Ekdog

I wish they'd do this in my neighborhood. What a great idea!

Here's What Happened When A Neighborhood Decided To Ban Cars For A Month | Co.Exist | ideas + impact

bikemig 

I love it.

CliffordK

So, they didn't actually get rid of the cars, they just moved them into a different neighborhood.

That has naturally evolved in the neighborhood where I used to live in Portland.
The city refuses to re-pave the road unless the residents pay for curbs and sidewalks that aren't needed.
The residents refuse to pay for the curbs and sidewalks (people walk on the street anyway).

So, the potholes have grown. Occasionally someone will throw a few shovels full of gravel into the bottoms of the larger ones.

It is better than speed bumps.

Ekdog

They only banned cars from the neighborhood for a month. What did you expect? That everyone would sell their cars?



Curbs and sidewalks aren't needed? Is vehicular cycling dogma now being applied to pedestrians?

Roody

Wow, I thought Portland was supposed to be really cool, but I guess there are still some pockets of dystopia. It doesn't sound like a very nice place to walk, ride, bicycle, or use a wheelchair. I can imagine riding through your neighborhood at a good clip after dark, then suddnly hitting one of those potholes filled with gravel. Yikes!

We have the same thing in Michigan but we call it "recession-era cutbacks" and "dysfunctional government."

CliffordK

Once the traffic drops down to local neighborhood traffic only, and mostly driving under 10 MPH, then the sidewalks really aren't needed. It is very popular street for people going out for strolls with their dogs, although there are still those people who drive their cars the 1/2 mile to the local grocery store.

As far as recession economics... the potholes were big around 1995... it now is 20 years later, and they're just bigger now. That would be quite some recession. And, it isn't really in the poor part of town.

I don't ride my bike 20 MPH on that street either. But, I hate speedbumps, so perhaps it is just better to pick one's path around the potholes.

tandempower

It would be interesting to see what motor-traffic patterns would look like if driving scaled back to 50% of travel with cycling and transit taking up the other 50%. If that happened, road-resurfacing could occur on a less frequent basis, saving the public purse plenty.

Potholes wouldn't get so bad if drivers would just avoid roads once potholes started forming. Then, those roads would be used for only car free travel for a while until the other roads began falling into disrepair at which point the roads with potholes would be resurfaced and car-free traffic would shift more to the eroding roads. Those roads could even be partially resurfaced for a while with smooth asphalt cycling strips without anywhere near the cost of redoing the whole road for motor-traffic.

This is how car-free travel and public spending reductions would go hand-in-hand.

Roody

At that point, it's the streets that aren't needed.

B. Carfree

Back when Davis had lost most of its bikes (mid-'90s) and our mayor was a wonderful artist who was the rare non-student renter, the city had plans to pave several alleys in the oldest part of town. The residents made a huge fuss and eventually convinced the city to leave the pot-holed gravel alleys just the way they were. The folks who live near/on the alleys were aware that a smooth surface would encourage increased speeds, which they did not want in their neighborhood.

We have similar issues here in Eugene. To put in formal traffic calmers (speed humps, bulb outs, diversions...) there is a complex process that is difficult to impossible to navigate. However, pot holes have no standards. Many of the routes I choose to use through town are on streets that have not been repaired because they tend to have lower traffic levels at lower speeds.

It's all in the context. Texas is returning many rural roads to gravel because the state does not want to spend the money to keep them paved. That's dysfunctional government. When local residents choose to have one or more parallel routes be structured so as to reduce traffic speed and/or volume, that's responsive, functional government.

nostalgic

The thought actually crossed my mind today about what a car-ban would look and feel like.

snowman40

What Texas is doing sounds responsible. Assuming they've done the proper research, it makes sense to have gravel versus asphalt roads. A road that has 100 vehicles in a day doesn't necessarily need to be asphalt. You want dysfunctional, take a look at Los Angeles and the Department of Water and Power (DWP), the DWP has a 2 trusts dedicated for safety and the highest on job injury rate of any public utility in the country. And the county supervisors allow it to happen. You can also look at Sacremento and see what they are trying to do to the "urban water users" versus the farmers. I'd rather a state let a road return to gravel than repaving it if the traffic volume doesn't merit a repaving.

