alt Hacker NewsThere is some clear bias and green agenda in the way this has been written, which to be fair it's very common in Europe. As the EU continues its course to ban the sale of ICE cars by 2035, the argument of "fewer cars make for cleaner air" is gradually losing weight. As more and more EVs hit the streets, the argument against cars is more ideological, about lifestyle. It's about collectivism, about giving up individual transport in favour of public alternatives. It's happened in London, where a clear anti-car agenda is being disguised as a pro-clean air agenda. Almost the entire city now has a 20 mph speed limit "to reduce emissions" but, if that was the truly the objective, then I should be able to drive faster with an EV.
Or maybe the angle they're trying to go for is another very European problem: cities are no longer designed for the people who live there, but for the people who visit them. Barcelona in particular has become a theme park, Venice has been one for decades. Entire neighbourhoods looks their soul so we can have more Airbnbs and drunk tourists. Sad times.
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As a resident of this city. The clean air is one thing. EV could give us that and offset the pollution where the batteries are made and recycle.
But the main gain, as someone paying taxes there: is the reclaim of public space for human to enjoy.
Its a cliché to say that Paris is pretty and its so much more enjoyable on a stroll along the bank of the seine that on a freeway at 20 miles/h. ( that freeway was permajamed )
> the argument of "fewer cars make for cleaner air" is gradually losing weight.
Particles from tyre wear are a big contributor to local air pollution from cars - while they don't travel as far as CO2 to cause the larger scale problems, it's still going to be a local problem from electric cars, and since electric cars are generally heavier than equivalent petrol cars, that does mean they give off more tyre dust.
Large car thoroughfares also didn't do much for the soul of cities and neighbourhoods.
Yes it is ideological: cars kill cities, kill communities and are bad for everyone involved. They are dangerous to drivers and non drivers alike and are deeply anti social. We need less cars everywhere period.
Putting cars in cities was also deeply ideological. It was about segregation and as a way to extract as much resources from people as possible. The imposition of cars was about turning people into consumers who only point was to purchase goods and services.
We didn’t choose cars- they were pushed on societies through a decades long propaganda campaign.
> It's happened in London, where a clear anti-car agenda is being disguised as a pro-clean air agenda.
I don't know about London, but in Spain there is no disguise: you can find pro-clean air and pro-human strategies. Pro-clean limits, or straight ban, the access of ICE vehicles to some zones. Pro-human/anti-car limit or ban circulation or park for any car in certain zones.
The speed limit in London is at 20mph primarily due to safety, not emissions concerns. It takes approx 2x the distance to come to a complete stop from 30mph than it does from 20mph.
For the majority of journeys in London, you're sitting at a red light, or transitioning to the next red light. Not a lot of opportunity for sustained 30mph travel. Accelerating up to 30mph so that you can travel the 300 meters, and then stop for 3 minutes serves no benefit to you (because your journey is still predominantly waiting at traffic lights), but reduces safety for you & everyone around you.
I get why you'd bring these points up. I mean, really, they could make sense. but both "green" and "tourist" points don't line up at all.
to cut short lengthy arguments, just compare urbanism rules in the US and in the EU. the 4, 5, or idk 8 lanes roads you can find in some parts of the US with the at mot 3 lane (paid) highways.
it all comes down to "if you make more room for cars, there will be more cars". if you refuse to cave in for this and you actually provide alternative ways of transportation (bus, bikes, subway if realistic, etc etc), then the overall traffic becomes much smoother. only complaints never cease, but that isn't specific to "moving people around".
Why reclaiming city space is biased but covering the thing in parking lots is not?
> It's about collectivism
It's about the many other objective problems caused by cars besides the fuel use. Most obviously: they cause terribly inefficient land use (demand for parking + the roads themselves being congested), and are a physical threat to pedestrians and cyclists.
> but, if that was the truly the objective, then I should be able to drive faster with an EV.
That would be fundamentally incompatible with how traffic works and a nightmare to enforce.
