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Comment by Johnny555 | Hacker News Reader

>Narrowing a road makes it worse for its' primary purpose

That's kind of the problem with urban planning in many cities in the USA -- the "primary purpose" of roads is assumed to be to serve cars, rather than to serve people.

>You would definitely not just narrow a footpath on a busy high street without considering the impact.

Happens all the time in my city for construction projects - an entire sidewalk will be shut down for years for construction, forcing pedestrians to the other side of the street (which means 2 extra waits for stop lights). Often the closed sidewalk is used for nothing at all except to hold a construction fence.. a more pedestrian friendly solution would require a covered walkway.

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> That's kind of the problem with urban planning in many cities in the USA -- the "primary purpose" of roads is assumed to be to serve cars, rather than to serve people.

Serving cars is serving people. Who do you think is driving the cars or being driven in them?

As an aside, I am surprised that this exceedingly shallow point is still being made in 2024. Let's be honest - it never made sense, and was only ever brought up as an empty slogan to dishonestly dismiss those who depend on and benefit from cars (which is most of the public in most cities).

>Serving cars is serving people

So is better transit, and biking, and even shutting off entire streets to cars and making them into pedestrian-only districts - and those can often serve more people than when it was just a road for cars.

Insane argument. Serving giant death mechas is serving people. Serving Houthi raiders is serving people. Serving Adolf Hitler is serving people - he's a person, right?

> Serving cars is serving people. Who do you think is driving the cars or being driven in them?

From a strictly utilitarian perspective, you can serve more people in the same land space by other forms of transportation:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_direct...

If you have a budget of $x, do you want to move more or fewer people? Because private auto transportation ("cars") moves the lowest volume.

Further, cars interfere with things that may not have alternatives, like trucks that make deliveries. There tend to all sorts of options for individuals (and the average occupancy of a car is like 1.0) to move hither and thither and yon, but if you want to deliver a refrigerator or a sofa, that's a lot harder to do on public transit—though not unheard of:

* https://www.blogto.com/city/2022/01/couch-toronto-subway/

* https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/5erltx/apparently_...

People are in cars.

I get it, we like public transport. It's just daft to go all in the other direction and pretend that cars aren't useful or don't count or something, though.

Is there any city that's done that and has completely banned cars to replace with transit? I haven't seen any except in very small pedestrian-only districts.

But I've seen a lot of fighting in my city anytime any transit or biking project reduces road space dedicated to cars, even if just removing on-street parking.

>People are in cars.

All too often, a "person" is in a car, which is a pretty poor use of space.

Private automobiles and in some cases other motorised vehicles are banned in Mackinac Island, MI, and Halibut Cove, AK, in the US, Giethoorn, Netherlands, and Lamu, Kenya (possibly old town only). And a number of others. Several seem to be vacation spots or resorts, so have unusual usage and aesthetic patterns.

<https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/16-places-around-the-world...>

The entirety of the Netherlands used to look like the US in the '60s and '70s, albeit not at Super Sized(TM) scale. Look up their urban design in 2024, it's quite pleasant and human-friendly.

People don't have to be in cars, and most cities have way more people in cars than necessary.

Cars are great. I like cars. I like driving as a mode of transport.

But there's a lot of potential ways to use space other than cars. The problem is, in seeking to accommodate cars at the expense of all else, we've made all other forms of transport -- like walking through a cute downtown on a spring day -- less practicable and common. In turn we drive more, spread businesses out for more parking, and created a never-ending feedback loop for more driving infrastructure.

In turn, the infrastructure has grown to a point that we can't really afford it from tax revenues, and where the mixed use of a thoroughfare for accessing businesses and going long distances does well at neither.

Unfortunately, getting us out of this loop is going to make things less convenient for some people for awhile before we can get to something better. There's no avoiding that, but continuing to make the same decision and hope it gets to a better outcome would be nuts.

> It's just daft to go all in the other direction and pretend that cars aren't useful or don't count or something, though.

Useful for what? More useful than what? Less useful than what?

How many people does private car transportation move? How much can a car lane move per hour? How about a bicycle lane? Bus lane? [0] What do private cars interfere with? Goods transportation / delivery perhaps? People's health (through pollution and/or lack of active mobility)?

It's not that cars cannot be useful, but are they more or less useful than other options? What does leaning towards cars inhibit?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passengers_per_hour_per_direct...

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