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What if the problem with cars was not their method of propulsion? Epthinktank | European Parliament

epthinktank.eu What if the problem with cars was not their method of propulsion? [Science and Technology Podcast] | Epthinktank | European Parliament

The European automotive industry is striving to adapt to market changes driven by the dual green and digital transition.

What if the problem with cars was not their method of propulsion? [Science and Technology Podcast] | Epthinktank | European Parliament

Instead of just electrifying vehicles, cities should be investing in alternative methods of transportation. This article is by the Scientific Foresight Unit of the European Parliamentary Research Service (EPRS), a EU's own think tank.

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Hopefully some of the people sitting in parliament will read this. In many cities we still have to fight for bicycle infrastructure. Car centric city designs should really start going out of fashion
- The worst is when they install bike infrastructure that will just randomly end and dump you onto a busy street, and then complain no one is using the fancy new bike lanes...
  
  Have some of these here. Absolutely wild, that the bike lane ends where it would become useful: Before a traffic light, so that you have to take part in the traffic jam of cars.
  But what am I even talking about. Traffic lights per se are an anti-pattern of city design.
  
  Traffic lights per se are an anti-pattern of city design.
  It’s a pro and a con. Cars waiting is a good thing. Car drivers chose cars for convenience so anything that makes them inconvenient is a positive factor to getting them out of cars. I’m in a place where bicycles can turn right on red but cars cannot. And there are cycle paths through woods and fields and niche trafficlight-free places cars cannot go.
  I love traffic jams because cyclists are immune to them and car drivers can only sit in frustration as they get passed by cyclists.
  A couple intersections are still fucked up though, where cyclists might have to wait for ~2-3 differently timed lights to cross an intersection. Luckly red light running is not generally enforced against cyclists.
  
  Car drivers chose cars for convenience so anything that makes them inconvenient is a positive factor to getting them out of cars.
  That's the wrong way. Bike should be made more convenient. But artificial worsening is no good thing.
  
  That doesn’t work. Making cycling more convenient is only noticed by cyclists. Car drivers see the inconvenience of pedaling. To them it’s harder work to move slower. You can’t offset that in any material way that’s noticed by car drivers from the comfort of their loungy cars as extensions of their living room.
  This is why I did not transition from car to bicycle. I needed a mass transit middle step. Mass transit includes the notable convenience of being chauffeured around, not having to look for parking, maintenance free. Then after getting accustomed to waiting for the tram and being locked to the public transport schedule, cycling becomes a viable upgrade from public transport (no waiting and more autonomy).
  
  I agree on everything, but the conclusion that they are a pro and a con.
  Under the constraint, that the same rules apply to bicycles and cars and they are enforced, then traffic lights are definitely an anti-pattern.
  Under the assumption, that the alternative would be that pedestrians and cyclicsts would have always the right of way over cars in an urban environment, they would be neutral.
  But are they ever a good thing? I see where you are coming from with this: Traffic lights make cars wait. But they are installed to optimise car-flow, in the first place. So, if they were not there, cars would wait longer, because they are inherently inefficient vehicles that would clogg up intersections immediatly and consequentially bring car-flow to a total halt. Hence, every traffic not participating in car-flow would drastically accelerate if traffic lights were abolished.
  
  I think the top purpose is safety and from there it’s an attempt at optimization. Or perhaps those priorities are flipped. But if you consider Europe which largely favors traffic circles over lights, that’s probably the optimum for keeping cars moving. If I were a selfish car driver in the US, I would want probably ~70% of the traffic lights at all the low-flow intersections to be replaced with traffic circles.
  I suppose it won’t be long before this discussion becomes moot. People on their tablets in self-driving cars won’t care whether the car is moving or not.
  
  Oh yea, here they painted the gutter red and called it a day. One such red gutter directs you right into a busy 6 way intersection and just ends there, it's unofficially called the suicide lane.
- The current plan where I live, is to chuck the bicycles on the footpath with pedestrians.
  
  Heyyy, we tried that! Yeah, went about as well as you can expect.
- Only thing is that electrifying vehicles is a little easier than rebuilding a city (or part of it). And it don't need to be a really old part, even a 60/70 years old city zone is relatively hard to convert. Not to speak of even older zones.
  But yes, newly build zone of city should be designed with this in mind.
  
  In my (over 1,000 year old) city, blocking several streets with bollards and massively reducing street parking worked just fine so far. As did curbing traffic coming in, with longer "red" phases at traffic lights for cars entering, when sensors detect too many cars in the city.
  
  The "smart" traffic lights idea is very interesting, never heard of it. Which country is that?
  
