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City roads should be ‘ripped out completely’ to fight pollution, says government adviser (www.telegraph.co.uk)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/fuckcars@lemmy.world
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[+] -8 points 2 years ago (2 children)

What is your proposed alternative solution for logistics in any moderately dense urban area? Like never mind New York, you couldn't make this work in Little Rock.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Why don't you read the article? It's all spelled out right there.

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  • [+] -15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    What? No it isn't.

    No part of the article discusses replacing the logistics function of cargo vehicles, but it does propose ripping out the road infrastructure they run on.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Apparently, you are unaware that cargo bikes are a thing.

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  • [+] -18 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Right... and how many such bikes would you need to replace the carrying capacity of a single 18-wheeler?

    This is not a practical solution.

    Also, not discussed in the article and not relevant to my previous comment.

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  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    18 wheelers are not last mile delivery vehicles and have no business being in cities to begin with.

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  • [+] -15 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Um, yes they are? 18 wheelers deliver goods to stores all the time. How are you even trying to make this argument? What kind of vehicle do you think usually pulls up to a loading dock?

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    What kind of vehicle do you think usually pulls up to a loading dock?

    Grocery stores inside cities do not have loading docks. Their goods are typically delivered by this type of vehicle to curb-side offloading sites during off-peak hours.

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  • [+] -12 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    148 E 17th St https://maps.app.goo.gl/a3wp7u1spEN4Vtjm7

    Here's a grocery store. It's in downtown Little Rock (pop 204k).

    Bet you anything you like all that cardboard got hauled away in an 18 wheeler (or a recycling truck).

    To be clear (and reitierate) I'm not talking about heavily urbanized places, I'm talking about moderately urbanized places (which there are a lot more of). Converting a few inner city blocks in super dense cities is entirely meaningless in terms of helping the environment. For a solution/change to be useful, it will need to have wider applicability (to the majority of cities, which have <1m pop).

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    I’m talking about moderately urbanized places (which there are a lot more of).

    Such places exist as a direct consequence of car culture. Their existence is not a universal constant; they can and must be turned into heavily urbanized areas.

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  • [+] -7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Their existence is not a universal constant

    Their existence is far more constant than heavily urbanized areas.

    they can and must be turned into heaviliy urbanized areas

    This is highly unrealistic. Most people do not want to be packed in tighter with other people, they want more space not less.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago

    Their existence is far more constant than heavily urbanized areas.

    Certainly not. Moderately urbanized areas are a historical footnote. They came into existence less than a century ago, with the emergence of automobilism and cheap fuel.

    Heavily urbanized areas have existed for millenia.

    This is highly unrealistic. Most people do not want to be packed in tighter with other people, they want more space not less.

    The alternative is that they stop existing altogether when personal automobiles become too expensive for the average consumer to own and operate.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    Most people do not want to be packed in tighter with other people,

    There are more people that do than you would think. Young people that are tired of being forced to live the antisocial lifestyle inherent to suburbia. People that recognize they don't need all that much space or material things, that don't mind sharing their outdoor green spaces with the public in exchange for not having to maintain it and having access to much more diverse businesses and entertainment, but cant afford to move to a big city because the demand for housing in them far outweighs the supply.

    Why do you think American cities are so expensive to live in, anyways? It can't be because nobody wants to live in them.

    There are only a handful of cities around the country with tax revenue and infrastructure that hasn't been wholly cannibalized by surrounding suburbs, as suburban infrastructure simply cannot fully support itself. Suburbs frequently must dip into revenue from areas with more density, and mixed use zoning that is more supportive of small businesses and takes more efficient advantage of sales tax revenue. The roads that all those cars and big box stores and winding neighborhoods rely on don't fix themselves, you know, and that certainly is not a cheap task. Roads that were literally paved in the middle of cities over entire city blocks and still divide them to this day. That is why our cities have largely shrunk since the 50s, not some universal american attitude towards density.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago

    They deliver goods to big box stores, not to the kinds of stores one finds in a dense, walkable downtown core area. I have worked in the delivery industry, and we served the downtown core entirely with 5-ton and 3-ton trucks and cargo vans. It's simply not practical to get a full-sized trailer in there.

