[hylaride]

> The e-scooters that clutter up pavements may seem like a new thing, but a hundred years ago, there were already people zooming around London on powered scooters.

The problem is that we've given so much space to automobiles that there's no room for anything else (bikes, scooters, etc). Pedestrians have been given a sliver only because drivers need to walk between parking and their destination. This is true even in cities where the majority of people don't even drive!

[sheepscreek]

Probably cause modern logistics, especially last mile logistics, is dependent on trucks/delivery vans/etc. So even though folks in a local area might like to walk around, their groceries won’t make it to the stores and packages won’t get to their homes without a robust road network.

I think Bacerlona hits a good compromise. The city has the concept of a superblock, which is a few city blocks grouped into one calm zone. Most car traffic stays on the streets around the outside, the perimeter of the superblock. Inside, driving is restricted and only at low speeds where allowed, so people and bikes get the space. So deliveries and residents can still but only slowly.

That’s far from the only example - many cities in Asia follow a similar model.

[jetrink]

> their groceries won’t make it to the stores and packages won’t get to their homes without a robust road network.

A road network isn't the only solution. In the early 20th century, for example, there was a separate narrow-gauge tunnel network beneath Chicago dedicated to freight. Deliveries were made directly to businesses via subbasements or elevator shafts. The network had stations at rail and ship terminals for accepting freight arriving from outside the city. At its height in 1929, the network had 150 locomotives pulling 10 to 15 cars per train.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company

[h2zizzle]

Smaller trucks. Japan makes due with one-lane alleys. (Not one in each direction. One. Deliveries and vehicular traffic are so uncommon, and the tightness of the space so inconducive to speeding, that it's safe for trucks and cars to go down them in whichever direction they need to.)

[ajb]

London is edging in that direction with the introduction of "low traffic neighbourhoods". Basically this involves preventing vehicles using them as a through route, by limiting some connections to only emergency vehicles. The problem is that it's also annoying for residents as it means the allowed entry/exit routes aren't necessarily in the direction you need to go. Does Barcelona have a smarter method?

[oblio]

Last mile delivery can be done with large cargo ebikes capable of carrying up to 250-500kg.

Trucks or delivery vans should only be allowed on roads farther apart than 1-2km, with some exceptions (supermarkets, regular markets, etc).

We have all the technical tools needed, this is about political will.

[zaptheimpaler]

I live in Vancouver, and we have plenty of both roads and bike lanes. Its not hard to fit a bike lane that's usually 1/4th the width of a lane onto a road or allow bikes to share with cars on smaller roads. We have trucks and vans and lots of deliveries too. The reason most cities are oriented around cars is because we designed them that way and it's difficult to change - there's no logistical constraint, its just politics and cost.

[thescriptkiddie]

it takes surprisingly few trucks to keep stores stocked. most of the trucks you see driving around are either delivering packages or hauling bulk cargo that used to go by rail

[hylaride]

> Probably cause modern logistics, especially last mile logistics, is dependent on trucks/delivery vans/etc. So even though folks in a local area might like to walk around, their groceries won’t make it to the stores and packages won’t get to their homes without a robust road network.

Totally. Banning automobiles is usually a bad idea, especially for residential zones. Years ago, I remember seeing a presentation about redeveloping a bad public housing block that was built in the 1960s with no auto-access (the assumption being poor people don't have cars), but it turns out that it meant they couldn't even get pizza.

[crazygringo]

> This is true even in cities where the majority of people don't even drive!

I dunno... in New York City there are an awful lot of bike lanes now:

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7355559,-73.9921499,13z/data...

There's still room for a lot more, but plenty of space has been taken away from automobiles precisely for bikes, scooters, etc. It's trending in the right direction. Especially now that bike lanes are increasingly being designed with parking between the bike land and vehicle lanes.

[coryrc]

Per capita that's table scraps.

[deafpolygon]

The Netherlands stares uncomfortably in the background.

[k4rli]

Problem isn't the cars. Stop buying uselessly oversized SUVs, and trucks in case of muricans.

A Fiat 500/Panda is perfectly fine in cities.

[AmbroseBierce]

Start charging taxes based on the number of square feet a car occupies and the problem will solve itself.

[Scoundreller]

I’d like to see the calculation of the reduction you get in roadway throughput by making the vehicles larger.

If people stay further away from tractor trailers, they’ll stay further away from SUVs too.

Even in an urban environment, if you stop X feet of distance from the back of the vehicle in front, if that vehicle is longer…

Anyways, street parking should be paid by the square foot * 1.25 to account for getting in/out/around parked vehicles.

[Sam6late]

The same case was in Italy, and calendars of Vespa were awesome back in the 70s ''Piaggio (maker of Vespa) had had its Pontedera (Italy) factory (where they used to make bomber planes) bombed during the conflict. Italy had it’s aircraft industry restricted to a great extent as part of the ceasefire agreement with the allies. Enrico Piaggio, son of the founder of the company Rinaldo Piaggio, decided to leave the aeronautical field behind and address the people’s need for an economic mode of transport. The idea was to make a scooter utilitarian and appealing enough to the masses. Till that time, scooters were mainly used by the military for quick on-ground transportation (you might have seen this in some Call of Duty games). So, two Piaggio engineers, Renzo Spolti and Vittorio Casini, took to their whiteboard and designed the first-ever Vespa, or maybe not quite. Mr. Piaggio was disappointed with the initial scooter. The scooter was named Paperino, and looking at the photo, you can understand Mr. Piaggios disappointment.' https://www.vespalicious.com/gallery/

[hexbin010]

For real. Loads of places in the UK are in desperate need of wider paths. Some probably haven't changed for 100 years except for making them narrower with stupid full height advertising screens (a travesty and civic vandalism by the councils)

[wakawaka28]

I'm sure they went away because it's a fad or the costs/benefits don't balance, not because there is no space for them. This is evident by the fact that we have scooters in abundance now!

