Unfortunately, New York City was built at a time when people rode horses, and its streets reflect that. And you can't just widen a street, certainly not in a city like NYC. You would have to destroy every building on one side of a street, and build new buildings, all for a gain of a few feet.
Large megapolises like NYC need to start exploring the concept of 3D streets. Instead of having a single street level, on the ground, start building skyways between skyscrapers, where both cars and pedestrians can move. Take 45th Street. You could build a second street 20m above the ground, straddling the buildings on the eastern side of the street. You build ramps at both ends, and you build your aerial street through the buildings. This would require heavy modifications, if not outright reconstruction, of the buildings in question, but this is the way of the future for large, dense cities in this millenium. Our current approach to city design is primitive, and quite frankly medieval. We still build cities the way we built them in the Middle Ages: independent of one another, standing next to each other. But as NYC's traffic woes show, this is not enough anymore. If you want to reduce traffic in large cities, without restricting car ownership, then you need to make way for more cars.
Or you could go underground. But I don't know if that's a viable option in a city with a subway, and straddled by rivers. You would need to protect your underground highways from water infiltration. And you can't hollow the ground below your city too much, lest the millions of tons of steel and cement and glass above the ground start collapsing.
When has building more roads for cars ever resulted in fixing traffic. The solution isn't to try and make the city more car friendly, it's to remove the cars entirely. Move to streetcars, subways, trains, busses, anything that moves crowds of people rather than 1-5 people.
Cars are such an incredibly inefficient model for moving people around in dense areas -- every person gets their own engine, several chairs, storage areas, and a couple tons of metal?
> If you want to reduce traffic in large cities, without restricting car ownership.
You don't have to restrict car ownership to make people stop owning cars. Just make the alternative much better -- why would I need to own a car if public transit served my every need and I could take a zipcar/car2go/taxi for those rare, rare cases when I needed my own vehicle?
> why would I need to own a car if public transit served my every need and I could take a zipcar/car2go/taxi for those rare, rare cases when I needed my own vehicle?
Many kids growing up in NYC rarely get to leave the city. They don't get to go upstate, see real nature and open spaces, go camping, hike a big mountain, swim in a natural lake, or experience the things that a large city cannot offer. Many never get a drivers license, rendering them immobile outside a major city, locking them in place.
For families in NYC that do not own a car, the only way to access these experiences is by renting a vehicle. Yet, New York charges a 20% tax on rental cars, and another 20% tax on paid parking spots, driving up the cost of renting a car to over $120/day, out of reach for many families that want to escape the city for a day or experience nature.
If NYC really cared about reducing inequality, and providing families access to experiences that everyone should be able to enjoy, they would eliminate these taxes and make car rentals/shares easier and far less expensive.
Can't you take Metro-North for a bit and then rent a car outside NYC (and its surcharges and taxes)?
Is it really faster to drive a rental car from NYC than to take a train out, especially on a Friday evening?
Also, one reasonable approach to this particular problem is to permit cars on West Side Highway and FDR Drive but not otherwise in Manhattan. You can go around the city core but not through it.
> Can't you take Metro-North for a bit and then rent a car outside NYC
It's a bit amazing, but the rental car companies have already taken this into account. If it costs $120 to rent a car in NYC, and $30 to take metro north upstate, rental car companies upstate charge around $90. It rarely makes sense.
> Ideally, the West Hide Highway and FDR would be torn up, buried
If you lived the thrill of driving down either of those highways, with their amazing views, tightly packed cars, so close to the water, you may disagree.
> Isn't the other alternative for those families to own a car? That's surely more expensive than renting one to go camping.
No. In many places, you can own and maintain a used car for as little as $200/month. In NYC, renting a car leaving friday at 5PM and coming back Sunday at 10PM will cost you about $400.
Latent demand does exist (not "induced", it was always there!) but it isn't infinite. There's a point where you could actually have enough supply. They just don't want to spend that much money and knock down that many buildings (give up Manhattan's density), so they say it wouldn't work.
Demand is only limited by travel time. The amount of traffic will rise to the maximum amount of time people are willing to endure reaching their destination.
Or you could just remove cars from the streets and replace them with much more efficient modes of transportation that don't require two tons of steel and forty square meters per person.
Why? This seems like an unnecessary optimization in a city like NYC where the population density already makes it largely unnecessary to own a personal vehicle.
I live in SF which is also among the densest cities in USA and in my 5 years here never have I felt like I'd need to own a car. They're inconvenient and expensive. Most of my day-to-day is easier to accomplish on foot because I'd spend longer looking for parking than it would take me to walk there.
Not having a car saves a bunch of money. Around $8,000/year according to a quick internet search on car ownership. That's a nice chunk of change.
Yes that means I have to get an Uber or rent a car sometimes. Especially for longer trips. About $2,000 last year according to my expense tracker.
Convenience and cost aside, optimizing for car ownership doesn't make sense from an environmental perspective either.
Taking public transportation in the bay area is incredibly stressful. I've had people try to fight me. I've had people threaten to stab me. I've had people smoke meth on the same car as me. Hell, last year one of my friends was robbed at gunpoint on bart. If these services were run by a private company, they would be shut down for safety violations.
I much prefer cars because it means I don't have to worry about vagrants, crazy people, and generally annoying assholes (such as those who play their music out of speakers instead of using headphones).
As a counterpoint: I choose to live within walking distance of where I need to be every day. Or an electric rideable or bicycle of some sort.
I did buy a motorcycle recently which does improve on some of that, but most of the improvement has been eaten up by the extra time it takes to gear up and park.