Looking at TfL’s infographic about the speed limits [1], it is all about safety. In fact, it mentions “no net increase” to emissions. I think there is no such thing as an anti-car agenda, but perhaps there is an anti-death one.
1. https://content.tfl.gov.uk/the-impact-20mph-limits-and-zones...
… It’s about collectivism? If you’re such a rugged individualist that it reads this way, large cities are probably not for you. Like “we are trying to make the transport work mildly better” is the tip of the iceberg.
"green agenda" means what exactly ?
>As more and more EVs hit the streets, the argument against cars is more ideological, about lifestyle. It's about collectivism, about giving up individual transport in favour of public alternatives.
Making the city safer and more pleasant to be in is now communist?
>Or maybe the angle they're trying to go for is another very European problem: cities are no longer designed for the people who live there, but for the people who visit them.
It seems a reasonable conclusion that the people who elect the people putting these policies in place live in these cities.
Exactly correct, ULEZ and LTNs have created a mess in London. These policies are driven by socialism not environmentalism. Climate is the excuse, reduced personal freedom is the intent. Thankfully many citizens in the EU and UK are waking up to it, so I hope a lot of these authoritarian policies get reversed in the future.
Electric cars tend to be heavier than ICE cars. This means their tyres wear out faster, which is plastic dust being thrown up in the air. (We're still not sure of the health impacts of microplastics, but we do know they accumulate in various organs, including the brain.) They also throw up road dust, and we know that rock dust is really bad to breathe in. Air pollution is still present. Compared to ICE cars fitted with catalytic converters, electric cars are probably better, but just because you can't smell their emissions doesn't mean they aren't still reducing the air quality.
They're also still tonnes of metal hurtling along the streets of a city shared by pedestrians, which is inherently dangerous. (Less so than a bus, but there are also more cars than buses: you'd have to check the statistics to see how that evens out.) As for actually damaging the road (producing road dust, potholes, etc, requiring a resurface that off-gases for weeks afterwards): cars damage the road more than bikes, though that's not significant compared to lorries, since the wear is something ludicrous like the fourth power of the weight-per-axle.
Well a big reason for speed limits in cities is safety, that doesn't change with EVs. Another thing you mention is collectivism but cars are a very inefficient private use of public space, both roads and parking, so when such space is scarce it makes sense to restrict them.
The amount of brain farting someone can do the associated less cars, more bikes to cities being full of drunk tourists is truly something
> As the EU continues its course to ban the sale of ICE cars by 2035, the argument of "fewer cars make for cleaner air" is gradually losing weight.
Complete nonsense I'm afraid. An EV is about 50% cleaner and way quieter. That's literally it. There's no other real benefits of it.
An EV is still a car:
- Still pollutes: it's a 2 ton vehicle with rubber tires - manufacturing that is very damaging to the environment and the tires constantly wear down
- Takes up a lot of space
- Incredibly dangerous to anyone not in a similar metal cage (hence 20mph limits)
- Super expensive
Your point about banning cars being ideological makes somewhat sense, but must be contrasted in regards to actual numbers.
- EV share in greater Paris area is only 3%, far from being high enough to impact air quality. Overall, the effect of removing cars on air quality has been noticed and celebrated.
- parisians are overwhelmingly in favor of banning cars. Unlike big american cities, car has never been a dominant transportation tool. Paris subway was already built when the first massed produced cars made their way in the capital. Cars have never been part of the soul of any neighbourhood people wanted to live in.
- paris has one of the highest population density in the world: 20k hab/km^2, ranking 31th in the workd. As consequence, parking space has always been crazy expensive, on top of high rents. Similarly for travel time between two locations: I can’t imagine a car being faster (except late at night, for night club and bars), and I try to avoid Uber/taxis intra-muros. Furthermore, a single noisy vehicle is estimated to be able to wake-up up to 150k (!!) people at night.
- a large part of vehicles are actually… taxis and uber for wealthy tourists than don’t want to bother with public transportation. In that regard, pushing away cars frees space for housing, parcs, shops, making the city easier to live in.