Car-free cities; the way forward?

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I wasn’t aware of this, but many of central London’s roads were closed to cars today. It was apparently to raise awareness about the city’s air quality issues. This article talks about how measures are having to be taken in cities across the world, and certainly in my experience in many of them it’s well overdue. As mentioned in the article, there are possibly benefits beyond pollution reduction by banning cars. Is it time to be strong and take the level of action happening in Oslo, or do we worry about upsetting a few people and just let things continue as they are? Can we change our mindset towards the perceived freedom offered by our cars or will we continue to offer excuses?

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/london-car-free-day-cities?
 
Do you think this is the best forum for these questions?

Whether we like it or not, fossil fuel depletion and environmental concerns mean that things will change and we will all be affected.

And although many on here will be uncomfortable with these changes and perhaps even oppose them, there is no better place than a car forum to raise questions about our future relationship with the automobile.
 
I visited Madrid a few years ago, and every Sunday they do just that, close a lot of central city roads and open them up pedestrian only for families to play. At the time I thought what a good idea for families, but also one day a week little or no pollution, must surely cut down the inner city levels of pollution.
 
Car free cities would be good for me but there would have to be affordable public transport to get there. Railways are an vastly overpriced bad joke that I won't use but it could be done with buses and a park and ride scheme. They wouldn't have to be free, just sensibly priced.

Ottawa is a an example of an excellent and affordable public transport system. They haven't banned cars but the public transport is so good I wouldn't choose to drive in the city. This is one way forward; provide excellent public transport and people will not want to drive.

l haven't visited many cities recently simply because it's too much trouble. For any city, making it hard or expensive to get there doesn't seem like a smart move on their part.
 
I think it is an inevitable step that will taken across the country at some point in the near future.

The current low emission zone in London will spread to other cities as councils are given the power to charge motorists with polluting cars to enter.
Once that has been accepted, it wouldn't surprise me to see a total ban on traffic entering cities, but the question of reliable, affordable public transport must be addressed first.
The High streets are already dying from lack of trade and a total ban will need considerable planning to succeed.
 
Car-free cities is the only way forward.

Sorry Tesla fans, but the idea that we can all hang-on to our metal boxes if we only got rid of the pollution, is a folly.

More privately-owned cars is not the answer to our issue, whether they have a IC motor or electric motor.
 
Of course, the main reason governments are apprehensive is because they don't want to foot the bill for the subsidised public transport infrastructure that will need to be built, and at the same time lose the income from VED and fuel duty.
 
I think this is about more than just cars - the way towns and cities are evolving means that “centres” will become pedestrianised and we’ll see more and more out-of-town shopping centres will thousands of parking spaces.

In fact, it’s happening right now...
 
Reminds me of the line from the Jam "hope I die before I get old".

Seems everyone on here has gotton old.

I guess it is inevitable we will all become Vegan by the time we find out that global warming is more to do with de-forestation to make way for our concrete carless Cities than it is about the combustion engine.

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l haven't visited many cities recently simply because it's too much trouble. For any city, making it hard or expensive to get there doesn't seem like a smart move on their part.

If cars were totally banned from a major city, I wonder how long the shops and businesses would take to complain they were losing x amount a year as their customers were going elsewhere?
 
My nearest city centre could do with better roads and parking.

It is dead, my Mrs hasn't been in there for about 15 years, I used to visit my office there once a week and saw the decline myself. There are the same people there every day just hanging about, the shops are empty, offices are being turned into student accommodation, there are already a lot of pedestrian only streets, parking is expensive, even starbucks pulled out.

The out of town shopping places are packed out because parking is easy, the roads links are good and the shops are grouped together.

I was once shown a report completed by a well known retail consultancy which showed that traditional city centres were moving outwards, a while later I attended a conference where a speaker from another consultancy was predicting that the High Street was well into decline and would be no longer within a few years.
Gone are the days when a fast moving pub chain was receiving a pitch from one of these retail experts who was boasting that M&S used their services to plan store locations, upon hearing this news they simply said 'we'll save your fee and put our pubs near M&S shops'

I appreciate that places like London are in need of a rethink and they already have an excellent alternative transport infrastructure in place but our provincial towns need to be more accessible not less.

