Driving a car in Europe is becoming more difficult…

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revvinkevin

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I'm not sure if this is supposed to be in this forum or "As The Tub Turns". But anywho.... not a good thing if you are a "car guy" like I am!

(From today’s New York Times)

ZURICH — While American cities are synchronizing green lights to improve traffic flow and offering apps to help drivers find parking, many European cities are doing the opposite: creating environments openly hostile to cars. The methods vary, but the mission is clear — to make car use expensive and just plain miserable enough to tilt drivers toward more environmentally friendly modes of transportation.

Cities including Vienna to Munich and Copenhagen have closed vast swaths of streets to car traffic. Barcelona and Paris have had car lanes eroded by popular bike-sharing programs. Drivers in London and Stockholm pay hefty congestion charges just for entering the heart of the city. And over the past two years, dozens of German cities have joined a national network of “environmental zones” where only cars with low carbon dioxide emissions may enter.

Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into “walkers’ paradises,” said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation.

“In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.”

To that end, the municipal Traffic Planning Department here in Zurich has been working overtime in recent years to torment drivers. Closely spaced red lights have been added on roads into town, causing delays and angst for commuters. Pedestrian underpasses that once allowed traffic to flow freely across major intersections have been removed. Operators in the city’s ever expanding tram system can turn traffic lights in their favor as they approach, forcing cars to halt.

Around Löwenplatz, one of Zurich’s busiest squares, cars are now banned on many blocks. Where permitted, their speed is limited to a snail’s pace so that crosswalks and crossing signs can be removed entirely, giving people on foot the right to cross anywhere they like at any time.

As he stood watching a few cars inch through a mass of bicycles and pedestrians, the city’s chief traffic planner, Andy Fellmann, smiled. “Driving is a stop-and-go experience,” he said. “That’s what we like! Our goal is to reconquer public space for pedestrians, not to make it easy for drivers.”

While some American cities — notably San Francisco, which has “pedestrianized” parts of Market Street — have made similar efforts, they are still the exception in the United States, where it has been difficult to get people to imagine a life where cars are not entrenched, Dr. Schipper said.

Europe’s cities generally have stronger incentives to act. Built for the most part before the advent of cars, their narrow roads are poor at handling heavy traffic. Public transportation is generally better in Europe than in the United States, and gas often costs over $8 a gallon, contributing to driving costs that are two to three times greater per mile than in the United States, Dr. Schipper said.

Globally, emissions from transportation continue a relentless rise, with half of them coming from personal cars. Yet an important impulse behind Europe’s traffic reforms will be familiar to mayors in Los Angeles and Vienna alike: to make cities more inviting, with cleaner air and less traffic.

Michael Kodransky, global research manager at the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy in New York, which works with cities to reduce transport emissions, said that Europe was previously “on the same trajectory as the United States, with more people wanting to own more cars.” But in the past decade, there had been “a conscious shift in thinking, and firm policy,” he said. And it is having an effect.

After two decades of car ownership, Hans Von Matt, 52, who works in the insurance industry, sold his vehicle and now gets around Zurich by tram or bicycle, using a car-sharing service for trips out of the city. Car-less households have increased from 40 to 45 percent in the last decade and car owners use their vehicles less, city statistics show.

“There were big fights over whether to close this road or not — but now it is closed, and people got used to it,” he said, alighting from his bicycle on Limmatquai, a riverside pedestrian zone lined with cafes that used to be two lanes of gridlock. Each major road closing has to be approved in a referendum.
Still, there is grumbling. “There are all these zones where you can only drive 20 or 30 kilometers per hour [about 12 to 18 miles an hour], which is rather stressful,” Thomas Rickli, a consultant, said as he parked his Jaguar in a lot at the edge of town. “It’s useless.”

European cities also realized they could not meet increasingly strict World Health Organization guidelines for fine-particulate air pollution if cars continued to reign. Many American cities are likewise in “nonattainment” of their Clean Air Act requirements, but that fact “is just accepted here,” said Mr. Kodransky.
It often takes extreme measures to get people out of their cars, and providing good public transportation is a crucial first step. One novel strategy in Europe is intentionally making it harder and more costly to park. “Parking is everywhere in the United States, but it’s disappearing from the urban space in Europe.”
 
thank God it is becoming more difficult

I am more than grateful for this development.
Euro towns are made in a different way compared to American ones. Everything has to be accessible by walking (which is the natural way to see dealers, shops and places - and it is a lot of fun to stroll along and have fun, have an ice-cream here and see what's going on there).

Some carwise-built cities struck me like a lightning: In LA I got picked up by the cops for walking alongside a road that didn't have a pedestrians' sidewalk AT ALL!
I was shocked to see myself having comitted a so-called "crime" for not having lived a lifestyle that was forced upon me just by the very architecture of its builders. No thanks. A final late-night walk is substantial to me, no way back.

Myself now living in the very town where the automobile was invented I am very safe to say: Cars downtown (at least here) are not just a nuisance, but taking alternatives is more than rational and thrifty: Going to city center by car is like driving some 18-20 mins from here, costing you some substantial bucks of gas and a parking space (fees depending on the owner, starting at 3.50 per hour). Taking public transports is just 7 mins ride (2 stations) and will drop me right in the middle of things (tickets are 2.20 no less, no more). And you have stops every 400 metres or on request.

Besides: I HATE these stubborn SUV shitheads with parking in the alley of some building or on some handicapped persons's parking space - just having the emergency blinker on (excusing themselves: "Oh, sorry, just had to pick up some cash at the ATM"). Or those upper middle class mothers taxi-ing their prissy and syndrome-shaken daughters to some doubious horseriding event. (not even able to park backwards).
*BAAAARRRRRFFFFF* and OUT you go, all of them!
(Real and experienced drivers being the exception here, those are welcome to me, but unfortunately they remain a minority).
 
