> We have to bite the bullet and redesign urban environments away from the car.
I agree with you philosophically but how would this work in practice? Most US cities that could benefit from urban planning and redesign are that way because they're densely packed car-centric areas.
It's like, if a giant earthquake flattened LA sure, that would be a great excuse to redesign the entire city. But the vast majority of the infra isn't going anywhere, and nobody is gonna float redesigning a city with the level of NIMBY-goodness here.
Practically speaking, a "50cc-rated EV moped" is a great way to, at minimum, start to get people thinking less about cars, in my opinion. It's a necessary bridge to a future that's probably decades away.
It's much more complicated in practice, but in theory, it's pretty simple: convert existing car lanes to bike lanes. Chaos will ensue as the construction work and reduced road throughput inevitably generate huge jams.
That chaos is a feature, not a bug. It's meant to discourage people from using their car. If you keep car usage convenient, people will continue to use their car. Any measure that makes using a car inconvenient is a good thing. Low road throughput, high parking cost, low number of parking spots etc...
I've seen it played out in Paris, which was very much a car city two decades ago, and can now be described as a bike-friendly city: it's far from being on-par with Netherlands standard, but good enough that lots of people chose a bike over other methods of transportation, and cars are generally one of the slowest form of transportation in a city (behind public transit, bikes or other 2-wheelers).
People are going to be angry, and you have to ignore them. Take something like Santa Monica Boulevard (which doesn't even look like it goes through any useful parts of the city, aside from housing, so there could be better places to do so), which is, seemingly, a mix of 3x3 lanes, and 2x2 at times with enough space to slide in a whole bus in the middle.
Remove all these lanes. Drop a tramway in the middle, with regular passages (one every 2-5 minutes is a standard in Europe). This serves both for tramways and emergency vehicles, grant them the right to drive here. Couple it with a bike lane on both sides, alongside that tramway line. Leave a single lane, usable for cars (which you really don't want to take anymore since it's become a single lane. Over time, car traffic reduces) and buses (which shouldn't pass by there too much, since you already have a tramway. Not along the whole length, at least, just portions. Congratulations, you've removed the need for a car for anyone alongside that road, going anywhere in a 10 minute radius around it.
Now, that's not much, and that's not all. Other plans have to include considering a small tactical nuke to clear out massive parking spaces for people coming from outside the city, at the extremities of these tramway lines. You really want them to drop that car outside. Then do it again. Start criss crossing. San Vincente Blvd, Western Ave., wherever. Just have the transit system befitting a major city, in a major first world country.
Now, yes, this also takes 30 years to finish, but that's the only way it's ever worked in car centric cities that transformed into tolerable, walkable places.
> Most US cities that could benefit from urban planning and redesign are that way because they're densely packed car-centric areas.
I mean, in Europe we've largely repurposed medieval towns to car usage, with much worse constraints in terms of preservation of historical buildings. US cities can be much more radical and much more easily, if they really want to.
I agree with you philosophically but how would this work in practice? Most US cities that could benefit from urban planning and redesign are that way because they're densely packed car-centric areas.
It's like, if a giant earthquake flattened LA sure, that would be a great excuse to redesign the entire city. But the vast majority of the infra isn't going anywhere, and nobody is gonna float redesigning a city with the level of NIMBY-goodness here.
Practically speaking, a "50cc-rated EV moped" is a great way to, at minimum, start to get people thinking less about cars, in my opinion. It's a necessary bridge to a future that's probably decades away.