alt Hacker NewsIt never made sense to me why cars and pedestrians need to share the same spaces. Why can't we have more efficient walking routes that are away from cars?
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if you have roads shared with pedestrians and cars (and bikes!) you can build denser cities.
I lived real downtown in Tokyo and my street was like "1.5" lanes wide (if cars were coming in both directions one basically needs to pull over and stop). I could just walk in the middle of the street. There was no sidewalk. No street parking of course. Cars would drive down at 15km/h or whatever, and slow to a crawl if people were in the street.
Straight lines are efficient walking routes, and ... well... that might involve just crossing the street directly! Every layer of grade separation gets in the way of that.
End result of all of this is less pavement to maintain, slower drivers (-> safer!), good walking and cycling conditions, etc etc etc.
Yes, we can do that by banning leisure cars trips from all dense areas.
What's that you say? Drivers are a major and rich political force and they will block such decisions?
Because cars took over the streets from pedestrians between 1900 and 1930 and no one noticed.
Hopefully when petrol hits $10 a gallon in the next few months more of the world will think about banning cars from high density areas.