Would I prefer to ride on freshly paved smooth roads, yes. And if that isn't a reality, I'll adjust with wider tires or different style of bike. As bicyclists, we have near limitless possibilities to equipping our bikes to match our riding conditions.

CliffordK

Perhaps they would just ban the cars and not the pickups....

Oh... that is what it looks like here anyway.

It would probably work in an inner city neighborhood, but it would require huge infrastructure changes to accommodate the more distant burbs.

Here, the nearest bus stop is about 4 miles away (4 buses each way weekdays, 2 buses each way weekends), and it is about 8 miles to the middle of town. I live just a little under 20 miles from Mom's house. About 4 miles to my nearest bus stop, and 2 miles from the nearest bus stop to Mom's house. According to Google, going from here to there on the bus, once a day during weekdays I can do it in 1 hr, 24 min. Otherwise, it would take between 3hrs, 56 min and 13 hrs, 27 min. The return trip is between 3 hrs 54 min and 15 hrs, 15 min.

if the town went car-free, then what about those that commute from out of town? Park & Ride?

Sometimes I like big things. I've hauled 400+ pounds on my bike trailer a couple of times. Those are heavy loads.



I haven't hauled a couch home yet... but I have thought about furniture a bit. Thankfully I'm not buying livestock feed.

snowman40

Well, urban planners would prefer we move there, no park and ride, no car ownership at all. You know, like most cities in Europe. Where they all work, shop and play near where they live. lol Cause that will work in the US, where if we were to spread out evenly there'd be like 80 people per square mile.

What pray tell were you hauling that was 400 lbs?

Mobile 155

Some cities maybe. But not all.
https://www.vtpi.org/avip.pdf
Moving the cars can create some problems.

Roody

Your town would not be able to ban cars unless they greatly fixed the bus system. And note that banning cars is not the same as banning delivery vehicles.

CliffordK

In case you were thinking I was exaggerating about a few potholes in Portland...



The first photo looks much improved from the last time I saw it. I think someone dumped a lot of very course gravel there to smooth it out a bit.

As far as recession cutbacks.... There has been minimal road maintenance for longer than the Great Depression lasted.

These are very low traffic neighborhood roads. Not good for high speed anything, but not bad for slowly picking one's way along with the bicycle, or in a car. Pedestrians are common on the street, as well as people walking dogs.

In some places, it can seem like one is riding in the potholes and occasionally hitting a piece of pavement

There is enough pavement to keep the dust down, and enough potholes to keep the traffic to local traffic only. And, thus, nobody has been screaming to get it fixed. It is a through road, but the access is a bit funky with a bad intersection on the western end (which would also naturally reduce all traffic including bike traffic).

And, in case you ask, this is also in a solid middle class, moderately affluent section of west Portland.

Blue Belly

dont forget, it's Portland we're talking about...

Roody

This "Keep Portland Weird" thing is cute on cable TV, but I'm not sure it should carry over into governance! Of course that's not up to me if all the people of Portland are happy with it. (Including the people who have to navigate walkers and wheelchairs on the local streets that you describe.)

I think paying for community infrastructure is a major issue in many parts of the USA.

Y'all know that I'm not a big fan of automobiles, but I do appreciate good streets, highways, and bridges. They are vital assets for any community that desires a good life quality and economic development. Like K-12 education, the public roadway system is a government investment that is estimated to return 100 or even 1000 times the investment cost. More than almost anything else, the benefits of good roads are spread evenly among all members of society, including the carfree citizens.

