this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
239 points (97.2% liked)
Europe
8484 readers
1 users here now
News/Interesting Stories/Beautiful Pictures from Europe 🇪🇺
(Current banner: Thunder mountain, Germany, 🇩🇪 ) Feel free to post submissions for banner pictures
Rules
(This list is obviously incomplete, but it will get expanded when necessary)
- Be nice to each other (e.g. No direct insults against each other);
- No racism, antisemitism, dehumanisation of minorities or glorification of National Socialism allowed;
- No posts linking to mis-information funded by foreign states or billionaires.
Also check out !yurop@lemm.ee
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
So - how do they get in and out of the cities?
Park and ride- I'm struggling to remember if it's called that in English. They set up a bus line between a car park on the outskirts of the city and the city centre. So you just have to park and then jump on the bus. More specifically to The Netherlands trains and bikes are usually workable options as well.
Amsterdam actually has quite a few of these options dotted around the outskirts of the city, with trainstations and tramlines connecting them to the city.
They work well in the UK for people visiting a city. I’m not sure they work for residents. Parking for around 2 million vehicles surrounding London would be … something. Even 1 million
If you're living in a city you shouldn't need, and thus have, a car. Cars are for people living in the middle of nowhere but still needing to get around in a way that isn't covered by collect taxis, for everyone else there's public transport and a rental once in a while.
As someone who cycles to work and uses public transport where possible, there are still plenty of occasions where a car is very useful and a rental wouldn’t cut it.
Then public transport infrastructure isn't good enough. Also things like shop locations, e.g. noone is going to haul beverage crates in a tram so there's got to be stores with a proper selection within handcart to cargo bike or bike trailer distance, same goes for parcel pickups. And the roads have to be designed so that people feel safe using those methods.
I'd even go so far that in the vast majority of cases where you'd need a motorised vehicle you then want a van, not a car.
Agreed. Once we’ve changed shop locations, redesigned the roads, revolutionised public transport I’ll definitely look into it.
Honest question, does London have intercity trains or busses? I mean 2 million sounds like a number for this public transport thingy people sometimes talk about
Yes it does. So lets have a look. Let's say I want to take my family of four down to Devon to see my folks this weekend. On trainline, the cheapest return fair is £239, at not very convenient times. Better times brings the price to £362.
Add in the price if tube and bus at either end and you are looking at about £400 (a bit over $500) to get down there for the weekend. It's expensive? Yes it is - and partly because of the limited capacity on rail.
Now that could absolutely could be improved with additional rail infrastructure - but not by this weekend.
Of course, if I was travelling by myself - that's about £66 return and I have done that in the past rather than driving
Public transport?
Massive parking lots at the edge of the city. At least this was the recommendation of the Berlin Autofrei initiative.
Park and Ride mass transit in. It's the only compromise that can be made, really. No cars beyond allowing registered work vans/trucks and emergency vehicles.
One way or the other it's inevitable. We either voluntarily (sic) shut down inner cities to any traffic other than the aforementioned due to obvious reasons, or, if AI can ever actually drive us, than we go all iRobot where humans just physically can't keep up with the speeds and the windows blacken out.
Schiphol airport is also a train terminal.