You are reading a single comment by @Seeds and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@Seeds
I suppose it basically comes down to whether you think:
1) cars are inevitable and that's fine
2) cars are inevitable - a shame but life is shit
3) cars could be used a lot less but so what, they're not doing any harm, eh?
4) cars can and should be used a lot less
I reckon you hold either opinion 1) or 2), whereas I'd go for 4).
On the other hand I like being part of an oppressed underclass and I like having the moral highground (and mentioning it a lot), so the current situation of near-total car dominance is basically perfect.
Back to urban planning: if you really want to dissuade car drivers from entering the centre, you need to examine Sheffield as a test case. Despite the city's large geographical area and the expensive, privatised public transport network, very few people travel to the centre by car.
The council accomplished all this by putting a carefully-selected team of idiots in charge of transport planning, who instituted a fiendishly irrational one way system that is completely altered every three months and constantly disrupted by major roadworks. Plus they accidentally eliminated all parking. It worked a treat.