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  • [+] -17 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Oh, this lie?

    Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of car journeys were under two miles and 60 per cent under five miles. “You could really walk two miles. By the time you get in the car, parked it, you have arrived there in the same time,” said Dr Fuller.

    Yeah that's totally going to get people to charge their behavior and not piss them off.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    By the time you get in the car, parked it, you have arrived there in the same time,” said Dr Fuller.

    This lie?

    Speaking solely for myself here: I used to have a mental block that prevented me from calculating travel time by different modes equitably. If it was a 10 minute drive, or a 20 minute walk, my calculation was anchored to the 10-minute drive as the "real" amount of time, and so the 20 minute walk always felt like a waste of 10 minutes. I think it's easy to fall into this trap, especially when our lives are busy and we're trying to save time anywhere we can. But a 20 minute walk is 20 minutes less I have to go to the gym, and 10 minutes less that I have to be hyper alert and driving a 2T vehicle around other people.

    Additionally, this mental block existed for me around time spent parking and walking from my car to my destination. Obviously I had to walk from my car, so my brain saw that as +0 minutes. But when I calculated it, I found that I was often spending meaningful amounts of time on this leg:

    My urban office is 6 miles from my suburban home (metro area approx 2.5MM people). Even with a highway for half the trip (which gets clogged with commuter and freight traffic during rush hours) the drive is approximately 20-25 minutes during light traffic, or as long as 40 minutes if traffic is particularly heavy. I have to park in a garage, which involves circling for a spot, and then have a 15 min walk to my office. On a good day, 35 minutes. On a bad day, almost an hour.

    But taking my ebike (which I only bought because of the many steep hills between me and work) through back roads and sidestreets, it's 35-40 minutes door to door. Now I get 35-40 minutes of exercise without having to go to the gym, and my vehicle is parked right at thr exit to my building. Plus, I can charge the ebike with company electricity instead of having to pay for gas for my car.

    Yeah that's totally going to get people to charge their behavior and not piss them off

    It pisses a lot of people off when they can't park right next to their destination. But that already happens. There is a limited amount of space at places people want to be, so someone will always have to park farther away. Circling the nearby streets for parking is also annoying as fuck, and a huge waste of time.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Currently, no. But with mixed zoning, it would become more amenable to change over time.

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  • [+] -13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    This is a fantasy. It can't be implemented in large scale in any practical sense.

    Centralization of distribution and centralization of production is always more efficient. You aren't going to put dairy farms next to apartment buildings next to orchards next to paper manufacturing plants next to microchip fabricators next to restaurants next to family homes next to waste water treatment next to hospitals next to bookstores next to power generators next to garbage incinerators next to grocery stores...

    These things get separated from each other for good reason, and running rail lines to all of them will never be practical. There will always be a need to fill the gap with small, independently powered vehicles for cargo transport.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    You know, for someone who complains about other people making strawman of them, you sure do seem fond of it yourself.

    Someone: "We should reduce our dependency on cars and shift our infrastructure planning toward other modes of transport wherever possible."

    You: "SO YOU WANT TO TEAR OUT ALL ROADS EVERYWHERE AND EXECUTE PEOPLE FOR OWNING CARS?!?1!?!1?"

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  • [+] -10 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    "We should reduce our dependency on cars and shift our infrastructure planning toward other modes of transport wherever possible."

    This is not what the article says.

    SO YOU WANT TO TEAR OUT ALL ROADS EVERYWHERE

    This is closer to what the article says.

    A government adviser has called for roads in cities to be “ripped out completely” to combat air pollution.

    This is the first paragraph of the article.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    ...and then you actually read the article past the misleading click bait, right? The Telegraph is a conservative paper, they have an interest in smearing anyone who challenges the status quo.

    Up to 80 per cent of people living on arterial routes in urban areas did not own cars, with most of the pollution being caused by motorists driving into and through their communities.

    Pointing to the “greening” of city centres such as Seoul and Utrecht, he said: “We should start changing our cities and actually start thinking about ripping out road infrastructure and turning them into green spaces or green transport corridors. We have to look beyond traffic.”

    That is not something a reasonable person would interpret as ripping out 100% of roads. Especially since he references real projects like Seoul.

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