Commuting is probably the single worst thing you can do to your quality of life.
PS: yes I know this is a position of privilege. We’re on hacker news and I believe most of us share similar privileges
None of which are things I've encountered while driving. I bet if you ran the stats, you would be far more likely to be a victim of crime on bart than while driving in the bay area. There's a reason all of the women at my workplace drive instead of taking bart. They've tried bart and found it incredibly unsafe.
The only disadvantages of driving are traffic and parking.
Edit: You've edited your comment to add links, and they're all discussing crimes in east bay. I don't think most of the articles you linked to happened in places served by bart.
There are people I know who will not take BART alone. I agree that the perceived safety definitely effects ridership. I can't believe this is not taken more seriously by those who wish to encourage more people to take transit! After all, subways are normally considered better than buses which really is what could be implemented more easily!
I bet if you ran the stats, you would be far more likely to be a victim of crime on bart than while driving in the bay area.
Then run the numbers instead of wildly waving your hands. If you'd like anecdotes I've never been robbed at gunpoint on BART, nor have I ever had anyone threaten to stab me on BART.
The only disadvantages of driving are traffic and parking.
And air pollution, risk of a crash or injury, cost of ownership, parking, pedestrian deaths and injuries, etc., etc.
Edit: You've edited your comment to add links, and they're all discussing crimes in east bay. I don't think most of the articles you linked to happened in places served by bart.
If you check a map I think you'll find that BART serves San Francisco, Oakland, and Fremont.
It's very frustrating to discuss this topic with you because you keep editing your comments after I've replied to them. This makes it appear as though I've ignored points you made, when in fact they simply weren't in the version of the comment that I read.
Of all the links you added, most are criminals shooting each other or cops shooting criminals. Neither of those are likely to affect me, as I don't rob places or brandish firearms. Also, you had to go back 5 years to find some of those results. In that same time BART had thousands of thefts, around a thousand robberies, hundreds of violent assaults, and around a half dozen homicides. Considering how much lower the ridership of BART is compared to all commuters in the bay area, those aren't great odds.
Again, this is obvious to anyone who rides BART and isn't a fit male. If you're old, or a woman, or just a small/weak guy, people on BART will fuck with you. The problem has gotten much worse in the past few years.[1] It's caused ridership and approval ratings to decrease.[2]
I already mentioned it, but there is the concept of relative risk. There is also the concept of reference classes. Because of the way I drive and the vehicle I use, I am much less likely to die than the average bay area driver. Also, the number of people who take BART each day is much lower than the number of people who drive each day.
There are so many better counterarguments you could have put forward. Please consider that you may be mistaken. I certainly have done so. I wish that public transportation were superior, but I've discovered (and experienced) that it's not the case… at least not in the bay area.
Also, you had to go back 5 years to find some of those results.
Last I checked this is 2019 which means I went back 1 year to 2018 and barely scratched the surface. In fact that one wreck with the taxi happened this week. Everyone died.
In that same time BART had thousands of thefts, around a thousand robberies, hundreds of violent assaults, and around a half dozen homicides.
And how many fender benders, DUIs, random Tesla mishaps, overturned big rigs, etc. have there been in that time? How many pedestrians have been injured or killed? How many cars have been broken into or vandalized (I know property crime isn't much of an issue in San Francisco)?
Considering how much lower the ridership of BART is compared to all commuters in the bay area, those aren't great odds.
BART is the second most used transit system behind Muni. Somewhere around 500,000 daily riders versus 750,000 for Muni. That's not a particularly small proportion of commuters.
Meanwhile the Bay Area has just about the worst traffic in the nation, and somehow you want me to believe that being stuck in traffic isn't stressful? Okay then.
Car ownership isn't affected. It's car usage within the city that would be banned.
There are much better transit options for dense cities like subways, light rail, bikes, and small electric shuttles. I do agree with skyways though. It would be great to have multiple levels of pedestrian and bike transit that isn't shared with heavier vehicles, and the views would be fantastic. It reminds me of the Highline: https://www.thehighline.org/about/
How would you get cars up to the roads 20m above the ground? How would you handle maintenance of buildings connected to suspended roads? Are there seismic safeguards for structures like this?
All real questions, I'm fascinated by this idea but clueless as to how it could be implemented.
There's no reason for it, we should continue removing cars from the roads because then there is no traffic. I think the incoming toll for cars to enter manhattan below 42nd or so, plus removing through traffic on 14th st, are great steps.
As a corollary to that, I can’t believe that the FDR is only 3 lanes at most points. It’s ridiculous for a road with that should in practice be a highway.
Large megapolises like NYC need to start exploring the concept of 3D streets. Instead of having a single street level, on the ground, start building skyways between skyscrapers, where both cars and pedestrians can move. Take 45th Street. You could build a second street 20m above the ground, straddling the buildings on the eastern side of the street. You build ramps at both ends, and you build your aerial street through the buildings. This would require heavy modifications, if not outright reconstruction, of the buildings in question, but this is the way of the future for large, dense cities in this millenium. Our current approach to city design is primitive, and quite frankly medieval. We still build cities the way we built them in the Middle Ages: independent of one another, standing next to each other. But as NYC's traffic woes show, this is not enough anymore. If you want to reduce traffic in large cities, without restricting car ownership, then you need to make way for more cars.
Or you could go underground. But I don't know if that's a viable option in a city with a subway, and straddled by rivers. You would need to protect your underground highways from water infiltration. And you can't hollow the ground below your city too much, lest the millions of tons of steel and cement and glass above the ground start collapsing.
Tl;dr we need to start building Coruscant.