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Comment by fredley | Hacker News Reader

Pedestrianisation works well in European cities, especially small ones. It's quite common here in the UK, often there are strict time limits on when delivieries can be made, e.g. 6-8am when barriers are open to let vehicles in and out.

However this model just does not work in the US, outside of very few places. US cities are designed for cars, and without major redevelopment everything's just too far apart - even within the context of a single street - for this to make sense. If you had electric scooters or something though...

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It took major redevelopment for many US cities to become car-centric, so I am not seeing why we could not do another redevelopment to create pedestrian-friendly cities.

>so I am not seeing why we could not do another redevelopment to create pedestrian-friendly cities.

We have 2 local cities that made themselves bike friendly. Property values are going up in that area.

However, the people living there were already 10%ers.

Its cool to see lots of bike lanes and walkers, but they also managed to price the people that cant afford cars out.

The cycle of gentrification will change that. In 10, 20 years, a new neighborhood will be the hip place to be, all the rich propel will move there, and prices will drop. It'd be nice if the development could happen in the low-income areas from the beginning, but it's hot hopeless.

All the more reason to make pedestrianisation universal, instead of a luxury.

For now at least. As mentioned in other comments it's hard, and expensive, to redevelop entire cities. Politically it's also probably difficult because it's such a big change. Makes sense that those with money to afford making changes privately would have them first.

However, it's also likely they will want this nice life in more than just their area and will push for that over time.

It hasn't happened because most in the US don't need or even want to live in pedestrian focused cities.

Americans tend to live in detached single family homes.

Americans tend to want space between themselves and their neighbors.

Americans do not see their cars as liabilities.

Most people don't live in SF/NYC and/or don't read StrongTowns

Replacing American suburbia would cost $100 Trillion dollars. More suburbia is being created every day, far outpacing investment in "New Urbanism".

In America, when your city/suburb becomes blighted, you can move.

Internalize the cost of parking, drop mandatory parking minimums and change zoning to allows for reasonable density. Wait a few decades and cities probably won't be as car centric as they are now.

You could make quite a lot of money by building mixed use retail/residential where the car parks are now.

> there are strict time limits on when delivieries can be made, e.g. 6-8am when barriers are open to let vehicles in and out.

That is nuts.

That means a plumber, electrician, home appliance deliveryman, mover, etc. can only handle one job requiring a vehicle per day. He will have to charge 3-4 times more for his services than someone working in an area where it's feasible to finish 3-4 jobs in a workday. The costs are of course passed on to the customers. Is their car-less life worth living in a pigsty that they can't fix up because laws force contractors to charge exorbitant fees?

That means any business will want a dedicated vehicle to haul what they need in the 6-8 am window. This is not just grossly economically inefficient (no outsourcing delivery to third parties), it results in more vehicles sitting idle during the day, using up parking space!

And that means moving is a nightmare. Moving a two-bedroom apartment worth of stuff into or out of a truck is, realistically, at least a four hour job. That means a cross-town move that could be done in one workday with sane laws will take at least four workdays (two to load the truck, two to unload) in your crazy UK town. Imagine the costs. How is it moral for you to shackle your people to the land by making relocation unaffordable?

I don't know of any residential areas that have these sorts of restrictions. Its generally in shopping areas. Businesses have to schedule deliveries for these time slots.

When you look into the details of these things you'll nearly always find that there are enough exemptions to make it work. If it was genuinely unliveable people wouldn't live there. People have managed to live in Venice for centuries despite it being physically impossible to get motor vehicles around the centre.

https://www.eco-business.com/news/how-a-city-in-spain-got-ri...

"In fact, in most streets there are no physical barriers to keep the cars out. Vehicles making deliveries or locals heading to private garages can still circulate in most places.

“What we did is to create loops to keep people from driving through the city,” Lores explains. “If you enter by the south, you leave by the south.”

The goal of this strategy, which is complemented by severe parking restrictions in all of the central area, is to get rid of what Pontevedra officials call “unnecessary traffic”.

It works quite well with none of these issues.

The 6-8am window is for large deliveries. There is normally a retractable barrier for emergency usage (police/ambulance etc) and for minimal day access (I don't know how this is managed, but I have seen vehicles have to turn around and leave, where others, normally with a business inside get access).

Another common way is to have a central pedestrian only section, but with vehicle access through the 'back streets' behind. The pedestrian street is normally a great deal larger than the (often one way) back streets, and again has retractable bollards for maintenance, event vehicles and emergency vehicles. These back streets also give access to underground/aboveground parking for residents in flats. I would love to see this model used to some extent in residential areas. Some of my favorite times are when a street is closed to traffic for a street party.

In practice it works very well, at least in a large number of towns and cities in the UK. It's about finding the correct roads and spaces to limit and disallow motor vehicles on.

You're being unrealistic.

I live in a large apartment development in Manhattan that is pedestrian-friendly and decidedly vehicle-unfriendly. You can't drive a car to the front of my building. And yet it works, very well.

I moved in with my girlfriend recently. You know how that worked? The movers she hired drove as near as possible, and simply pushed her stuff on dollies the rest of the way to the building. No big deal. Yeah, it took a little bit longer, but nowhere near as bad as the 4-day move you're hyperbolically claiming. And that side of the move was actually better than the other side, since she was moving out of a fourth floor walkup. Even though the truck could park almost directly in front of that building, it turns out it's harder to carry stuff down many flights of stairs than it is to push it on wheels across a flat surface and then up an elevator.

I moved from another building within my complex, and I accomplished my entire move simply by pushing my stuff on a dolly, without even having to hire movers. I've never before had a vehicle-less move even be an option, but it was in this situation.

As for repairmen, you know how they work? They get around on bicycles. You can carry a surprising amount of stuff on a bicycle, including all the tools you'd need for >95% of repairs. The plumbers ride around on bikes with a toolbox, plungers, and a snake, for example. For appliance delivery, they use tiny little vehicles that are basically a pick-up truck version of a golf cart. These vehicles don't go fast and the drivers yield to pedestrians, and you see them on pedestrian paths (and don't feel unsafe about it).

Every problem that you're bringing up is already solved in the many different areas that are pedestrianized and prohibit vehicle traffic. It's a failure of imagination to think that these problems are unsolvable. When your city is dense enough, a plumber/electrician can easily support him/herself on just jobs that are within a 10 minute walking radius, with the tools that can be pushed on a handcart or fit on a bicycle. Vehicles aren't necessary. It's actually more efficient for these professions, because in the suburbs it's typical to drive for up to an hour to get to a jobsite! So much wasted time spent just getting somewhere!

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