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People Hate the Idea of Car-Free Cities—Until They Live in One
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this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Is there a FAQ about living in car free cities? For example, how do you travel to another city? What do you do if the city has high slopes making walking and biking too hard? Or how do elders deal with what other citizens would take for granted in terms of mobility?
Usually by bus or train.
Walking is good for you, biking is not too popular in cities with slopes, but electic bikes are changing that.
There is definitely less mobility, but that is part of getting older isn't it? Usually they just walk a bit slower and use busses and taxies.
Electric mobility scooters as well. I'm sure those are capable of much better range now, and it should keep getting better, and everything they need would ideally be close by
Wouldn't the elderly be a huge benefiter of a car free city? You get old enough or frail enough that you can't drive. Then what?
I like in a city that provides free busses and trains to those aged 65+ if they ride in off peak hours, and it's heavily used. This is in a city designed around cars.
Also "car free" doesn't have to mean literally zero cars allowed, but just build and layout the city so you never have to use one for daily errands.
I live next to a grocery store and it's literally the best thing ever, grocery trips take 10 minutes max, I only end up using the car on weekends for hobbies or to visit family and friends.
From what I've seen from Not Just Bikes, there's also car-sharing. There are services to make it super easy to borrow a car for as little as a few hours if you just need to lug some furniture or something.
"Car-free cities" gave the wrong idea. I'd call them walk-friendly cities instead, but I guess that ship has already sailed. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and first-hand experience.
The term "city" can actually be confusing too since it might mean the most central district of a metropolitan area, or it could mean the whole metropolitan area. There is some desire to make the most central parts car free in the way you thought (usually street by street in the centre of the CBD etc), but generally the broader area will not be.
Train or car. Car free mostly refers to inner city trips, for special occasions it's totally fine to use a car (e.g. moving, buying something big, a weekend trip, etc)
Bus, ebikes, other types of electric assist stuff, walking. Crazy steep slopes do put a limit on exclusively human powered mobility (i.e. walking and cycling), but those places are incredibly rare.
A walkable city features amenities close by, plenty of benches to rest, and a solid bus system. There are absolutely no issues for people with restricted mobility. This applies to people with disabilities as well btw.
In fact I would turn that question around: how do elders deal with the requirement to drive a car to get groceries, etc? Isn't that like super duper dangerous?
Thank you for your detailed reply. I was under the impression that cars and buses were out of the question. This clarifies a lot. Ebikes and electric devices, however, sound to me like something futuristic, probably because I live in latinamerica.
Steep-slope places are not the norm almost anywhere, but they are not really that scarce here. We probably would need to make some technological catch up.
About elders driving, well, it's common that they have cars although they can't/shouldn't drive them. Some younger ones can step in and volunteer, usually family members, but not only. An arrangement can always be made when young people hardly owns a car.
There are kits enabling you to convert a muscle bike (push bike) into an e-bike. If you get one with a torque sensor, then it will detect how hard you push on the pedals and drive the motor proportional to that force. So you still must pedal but it amplifies your effort which preserves the natural feel and control of pedaling. It essentially makes the hills go away; a hilly place becomes a flat place.
No worries Switzerland and Austria have you covered. Gondolas are only suitable for people and lighter loads, but funiculars can carry a ton of weight and can be built quite steep indeed, Chile has quite a few of them. In less extreme cases there's good old rack railways. Funiculars are actually the oldest type of public transport in the world, invented before the industrial revolution, back then operated by water power (fill a tank in the top car, it will pull the bottom car up), and rack rail isn't exactly new. The oldest were built to get stuff up and down from castles. Gondolas of the Mi Teleficero type are quite a bit newer and can reach quite impressive throughput numbers as the gondolas are unhooked from the wire in stations to make it possible to have a fast wire while not having to sprint when getting on (usually they move about at like 1/2 walking pace in the stations but you can also stop them completely for the elderly).
Judging by some folks I've seen driving around with oxygen tubes in their noses: They just drive. And, yes, it is dangerous.
Trains.
Cool stuff
PEVs
It's cool and all, but trains have fixed routes that can't take you almost everywhere. Of course I'd prefer trains over highways, just stating the current fact. Take for example every city I've lived in Mexico: trains never were an option to travel between cities. That's changing, fortunately.
PEVs are still not very common around here, but that answers some questions. Thanks for your reply.
sensible places have enough railways that trains can practically take you everywhere, used to be that here in sweden we had railways even to teensy tiny villages a lot of the time.
Currently they alll use little electric mobility scooters, in cycle lanes when available, bacause its too dangerous to be any where there are cars here in Australia.
How do those with epilepsy get around, they can't drive at least they can't here in Australia. One lady with epilepsy I knew rode a little electric scoot, she loved having her independence.
What happens to people when they loose thier license in the US ?
I couldn't tell. Barely know the US and it's been a long time. Those were questions over the top of my head, out of curiosity, and coming from the wrong assumption that these cities were totally car-free with the only exception of emergency vehicles.
Car co-ops is one way.
I have a car, but I'm also in one as it gives me access to different vehicle types that I sometimes need.
To get some places here I also need to take a ferry, and walking on and renting a car on the other end can be situationally cheaper.
E-bikes and regular bikes with good gearing. And walking up slopes generally isn't too challenging it's just slow. Infrastructure can help here too by making sure there are paths that don't go up hills unnecessarily. Fast and frequent public transport provides another option where walking and biking is less viable.
Trains and buses. Car as a last resort (preferably one that is hired rather than owned, and preferably electric rather than an ICE).
Elderly people can't (or shouldn't) drive either so better walkability = better for the elderly since it gives options to get around without relying on a car. Good infrastructure design can help with disability access, and many disabled people can't drive anyway.
Train, bus, electrical bike, rideshares for the last mile maybe.
Get off and walk, use a bike with electrical assistance, use a different type of mobility assistance if i am very physically impaired.
See above + Elders are typically more physically able due to having lived a life of regular everyday exery + their everyday destinations are not several miles away + "car free" doesn't paradoxically mean free of cars, just almost all cars - ambulances are still needed for example - as such if a person is so impaired that no mobility assistance is enough to get them to their destination, then they can still be taxied by help.
public transport of course. buses go uphill you know.
You shift to a lower gear and go up the hill