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City roads should be ‘ripped out completely’ to fight pollution, says government adviser
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
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this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2023
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Apparently, you are unaware that cargo bikes are a thing.
Right... and how many such bikes would you need to replace the carrying capacity of a single 18-wheeler?
This is not a practical solution.
Also, not discussed in the article and not relevant to my previous comment.
18 wheelers are not last mile delivery vehicles and have no business being in cities to begin with.
Um, yes they are? 18 wheelers deliver goods to stores all the time. How are you even trying to make this argument? What kind of vehicle do you think usually pulls up to a loading dock?
Grocery stores inside cities do not have loading docks. Their goods are typically delivered by this type of vehicle to curb-side offloading sites during off-peak hours.
148 E 17th St https://maps.app.goo.gl/a3wp7u1spEN4Vtjm7
Here's a grocery store. It's in downtown Little Rock (pop 204k).
Bet you anything you like all that cardboard got hauled away in an 18 wheeler (or a recycling truck).
To be clear (and reitierate) I'm not talking about heavily urbanized places, I'm talking about moderately urbanized places (which there are a lot more of). Converting a few inner city blocks in super dense cities is entirely meaningless in terms of helping the environment. For a solution/change to be useful, it will need to have wider applicability (to the majority of cities, which have <1m pop).
Such places exist as a direct consequence of car culture. Their existence is not a universal constant; they can and must be turned into heavily urbanized areas.
Their existence is far more constant than heavily urbanized areas.
This is highly unrealistic. Most people do not want to be packed in tighter with other people, they want more space not less.
Certainly not. Moderately urbanized areas are a historical footnote. They came into existence less than a century ago, with the emergence of automobilism and cheap fuel.
Heavily urbanized areas have existed for millenia.
The alternative is that they stop existing altogether when personal automobiles become too expensive for the average consumer to own and operate.
There are more people that do than you would think. Young people that are tired of being forced to live the antisocial lifestyle inherent to suburbia. People that recognize they don't need all that much space or material things, that don't mind sharing their outdoor green spaces with the public in exchange for not having to maintain it and having access to much more diverse businesses and entertainment, but cant afford to move to a big city because the demand for housing in them far outweighs the supply.
Why do you think American cities are so expensive to live in, anyways? It can't be because nobody wants to live in them.
There are only a handful of cities around the country with tax revenue and infrastructure that hasn't been wholly cannibalized by surrounding suburbs, as suburban infrastructure simply cannot fully support itself. Suburbs frequently must dip into revenue from areas with more density, and mixed use zoning that is more supportive of small businesses and takes more efficient advantage of sales tax revenue. The roads that all those cars and big box stores and winding neighborhoods rely on don't fix themselves, you know, and that certainly is not a cheap task. Roads that were literally paved in the middle of cities over entire city blocks and still divide them to this day. That is why our cities have largely shrunk since the 50s, not some universal american attitude towards density.
Most urbanists also despise mega-mart style stores as well, and would rather have smaller stores littered throughout neighborhoods
Reduces the dependence on cars as the stores nearby have what you need without having to drive super far and to buy so much because its so far.
They deliver goods to big box stores, not to the kinds of stores one finds in a dense, walkable downtown core area. I have worked in the delivery industry, and we served the downtown core entirely with 5-ton and 3-ton trucks and cargo vans. It's simply not practical to get a full-sized trailer in there.
I've never even seen an 18 wheeler in UK much less in london