Quote:
Originally Posted by JMKeynes
I just posted the same thing. I love this project. Something similar is occurring on Regents Street in London.
New York, in particular, should follow Paris’ lead. It needs less traffic lanes, no parking on avenues, and therefore, more green space.
Even D.C., which is pretty green, should eliminate lanes on traffic on thoroughfares like Pennsylvania Avenue.
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Yeah, of course: Eliminating traffic lanes causing more traffic to squeeze into fewer lanes and spend more time idling at intersections and spewing pollutants is bound to make cities better places.
I can see removing traffic from selected streets like perhaps those mentioned (we are doing it on Market St. in San Francisco). But the general turning over of traffic lanes from many thousands of motorized vehicles to a few thousand bikes is just making traffic worse. It is pure feel-good activity. And those cars choking the narrowed streets pollute more than ever.
If cities really want to cut down traffic, the first step, not the last, needs to be making alternatives like public transit much better and more convenient. San Francisco is proving you can't force people out of cars just by being punitive to drivers because people have got to get where they need to go and if they have few alternatives they are going to own a motorized vehicle and they are going to drive it.
Note: Post-COVID, I am thinking of keeping a car in SF for the first time in 15 years because transit is a soup of contagion.