, special taxes or permits needed, etc. etc. Of course it seems to have all started with a particular guy from UCLA. Traffic was not a big problem in Minneapolis until the late 70’s when they started building mega office buildings downtown. Ye reap what ye sow. What did they expect to happen? Might be time to re-think the big city model cramming everyone together so they can take the train.
if you go near the places public transportation goes, it’s fine. I know someone that worked on the southeast outskirts of D.C., and he lived in DC. He drove to work every day because there was no subway, and the bus would take over an hour to get from his house to work. By car, it took him about 15 minutes.
When ever I have to go into Boston I take the train or drive to one of the T’s (subway). Boston is a very walkable city and the public transit is decent.
NYC has a good public transit system. I have cousins who live in the Bronx and Brooklyn and they don’t even have a drivers license. Never needed it. A couple of them are lawyers. One’s a DA. If I lived in NYC then I probably wouldn’t get a license either.
Yes. The D.C. beltway parking lot. The last time I was there I just paid too much for parking and walked.
I object to a car ban in the city. There is plenty of incentives not to drive into cities already, why force that with a law? Because you can’t get everyone to do what you want them to do, that’s why you pass a law.
There are a bunch of cities in the mid-west that don’t need to ban cars because the jobs left the city center for the suburbs and never came back.
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Don’t they ever leave the city or the state? You miss a whole lot if you don’t hit the open road once in a while.
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Maybe why New Yorkers have no idea how the rest of the country lives, thinks, or wants.
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You want them in your neck of the woods?
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I live in Florida, they are already IN my neck of the woods!
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I moved from Oregon to Southern California in January 1974 for a job. I lived less than 10 miles East of LA and it took at least an hour to get there on the “freeway”. They call Interstates freeways because only 2 or 3 actually leave the state. It made sense to me to use the boulevards and get there in 30 minutes. When I asked a native about that they answered because the boulevard speed limit is 35mph and they have traffic lights. OK… Lemming syndrome? “Everyone uses this route so it must be the best”.
As a bicyclist, I always used streets in LA. It prepared me well for driving on them rather than getting stuck on the 'free’ways. They call them freeways because they had them before Interstates and they had no tolls. The first freeway anywhere was the Pasadena, originally California 11, now I-110, connecting the south edge of Pasadena to downtown. That’s why it has 5 mph exits.
My daughter has lived in Manhattan for 14 years without a car. If she needs to travel, she takes Amtrak or flies. Zero need for a car.
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A lot of places have public transportation. I know they went to Disney World a few times. No need for a car there either. They aren’t alone.
http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20030820&slug=drive20
And those wouldn’t qualify as “dense urban” anymore, if they ever did, and wouldn’t be part of the discussion.
Detroit, MI, Dayton, Ohio to name 2 I’m very familiar with. Not dense urban today bit both were in 1960. Both have mass transit, buses, both are a shell of their former selves and neither have much in the way of employment in the center city as all moved to the 'Burbs. Any rush-hour traffic they experience is on the highways that bypass the cities.
So then… We don’t ban cars there…