It’s insane how we don’t even notice how much public space is devoted to cars:
For a typical residential street, it’s 2/3: two lanes of traffic, two lanes for parking, vs two sidewalks. All are about the same width.
That primacy of the car is what needs to change. Autonomous driving could go a long way, by allowing offside parking and increased utilization of shared cars. But even before, just inconveniencing drivers by eliminating one lane of parking would open up enough space to accommodate safe bike and scooter lanes.
Next up is the wasteland of endless parking lots the US is so fond of, and that unnecessarily decreases density to maybe a third of what’s easily possible. But it’ll take far more time to heal that particular hellscape.
Strongly agree with this! The problem for SF is that it also needs buy in from the rest of the Bay Area to continually upgrade mass transit into the city. If CalTrain had higher throughput to take more cars off the road, then replacing car lanes with bike/e-mobility lanes would be more feasible.
Yes, absolutely! I was just saying this on another thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16934196 There is so much space needed to accommodate the everyone-in-a-car model. The space for active use is only one part of it; where to put them when they're idle is a problem unto itself.
For a typical residential street, it’s 2/3: two lanes of traffic, two lanes for parking, vs two sidewalks. All are about the same width.
That primacy of the car is what needs to change. Autonomous driving could go a long way, by allowing offside parking and increased utilization of shared cars. But even before, just inconveniencing drivers by eliminating one lane of parking would open up enough space to accommodate safe bike and scooter lanes.
Next up is the wasteland of endless parking lots the US is so fond of, and that unnecessarily decreases density to maybe a third of what’s easily possible. But it’ll take far more time to heal that particular hellscape.