mr_bill

Paris is always changing.

If you want an idea of where the 1st-4th Arrondissement are located:



The full interview in French and English - (google translate).

-mr. bill

genec

What I think is most interesting is that major cities such as NYC, London and now Paris are all coming to the same conclusion, that there just isn't enough room for cars...

CrankyOne

Agree. :-)

Feldman

A way you can tell--I live in an exurb of Portland, OR and like most who do, go into the Rose City pretty often.
Central Portland neighborhoods have an obvious sign of 19th century traffic engineering--horse hitching rings sunk into the cement curbs! I used to live around the block from a pedestal-mounted ring that must have been intended for carriage horses. You could maybe call this a sign of a neighborhood that was laid out before cars existed?

ModeratedUser150120149

Additionally, on a global basis there is a growing recognition that there isn't enough room for our current population, let alone forecasted growth.

As populations grow they become subject to all kinds of ills. Members become more aggressive to each other. There is less concern for other members of the community. The population becomes less able to clean up after itself creating ever increasing levels of pollution. All of which directly affect cycling as well as the rest of our lives.

genec

Ah yes, nothing a good world wide plague won't clean up, eh?

Actually the terrible truth is that food is probably the biggest shortage... and while the US throws food away, other countries starve... and we can't figure out why our method of sending in troops doesn't make us friends... Sigh.

Rollfast

With THAT I'll agree fully...Portland is a MESS, and a good radio for traffic reports is a must. My mother scared the dickens out of me once by traveling straight on a road where traffic forward had to split to the right on a Y and we were suddenly going the wrong way on a one-way road! I almost overheated there on my way into Washington a few years ago and it was a bit unnerving finding a place to stop and take car of my car.

This was just coming into and leaving town and dealing with the interstate.

B. Carfree

Ah yes. I too long for the civilized days of yore when the western territories of the US, with their low population densities, were so renowned for their civilized ways.

spare_wheel

This is why we need congestion tolls for non-residents in PDX.

B. Carfree

Many cities need those, including the small ones like mine.

kickstart

That seems backwards, rewarding locals who have options but don't use them, and penalizing those who don't have options because they're not locals.

There must be something more sensible than that.

spare_wheel

one could argue that urban centers subsidize people who live in suburbs and exurbs by providing them with attractive destinations and associated infrastructure without having to pay for it.

kickstart

Urban areas are where most capital is generated, that's a given, but isn't the question about transportation, not money?

The primarily objections to personal motor vehicles are the pollution, resources consumed, and physical dangers, right? Statistics show most accidents happen close to ones home, vehicles are the least efficient, and most polluting on short trips, and a large percentage of commutes are under 10 miles, ergo the biggest issue is in fact intraurban transportation, not "non resident" transportation.

B. Carfree

Urban residents are still subsidizing the suburbanites. We are the ones paying for the road repair and even road widening to support their car habits. Meanwhile we also get a generous dose of their pollution on our doorsteps. Clearly they should pay more for this privilege. And they do have choices. They can move close enough to give up their car habit, get fitter so they don't feel the need to drive or take the extra time involved with public transit. The subsidy from urban to suburban is part of why they aren't changing their behavior; time to fix that.

CrankyOne

I think it's actually the other way around. Taxes from wealthy homeowners in the suburbs subsidize inner cities. Most states have a resource sharing pool that facilitates this.

If every property owner paid the same amount then cities might subsidize suburbs because there is much less infrastructure (roads, sewer, water, etc.) miles per property in urban areas than suburban. In most states property taxes are based on land + building value though and while there can be some quite expensive and grand homes within cities the average is usually massively greater in suburbs. Core cities also have greater expenses per capita for police & fire.

kickstart

Urban areas may "subsidize" suburbanite transportation in regards to road spending, but its the suburbanites and urban businesses that subsidize urbanites in general. Its a symbiotic relationship, but that's not a transportation issue unless one is selectively looking to justify peripheral agendas.

And that attitude is why most people dismiss cycling advocates as flakes.
Most people don't desire, or have the resources to structure their lives around alternative transportation, "get fitter" is too silly to justify a response, and public transit has many more issues than the time and effort involved.

Maybe it would be best for the productive businesses and people to abandon urban areas, and just let those left to founder and consume themselves.



Outrageous and insensitive?


That's probably what would happen if it becomes too expensive and inconvenient to work or do business in urban areas. The net result being those with the fewest options and resources, who do the least harm, would see their lives go from bad to worse.

B. Carfree

Not in the West. There's very little resource sharing other than a small amount for schools, and that only transfers from suburbs to cities in California. In Oregon it goes the other way for the most part. The jobs, and most all of the amenities outside of television and tree farms, are in the cities. I can't count the number of public meetings at the county level wherein suburbanites have explained that they choose to live outside the city limits solely to pay lower taxes (and often lower mortgages as there is a trade-off between time/money spent on transportation and the value of the property). It's their choice, but I think it's high time we stopped paying them to decide poorly.

B. Carfree

Even from you that's lame. Sure, let's see how that works. Just what planet are you currently living on? Do you understand thing one about locating a business or running one successfully? Methinks you've been drinking too deeply from the fuel nozzle.

CrankyOne

How are you paying them to decide poorly? What do you recommend to correct this whole situation?

I-Like-To-Bike

More on the Paris mayor's plans:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/wo...politics-.html

kickstart

I think you need to reread my previous post, I was simply pointing out that would most likely be the outcome of your suggestions and why they're unrealistic.

On the planet I'm living on, social engineering by coercion harms those who do the least damage and have the fewest options.

In other words, I was being sarcastic.


BTW, I'm car free too, but its not an affectation for me.

Feldman

We're starting to get an integrated enough transit system around here so I could agree with that.
Wife and I are considering renting bike lockers at Delta Park for multi-modal trips. There's even local talk (bikeportland.org) about how many low car and zero car households are in Washington county.

spare_wheel

Meh.

If it's not an affectation then start to think like someone who believes, based on personal experience, that active transport is possible for most people. (And many of the other trips could occur via mass or shared transport.)

spare_wheel

Yeah...seeing that statistic was awesome.
Maybe a little social engineering (*gasp*) is preferable to a tragedy of the commons!

CrankyOne

What's good is that this is becoming socially acceptable or even desirable outside of NYC and similar east coast cities. Not long ago someone in St Paul or Seattle who didn't have a car was viewed a bit awkwardly. Fortunately that's changing and the change isn't just from younger folks but many older folks as well.