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Comment by steadicat | Hacker News Reader

I think we just have a different idea of what it means to be closed to cars. I live right by the stretch of Broadway you mention, so I’m very familiar. This is what it looks like: https://flatironnomad.nyc/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/4.2-Pla...

There is no restriction of through traffic. Effectively pedestrians are still confined to tiny and overcrowded sidewalks.

By comparison, here’s what a pedestrian street looks like in the non-US city I grew up in: https://sana.ae/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Corso-Italia-Stre...

Keep in mind that cars are still allowed for emergency services and (night time) deliveries. But the difference is night and day.

This is exactly what “the US can't imagine itself without cars” means to me.

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Those photos say it all. The NYC reduced street still manages to park a Chevy Silverado smack in the middle of it all, and all those planters aren't there for the sake of having plants, but rather as crash barriers protecting the patios from traffic.

The entire country of Italy is only twice the size of the state of New York.

And they can manage it, why can't New York?

New York City has more people in it than the 4 most populated metro areas in Italy. Italy has ~3x the population of the state of New York, half the population of the state lives in NYC area.

So they need it more than Italy. You can handle wayyy more traffic without cars on the road than you can with.

in context, i am specifically talking to “the US can't imagine itself without cars” point here and in my other reply upthread. I live ~36 hours from Los Angeles, driving at legal highway speeds, assuming no stops or delays. It's all about perspective. California is larger than germany. New York isn't a small state by any stretch of the imagination, unless you're comparing it to texas, alaska, or california. The car/public transportation stuff in the US is partly because of the ruralness of the country in general, plus culture. A lot of people have the idea that public transit is for the poors.

I live in Canada, a bigger country with less people and better public transport. A bunch of provinces are bigger than Texas, doesn't stop the public transport from being decent inside the cities.

The obvious answer is more public transport infrastructure & bike lanes.

If you think population density is an excuse for public transport infrastructure not coping or need for more people owning cars I suggest taking a long hard look at e.g. Japan to have that hypothesis reality-checked.

I'm btw. not saying you did, just reading between the lines.

As I wrote in an earlier reply to parent, NYC hasn't managed to even build ring Metro lines around its city center – since a century!

And that is for one reason and one reason only: not nearly enough (political) pressure from the public to improve public transport infrastructure.

And that in term gets us to the root cause again: the US can't imagine itself without cars.

This is not a critique. It's just an observation that is very plain to see if you grew up in Europe (and possibly many other places, too).

When/if that changes, ever, the above things will just happen naturally.

What would a ring metro look like in NYC? Manhattan is an island. Directly west of it is a body of water, then land that is not NYC, in fact is not NY.

It doesn't have to be a closed ring. Or resemble a ring.

Many metro systems in other big cities with comparable topological constraints have metro lines that are orthogonal to those going out in roughly a star pattern from the center.

But NYC almost only has the latter.

Underwater sections are not an issue, really. There are many cities that have metro lines going under bodies of water.

And even the length or depth required is not an issue if you want to build it.

That's why you can go from England to France, by train, in roughly half an hour, under the English Channel.

That is a seriously hand-wavy response to a complex task.

Man, there are street that are closed to traffic, and you just are either lying or being dumb.

They just don't look like streets anymore, as they are turned into plazzas or parks.

EG: E25st at Lex, Baruch College is truned into a plazza/walkaway. No cars. 8th/st Saint Marks, by A Ave, is off cars, (It is part of the Tompkins park). Irvin Avenue is part of a park (gets interrupted by Grammercy Park)

etc...

There are plenty of places like that, but over time they turn into plazzas or parks, and you think they were not streets at some point.

Ps https://maps.app.goo.gl/Df6U3DkPpUxirG5B9

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZivSNhiEnn2Q4pjr6

You can see throw time that it used to be a street at some point.

Anyways, there are plenty of examples like that. Just stop exaggerating.

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