Makes sense to me

If anyone is as ancient as I am, you can remember the idea behind the Interstate Highway System brokered by Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower.  He being a general in the European Theater during WW2 (I hate that term and don't mean to offend but it's the most descriptive thing out there), was up against the wall in moving troops and the machinations of war through difficult or nonexistant roadways and byways. 

 

The IHS is NOT designed for the convenience of motorists, but to facilitate the movement of troops and equipment.  This is why they are of consistent height (bridges, tunnels) and width.  The fast travel of cars and trucks is just a secondary benefit.  This is the answer to the (not-so-amusing) joke:  "Why do they have interstate highways in Hawaii?"  Now you know the answer if you didn't before.

 

The EU and UK can hardly be expected to tear down their infrastructure and centuries-old precincts to accomodate cars and trucks, and they should be applauded for that.

 

It's a shame that I live 27 miles from New York City and a round-trip bus is $18 (USD).  I have no other alternative (train, trolley, ferry) that is within easy, or even workable access.  I would gladly take public transit if it were available.  It isn't.  And I must pontificate that in NJ and other states, hefty gasoline taxes are for the express purpose of funding public transit. 

 

Any other NY/NJ guys and gals out there who have gone out at 7pm for an errand and sat in beep-and-creep for an hour?

 

Rant over. 
 
People with physical challenges would be hard pressed to have to deal with all that walking!!! That's not very considerate by the authnorities for dealing with people with physical challenges.
 
I'm in the center of the #10 US metro. We have NO PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION AT ALL. We DO have building codes specifying parking spaces per-occupant. So yeah, the planners obviously EXPECT you to own and operate a car, and to hell with you if you don't.

There's pub trans within Dallas and Ft Worth proper, which have deteriorated into ghettoes over 40 years, but if you can afford the suburbs you're presumed to own a car. The neighborhoods I grew up in, lackadaisically locking doors and crime was something that happened in New Jersey, you can't leave a lawn sprinkler out overnight without getting it stolen now. Drive a car downtown Dallas today, lucky if it's still there when you come back for it.

Whereas I've flown into LAX and taken pub trans clear across the county to Long Beach for about $2. LA is a ghetto too but in ways it makes better sense than here. Oh, and if the FBI worked as well as LA pubtrans security, there would be NO CRIME AT ALL IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY. They are ON IT!

(Skuze the ALLCAPS but I don't have the utility of italics.)
 
Bob

People with physical challenges can get special transportation in the Netherlands i.e. a taxi to a reduced price. If they own a car, they can get a permit to drive the car in areas where other people aren't permitted. They also can get a parking permit to park in spaces where others are not allowed to park. However, European cities being as they are, don't give you always the possibility to park in front of the destination where you wanted to go.
 
I USED to live in the Wash DC area-the public transit there was GREAT!-The Metro subway and buses,VRE trains,taxis(they CAME when you called them)and airport taxi-limos-was nice on a trip-since they specialized in taking people to and from the airports in that area-Dulles,National,and BWI-you didn't have to wait long for one to take you to the airport-and he would meet you at the airport and take you home when you arrived from your trip.
Now I have a car(didn't own one in DC)Drive everywhere-the roads out here are designed for CARS only-crazy bicyclists use the country roads out here for bike tours or races-STUPID in my and others views-they block the road-speed limit on these roads is 55mph-bikes can't do that.the bikes are OK DOWNTOWN!But not out on the roads where the worksite I go to is.And there are bears and wild boar out here to add to their fun!These come out at night!There is a really LARGE black bear that hangs out near the transmitter site.A large boar has been seen out near here,too.Not nice critters.Afraid out my way CARS only.
 
I think the public transportation systems in the UK and Europe are marvelous.  Whenever I have traveled there I've been able to reach virtually any destination, even in some rather remote areas wthout the need for renting a car.  I have seen many accomodations over there for people with mobility issues and wish more of the US could follow the example, kicking our forced enslavement to cars in order to go about our lives.

 

The St. Paul/Minneapolis area where I live had a wonderful trolly transit system up until the 50's.  Almost anywhere within the cities one needed to walk only a few blocks in any direction to get on the system.  A person could get from Stillwater, 20 miles east of St. Paul all the way to Excelsior, way out in the country back then west of Minneapolis.  A shady deal between a councilman and a bus manufacturer brought an end to that.   Within a couple years all the trolly cars had been sold off, left to rot, or burned and miles and miles of tracks were ripped up.  Fifty years later now the trend is back to more efficient public transit and bike/pedestrian mobility.  Many of the old trolly car/railroad beds have been converted to paved bike trails and there are dedicated bike paths or marked bike lanes on roads all over town.  We recently surpassed Portland Oregon as the most bike-friendly metro area in the country.  The new train line from Bloomington to downtown Mpls has been hugely successful and they're in the midst of constructing a line linking the two downtown areas.  It's funny how attitudes have changed, and a travesty that so much transit infrastructure was dismantled years ago and now has to be rebuilt at the cost of billions and billions of dollars

 

 
 
I agree with you ptcruiser51!

I live in Bergen County, and trying to get anywhere quickly is a joke. I don't even think about going out until after 7 when rush hour calms down. Unfortunately work does put me on the roads when I would rather not.

I wouldn't mind public myself, but they are not convenient enough yet to get anywhere in a decent amount of time and especially there is no way to get to my job by one that I know of. It would probably take me an hour to do so, rather than the 10 minutes that it takes me now.

I just went into NYC on Sunday for the Parade, and a one way ticket costs $5.50. For my friend and I, that is $22 just in public trans. Could have driven into the city and found parking on the street for less.
 

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