Office workers are travelling into town less often as they either work from home or out of town on enterprise zones, people shop out of town which leaves little reason to go there, ban cars as well and you might as well shut the place down.

I wonder how poor air quality is these days opposed to the days before heavy industry was killed off?
 
Where we live had streets closed off yesterday saying traffic free zone by the residents.

These are streets with potentially all only having on street parking. They weren't so bullish when we suggested they should have moved all of the cars off of the street and found somewhere else to park them (difficult as the whole area has different zone parking restrictions.

I can see a shift towards people not owning cars and just doing pay per use in automated vehicles before complete bans on cars in large areas of cities. But no doubt it will eventually come.
 
Assuming you can still function in the City as efficiently as you can currently then it makes sense.

I commute into London every day for work. I take a bus to the train station, then take a train into central London and wouldn't consider driving in to where I work. That said, it's a very very small percentage of what is considered London. I live in the outskirts of a London borough myself and could not be without a car for personal reasons.

The bulk of the traffic you see around London is not commuters though, it's commercial vehicles so it's those that need addressing more than the average member of the public. Delivery vehicles, cabs, buses etc. are the main things you see on the roads with what would appear to be personal vehicles being in the minority.
 
My nearest city centre could do with better roads and parking.

It is dead, my Mrs hasn't been in there for about 15 years, I used to visit my office there once a week and saw the decline myself. There are the same people there every day just hanging about, the shops are empty, offices are being turned into student accommodation, there are already a lot of pedestrian only streets, parking is expensive, even starbucks pulled out.

The out of town shopping places are packed out because parking is easy, the roads links are good and the shops are grouped together.

I was once shown a report completed by a well known retail consultancy which showed that traditional city centres were moving outwards, a while later I attended a conference where a speaker from another consultancy was predicting that the High Street was well into decline and would be no longer within a few years.
Gone are the days when a fast moving pub chain was receiving a pitch from one of these retail experts who was boasting that M&S used their services to plan store locations, upon hearing this news they simply said 'we'll save your fee and put our pubs near M&S shops'

I appreciate that places like London are in need of a rethink and they already have an excellent alternative transport infrastructure in place but our provincial towns need to be more accessible not less.

Office workers are travelling into town less often as they either work from home or out of town on enterprise zones, people shop out of town which leaves little reason to go there, ban cars as well and you might as well shut the place down.

I wonder how poor air quality is these days opposed to the days before heavy industry was killed off?
I actually agree with the sentiment of your post but I think the situation is too far gone - our towns and cities were (mostly) designed with a horse and cart in mind and at no point has anyone in the last 50 years or so done anything to adapt to our reliance on “the car”, everything has just been a fudge.
 
I actually agree with the sentiment of your post but I think the situation is too far gone - our towns and cities were (mostly) designed with a horse and cart in mind and at no point has anyone in the last 50 years or so done anything to adapt to our reliance on “the car”, everything has just been a fudge.
A bit like Thomas Cook perhaps and not progressing with the times? Possibly resulting in a comparable fate if nothing dramatic is done. :dk:
 
I saw an article yesterday that talked about how cities are transforming from places where families live, work or gather to places for only singles or DINK's. The reduction in % of school age children living in major cities has dropped dramatically over the past 30 years, and is now actively encouraged by many authorities who see savings in items like School costs and increase in revenue from working age people packed in smaller accommodation. so it's likely that banning or discouraging car use in cities goes hand in hand with the social transformation, start working life in a small (expensive) flat with no car in a city and move to the suburbs when you want to breed.
 
Cities need to be bulldozed and planned again to have a fully integrated public transport system. Not only that, but it also needs to be affordable and not so disgusting that you risk your health and being when using it.
 

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