124 points
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Car brains are out in force for this thread, lol.

Apparently, if you can’t transit products by car or truck, directly to the front-door of every business, the city will collapse.

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74 points

That there are cities that have actually done this doesn’t seem to stop them insisting it’s impossible.

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31 points

Something I think is sort of ironic is that in my neighborhood most of the last mile delivery happens on bike. This isn’t because of a lack of automobile infrastructure but because there are too many automobiles. Nowhere to park or even idle the van for a short time.

I do also suspect it’s more convenient for the delivery person to hop off a bike at each stop than it would be to park a car and get out etc.

If I were a city planner I’d integrate that system into my strategy. Ripping out every road is of course hyperbole and clickbait, but ripping out every other road seems like a no brainer. But I seriously doubt converting 3/4 or more of the roads for autos into pedestrian/bike/tram/greenspace would shake things up too bad. Just make sure to keep main arteries open for automobiles and ensure there’s centralized parking garages (street parking is a blight) within a decent walking distance and I think people who need to have a car in the city will get used to it fast.

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6 points

Hey so I come from a european city from 778, with most of the streets having been the same for over 500 years now.

Heineken truck drivers manage to supply bars and restaurants throughout the city with little to no problems and most of that is pedestrian zoning with exceptions for deliveries and it works quite well.

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-23 points
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Name five, with populations higher than 50,000.

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29 points
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You know there are dozens of major cities that have converted major roads, and entire precincts, to foot traffic only… right?

Turns out it’s pretty easy to transport inventory in hand trolleys a few blocks as most major cities, especially business districts, are flat as fuck.

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23 points

Fuck_cars on Lemmy is great, I feel like I’m really fighting for the future every time I come here.

On Reddit it was just people trying to out meme each other

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14 points

Fuck_cars on Lemmy is great, I feel like I’m really fighting for the future every time I come here.

Lol

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12 points

These people also forget that “delivery trucks allowed” is common. Cutting out 95% of cars and leaving delivery vehicles is fine.

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0 points
*

I worry more about emergency services access…

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19 points

Emergency services have a lot of problems delivering care in current city traffic.

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1 point

Sure, but if they don’t have any roads to travel on what then?

But I’ve seen another comment mentioning the distinction between roads and streets so I guess that might explain why I can’t imagine how that would be realistic.

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-8 points

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

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

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-15 points

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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-17 points

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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7 points

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

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-13 points

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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71 points

ITT: trolls seizing upon a clickbait headline and out-of-context quote in order to make blatantly delusional strawman arguments.

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32 points

It’s literally two idiots contorting into ludicrous shapes just to stay mad about this. It’s wild.

WHAT ABOUT THE TRUCKS??? I am going to quote one clause of the article over and over to prove I didn’t read it and get mad at people who suggest that anything could change in any way, ever! Trucks are part of human DNA and the moment an 18 wheeler can’t smog up your back yard is when we have all lost our freedumb!!!

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18 points

People not realising the Telegraph is one step up from shitty xenophobic racist shitrags like The S*n

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-13 points
*

Ok, then why was an article from this source even posted to this community in the first place, and why is it popular enough to be at the top of the community right now?

If it’s such a bad article and source and does not represent the values of this community, shouldn’t it have a lot more down votes? And also fewer community members defending the content of the article?

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12 points

I upvote it because I see a headline like this and go “damn, based” and then I move on with my life without reading the article or the comments. I think that’s what most people do, man. It’s a coincidence that I noticed the votes to comments ratio and decided to check it out because when its this even it’s usually a shitstorm worth reading.

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11 points

If it’s such a bad article and source and does not represent the values of this community, shouldn’t it have a lot more down votes? And also fewer community members defending the content of the article?

I get the impression that the Lemmy “fuck cars” communities have a much larger percentage of concern trolls (case in point: you, frankly, who inspired the comment at the top of this chain in the first place!) than the R*ddit one did. It might be a function of smaller community size + relative ease of reaching “All” [what’s a good way of notating that for Lemmy, BTW?]. It could also be a difference in moderation zealousness and/or priorities, although I feel like I’ve noticed the same phenomenon across both !fuckcars@lemmy.world and !fuck_cars@lemmy.ml, so maybe not (I haven’t been paying close enough attention to be sure, though).

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4 points

Yeah, I’m sure the quote is completely out of context and the guy who’s also

called for people to limit the use of “personal care products”, “computers” and “printers” in their homes which he said were contributing to pollution.

isn’t just one of those “back-to-monkee, comfort is unnecessary” types.

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11 points

Not sure what his beef is with computers, but to be fair, laser printers and aerosol products like hair spray and deodorant really are pretty bad for indoor air quality.

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1 point

laser printers

Hot paper smells so nice though 😮

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-2 points

I really want people to continue to use deodorant

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3 points
*

Also ITT: a lot of people who didn’t actually read the article and are instead making arguments based on their feelings.

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3 points

Story of humanity.

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-3 points

I mean… it’s not a particularly in-depth article. Do you have a better source with more context for Dr. Fuller’s comments?

The burden of providing better context is on the people who support this point of view, not on the people criticizing what the article says.

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40 points

Gentle reminder: This site is basically a tabloid at this point and should not be used as a serious source. If you have to, at least use an archived version.

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32 points
*

I can’t read the article (paywall), but it seems to me that there might be a distinction between road and street that some people in this thread don’t know about.

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19 points
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I’ll quote the main bit, standard problems and he’s not wrong about the solutions. Why should London residents put up with rich out of London drivers polluting where they live? There is a tube and train already. Cutting down the number of routes for through traffic and turning the old roads into parks would be great. And exactly what is already happening in places with ltns

"He cited a north London councillor who described traffic as an “invasive species” that “swamps all other types of transport”. 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.”

This needed to be combined with a drive to get people out of their cars and into walking, cycling and using public transport, which would not only help tackle climate change but also improve health and so reduce pressures on the NHS."

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19 points

Not a horrible idea if you have solid, simple, and actionable plans to replace them with robust, simple, and effective public transport options. Otherwise… yeah, a bit too far.

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-23 points

Uh huh, and what about material delivery to stores, restaurants, &etc in the city? What about postal service?

We should absolutely invest more in public transit, but light rail and buses are not logistics solutions.

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17 points

Trains carry cargo all the time. I don’t think it’s too crazy to suggest light rail be adapted to do the same.

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0 points
*

Deleted

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-13 points

And we’re going to build rails to every store, restaurant, and other business that needs cargo pickup & delivery? And run a train to each of them, every day? And you think that would end up being more efficient/environmentally friendly than trucks?

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-15 points
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Sorry. Good luck transporting a washing machine or full kitchen on public transport.

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5 points

Who said we were abandoning all of them?
Street vs Road.

You can totally have delivery vehicles for stores on a street, but no other cars are allowed.

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-8 points

This is different from “ripped out completely”, which is what is proposed in the article. So the answer to your question is that Dr. Fuller said that.

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