[tim333]

In central London the cars are restricted quite a bit. In places like Soho and Oxford St they are more cluttered with pedestrians than cars.

[echelon]

Despite city dwellers hating on cars and wanting complete streets, cars are poised to win even bigger when self driving becomes widespread.

Our roads and highways will metamorphose into logistics corridors and optimal public transit systems.

Everything will be delivered same hour. The cost of this will drop and entire new business models will be built on top of the "direct to you" model.

Self-driving cars will replace public transit. They connect every destination on demand. Short hops, cross-country long-haul. Waymo alikes will become cheaper than the city bus.

Van life will accelerate. People will live in their automated vans and SUVs. They'll become luxury and status items for knowledge workers who are constantly conveying themselves coast to coast, from cozy fire pits by the sea to hidden mountain getaways. Life in America will become one of constant travel, because we can take our life with us without lifting a finger. People will have large home bases in the affordable suburbs - possibly one on each coast. They'll wine and dine in the city, then be off to hike the next day.

Life will turn into adventure and it'll be accessible to almost everyone. Rich, poor. Young, old. Busy, retired.

Nobody will lift a finger for any of this.

We're going to want more roads.

Bikes don't stand a chance. They're inequitable. Old people, pregnant people, sick people, and children are all left out. They suck in the rain and the snow. You can't move anything of size or scale.

Automated self driving cars will win.

[agenticfish]

> Bikes don't stand a chance. They're inequitable. Old people, pregnant people, sick people, and children are all left out. They suck in the rain and the snow. You can't move anything of size or scale.

I would invite you to come and have a look in the Netherlands. It’s very common for octogenarians to cycle. My wife cycled up to the day of the birth of our daughter. Children have more independence because they can cycle to football practice on their own. Bike lanes are great for mobility scooters. It rains here, a lot! And it snows. I picked up our Christmas tree with our cargo bike. When I need to transport anything larger I will book a carshare, which are dotted around our neighbourhood.

And the result? People are happy and healthy.

[digital-cygnet]

I don't think this is a crazy take, but it is missing two big factors that self driving maximalists often ignore.

First is the cost of driving. A reasonable rule of thumb is $0.50/mile all in (i.e. including depreciation, repairs, gas, etc) -- you can get down to half that pretty easily and maybe a little lower, but especially if you're spending tons of time in this car you're probably going to want a nice comfy one, which will cost more and depreciate faster. So, these trips you're imagining everyone taking constantly are not going to be accessible to most people. Cars are already the second biggest expense in most Americans' budgets, one which scales with mileage, and which self driving would only increase (have to pay for the lidar, on-device compute, whatever remote service handled edge cases, etc).

The second thing your predictions miss is geometry. Despite the decades of predictions about self-driving cars being able to run safely at much higher speeds and with much tighter tolerances than human-run cars, the tyranny of geometry and stopping distances (which actually won't change much even with millisecond reaction times) means that throughput of car lanes is unlikely to change much (though we could all imagine top-down infrastructural changes helping this a lot, eg coordinated self driving cars and smart roads, those seem unlikely to land anytime soon given American political inclinations). Imagine how spaced-out people are on the highway -- in each lane, 1.6 people (average car occupancy) every football field (300 feet -- safe stopping distance at 70mph). If you're trying to go anywhere more densely packed than that -- e.g., a city, a restaurant, a ball game -- you're going to start to run into capacity constraints. Mass transit, walking, and cycling all can manage an order of magnitude higher throughput.

So while I think your prediction -- that self driving cars will increase demand for road space -- is right, the valence that takes for me is much more negative. The wealthy will be able to take up way more space on the road (e.g., one car each dropping off each kid at each extra curricular activity), condemning the poor to even worse traffic (especially the poor who cannot afford a self driving vehicle, who will not even be able to play candy crush while they're waiting in this traffic). People will continue to suburbanize and atomize, demanding their governments pay for bigger and bigger roads and suburbs, despoiling more of the areas you'd like to hike in, with debt that will keep rolling over to the next generation. Bikes and peds will continue to be marginalized as the norm for how far apart people live will continue to grow, making it even more impossible and dangerous to get anywhere without a car. I hope I'm wrong but this is how mass motorization played out the first time, in the post-war period, and if anything our society is less prepared now to oppose the inequitable, race-to-the-bottom, socialize-your-externalities results of that phase of development.

[reactordev]

But this has been true every hundred years or so as technology changes and those that are building infrastructure know nothing else.

2000s : Damn these cars clogging up the road!

1900s : Damn these buggies clogging up the road!

1800s : Damn these carriages clogging up the road!

1700s : Damn these horses clogging up the road!

1600s : Damn these " " " " "

100BC : Damn these romans clogging up the road!

[Zambyte]

You really think the idea of anything like bumper to bumper traffic existed more than a hundred years ago? Everything before 2000s (though surely car traffic existed in the 1900s) seems like a dramatization.