Remember, bicycles and buses need good streets as much as cars need them!

rhm

My wife and I lived in West Philadelphia, the University City neighborhood, for a while in the 90's. The pavement was in pretty poor shape, but that didn't seem to matter much to through-traffic. At one point the city decided they needed to repave the streets in our neighborhood. "NO PARKING" signs went up, followed by road barriers, and over a few days the parked cars were moved to vacant lots etc. Huge machines came through and ground up the asphalt and scooped it up, a nice clean job, exposing remarkably well preserved cobblestone pavement that was put down when the neighborhood was build ca. 1890. And then work stopped; the barriers went away, parked cars came back, and traffic returned. For a day or two we got used to the the occasional racket of a car hitting cobblestoned streets at 25-30 mph and slowing down to a quieter 15 mph. And then we got used to something more like silence, as all the drivers who didn't actually need to drive through the neighborhood on a regular basis found other routes to their destinations. It lasted about a month, during which they did various work on sewer lines and other stuff under the cobbles. There was very little traffic, and though most of the neighbors complained that the city should never start jobs they can't finish and so on, I thought it was pretty nice.

One day the "NO PARKING" signs went back up, the parked cars were moved to other streets, and the big machines came through laying down a double layer of nice, smooth, black, asphalt. And life went back to normal. Sigh.

Roody

Nowadays I hope they would have been smart enough to leave it with the cobblestones. City neighborhoods would kill to have beautiful stone pavement! Here in Michigan it's pretty common to strip back the pavement and leave it with the beautiful orange bricks. (we don't have cobblestone AFAIK) If the cobblestone is too rough for bikes and wheelchairs, the bike apths and sidewalks can be finished with something smoother, and leave the stones in the actual car lanes, where they are both attractive and traffic-calming.

corrado33

Some of you are a bit crazy. Leaving the roads bad to "slow" down traffic is a terrible idea. Why even have the road then? Bad roads/potholes cause much more damage to cars than smooth roads or properly installed speed control devices, and are much louder. I don't drive often anymore, but if my neighborhood had potholes up and down the roads for years at a time, I would surely complain.

Slowing traffic is a matter of enforcement and well installed speed control devices, not having crappy roads. I personally hate speed bumps, especially the poorly installed ones, but if you want people in your neighborhood to slow down, write to your congressman/person in charge of your streets and ask them to get a speed bump installed.

I would love to live in a city with no cars, but today, for the majority of people, a car (and subsequently roads) are a necessity. Bikers are the minority.

rhm

Maybe we could distinguish between "roads" and "streets"? I'm all for good roads. But residential streets are not the same thing. I don't want to change this into a discussion of semantics, but I think of it this way: roads divide neighborhoods; streets are part of the neighborhood.

CliffordK

It is easier to get a pothole in a street than to get a speedbump installed.

And, for the most part one can avoid drivng through the potholes.... even if there are quite a few. So, they are less bumpy than the speedbumps which one usually can't avoid.

As far as stuff found under the street during paving, in Eugene, some old trolly tracks were dug up when repaving around the University. But, the cobbles rhm mentioned in Philly would have been an interesting find..... if they were still in reasonable shape. Perhaps they'll come back again in a few decades.

jfowler85

Obviously not, which is the point. This whole thing is nothing but a faux rebellion...like the band name Taking Back Sunday. Taking back Sunday...from what? What exactly did the neighborhood accomplish? People still used their cars, in fact it was encouraged by the shuttles being set up.

All that happened was that the neighborhood rerouted traffic and parking....to some other neighborhood. What is the benefit of any of this? It got a big hoorah, but seems to have accomplished very little.

Roody

I very much doubt if they will find cobblestones outside the areas that were settled very early, such as the Eastern Seaboard. On this side of the Alleghanies, the original hard surface was brick, which is also much prized by people who want to have more character in their neighborhoods. Brick is smooth enough for bikes, wheelchairs and pedestrians, while cobblestone can be a little too rough.