Cities Can Reclaim Their Streets from SUVs | Hacker News Reader

Cities Can Reclaim Their Streets from SUVs

bloomberg.com

10 pointsjseliger5 comments

IMO problem is not enough public space for bikes, peds and public transport to begin with. It's obviously impossible solve for US, AU, NZ and the like. But in old cities we can definitely reclaim the space from private cars for the greater good. Watch https://www.youtube.com/c/TheLifeSizedCity/playlists to see how selfish car infrastructure is with no consideration for anyone else. In many cases something like 90% of public space is dedicated to cars....

If you wan't people to stop using something - make it inconvenient. SUV's are bloody good for car focused cities, especially for families. They are useless in large European cities by design and we're not even talking silly sizes like in US. A crossover (which is also smaller in EU than in US) is too big and too impractical.

That said amazing how one class of vehicles is vilified and others are OK. Seems buses and utility trucks and headphones don't kill pedestrians. Only personal SUV's kill pedestrians. Guess who'd want to push such narrative...

IMO a gas tax rate that is on par with the rest of the developed world would be the most sane way to combat this. Gas taxes in the US and Canada are dismal compared to many other countries (https://afdc.energy.gov/data/widgets/10327).

And of course more investment in pedestrian/biking infrastructure and more walkable city planning.

Car registration cost is proportional to (internal combustion) horsepower in Switzerland, which is helpful in punishing buyers if heavy vehicles.

Electric cars in Canton Vaud can be registered for a flat rate of $25, whereas cars are $700 a year and bigger vehicles (SUV, 7 place minivan) are $1200.

Eventually the transition to electric will require that we apply proportionality to electric too.

I'm all for putting an excise tax on new on gasoline cars. Make the owner of a new gasoline powered car pay their carbon tax up front. In this case you don't care about the money you want people to stop buying gasoline power cars. You can then that money to buy back older cars and take them off the road.

Problem is they are convienient in cities. Make your cities unusable for the size and it's problem solved. Just make your streets more narrow. Removing parking is a dick move. Taxing is pointless.

For people with special needs - subsidise specialised Uber. For the very few tradies who actually need to lug cargo narrower street is minor inconvenience.

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