  Germany (city of Potsdam)
  
  smart lights come in other forms:
  If you are speeding, the next light detects it and nearly guarantees you get a red light
  If you are not speeding, your license plate is read and entered into a lottery where you can win money from the pool of money collected by traffic violations.
  I don’t recall which country implemented what, but IIRC Canada, Sweden and Spain each had one of the above two systems.
  
  If you are not speeding, your license plate is read and entered into a lottery where you can win money from the pool of money collected by traffic violations.
  That's the most dystopian and borderline insane thing I've read for some time.
  
  There is a quite good opt-out procedure: cycle.
  
  But how do I participate in the lottery as cyclist, pedestrian or as a resident?
  
  I don’t think whatever article I read about it covered that.
  In principle, you should theoretically be able to register for tracking and then have a QR code attached to the front of your bike / shirt which would enter you into the lottery.
  
  We also have restricted access to the center of the city (the infamous Area C and Area B) even stricter but so far they are not working that well simply because they created them but not added the necessary alternatives (public transportation first and foremost).
  Where I lived when I was younger, to be able to have a neighborhood that is not that dependent on cars (back at the time it was not, everything you need was at a 5 minute walk) they basically levelled the neighborhood and rebuild it, and it was relatively new (post WWII), a thing that is not an option in older area (center).
  The way of your city (or of Milano) are also appliable only to big cities where everything you need is present, where I currently live I need a car for a number of reasons, because my small town has not all what I can need, for example the only way to go to the train station I use is by car since it is too distant to walk to (or I can choose the other one and hope to use less than 1.5 hours for a 20 minute train travel), and there is not a public transportation system.
  Maybe I am naive but I think that people would discard the car (or use it a lot less) if for the day by day they have an alternative, so when I said it would be easier I should have added the missing implicit (for me) part "in the short term".
  You want I don't own/use a car in 5 years from now ? Fine, where are the construction sites for the railroads and the other public transportation system I will need to use ? Because I can stop using the car in a month, but you cannot build a railroad in a month.
  
  Just take lanes away from cars
  
  It’s a good move but note that car drivers are extremely clingy to their convenience. They protest violently and burn tires under the threat of pedestrianizing a road. The hostility they bring to the slightest possibility of a perceived drop in their convenience is unmatched. The car lobby is BIG and the politicians themselves are in that car-driving demographic.
  
  I understand the sentiment, but that could cause more issues than it solves. Cars then would be forced to compete for space with bicycle again,only this time on all bicycle roads. Or houses could not have car access at all, if you'd narrow the streets.
  
  Cars then would be forced to compete for space with bicycle again,only this time on all bicycle roads.
  Why? The other person said: "Take lanes away from cars". There wouldn't be any cars on that lane.
  
  Huh, somehow misread that as "take all lanes away"
  
  There are some model projects of super blocks which are already very promising. They change the nature of car use inside a neighborhood by making pass-through traffic impossible and limiting parking space to only residents as well as making roads very narrow all the while being mixed use. It makes driving faster than 10km/h pretty hard, all the while still keeping it possible for people who really need it.
  
  It’s called a “woonerf”, we’ve had them since the seventies.
  
  Yaeh ok, but what are the issues you were announcing before talking about the benefits?
  
  Is it easier or is it just shifting the cost? We're talking thousands of cars needing electrification in any given city, at let's say they get it to an average of $35k each.
  Picking a random city, let's say Cincinnati. They already have some infrastructure but it's largely car dependent. They have 148k households, of which 44.1% have one car, 25.2% have two, 6.8% have three, and 2.4% have four. So roughly 65k + 75k + 30k + 14k = 184k cars * 35k each or minimum 6.4 billion to electrify them all.
  I don't know how much good public transit costs, but I have to imagine $6.4b can buy a fair amount of it.
  
  You anyway need a new car every 15 years. So no additional costs.
  
  Actually it really isn't easier to keep things car-oriented because building a city so there is enough room for cars is fundamentally impossible.
  
  I beg to differ!
  
  The point is not to build (or reshape) a city to have enough room for cars, but to build (or reshape) a city so that you don't need to have (or to use so often) a car for the day by day.
  But yes, you can. Our cities are basically build this way, the only problem is that they are build with much lower number of cars in mind.
  
  I mean sure, you can absolutely build a city to have enough room for cars for 10 rich assholes and everyone else can deal with the fact that the city is built to cater to those rich assholes instead of the majority of its inhabitants but I think it was pretty much implied by my statement that a car-oriented city would be the kind that has enough room for all its inhabitants and visitors to use cars and that is fundamentally impossible since cities have a lot of people and cars need huge amounts of space per user.

80 comments