People are still free to drive to other areas, just not on all roads.
You could just as well be saying "why not let people drive drunk and at 100mph on residential roads, and let others can choose not to?"
Sure we could say that... or we could say it's legal to drive your car onto historically pedestrian-only paths.
But we elect people to try to make decisions that benefit the most people as best as possible, and it turns out that most people don't think that "any road that currently allows cars must always allow cars" is an inalienable rule that must be followed.
Yes we should debate these things - I assume very few people would support removing all speed limits or lowering speed limits to 2mph on all roads, though there's bound to be some variance in views about what goes too far or not enough.
But in this topic of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, you've got one side saying "wouldn't it be nice if residential side roads stopped being hugely used (thanks to GPS routing apps) by through-traffic, and therefore made much better for the people living there, and for pedestrians and cyclists" while the other side instead of engaging on that actual debate instead jumps to "they want to lock us into 15min areas we won't ever be allowed to leave! It's climate fascism!"
Your comparison makes no sense. A person is banned from driving drunk because it can result in people getting killed.
There is nothing preventing 15-minute cities from having both pedestrian walkways as well as roads.. as most cities ALREADY do.
And oh, by the way, even a 15-minute city will have to make space for roads for vehicles. When you change houses, you aren't carrying your furniture on foot between houses, are you? or for that matter, when you call emergency (911), the cops and emergency workers are not arriving by foot. Or when you make a house, the construction equipment, material etc are not being carried in by foot either. Also, the shops in your neighbourhood are not been replenished by suppliers carrying in products on their back.
So this idea that you can suddenly replace all roads with pedestrian paths is just completely unworkable.
Please find one example of roads being replaced by pedestrian paths? LTNs put a block at one point in the road, so people who live there can drive from whichever side of the block they live on if they're moving house (or even if they want to use their car for any reason!) They're Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, not Zero traffic.
The block is to prevent people using the small residential street as a through-path for motorists from other areas, not to prevent any vehicle from ever using the roads.
You could just as well be saying "why not let people drive drunk and at 100mph on residential roads, and let others can choose not to?"
Sure we could say that... or we could say it's legal to drive your car onto historically pedestrian-only paths.
But we elect people to try to make decisions that benefit the most people as best as possible, and it turns out that most people don't think that "any road that currently allows cars must always allow cars" is an inalienable rule that must be followed.
Yes we should debate these things - I assume very few people would support removing all speed limits or lowering speed limits to 2mph on all roads, though there's bound to be some variance in views about what goes too far or not enough.
But in this topic of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, you've got one side saying "wouldn't it be nice if residential side roads stopped being hugely used (thanks to GPS routing apps) by through-traffic, and therefore made much better for the people living there, and for pedestrians and cyclists" while the other side instead of engaging on that actual debate instead jumps to "they want to lock us into 15min areas we won't ever be allowed to leave! It's climate fascism!"