Ban private cars from Manhattan

I just got a Google reminder today that a year ago I was in Paris. Jeez, traffic was pretty insane, glad it's been reduced by 40%, lol. Though quite frankly I couldn't tell, used to spend quite a bit of time there, ex is French.

Yes, build lots of high-rise garages in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and New Jersey. I'm sure the residents out there will be thrilled.

I own a car and park it in the city, but do support much more stringent restrictions (or fees) on car use. I'd be happy to leave the car in secure parking in Fort Lee (there's a good sized park right near the GWB with easy access to the highways that I'm sure the locals wouldn't mind losing to a high-rise parking garage), but public transportation will have to significantly improve to make that a viable tradeoff.

I'm fortunate to be able to afford either the fees or the hassle. Maybe not so much the doorman, construction, hospital, or food service worker, who commutes in and work a non 9-5 shift.

I've been going to Paris for the last 15 years fairly regularly. The traffic today is so much better than 15 years ago, and the city is far more livable. I used to give myself 45 min to get from the Concorde to Gare du Nord, and now it's reliably 20 minutes or less. The traffic reduction is despite closing some of the major arteries by the Seine to pedestrianize them, along with Rue de Rivoli. The Socialist mayor wants to pedestrianize the entire historic center and the Square du Trocadero across the river from the Eiffel Tower. They have also banned older cars and are planning to ban all diesel vehicles.

If a city like Paris can do it, so can New York. It will take some adjustment, and some people will leave because of it, but the result will be a much more appealing and healthier city where people want to live. NYC will need to reinvent itself post-covid, and this is one way to do it.

And exactly how much revenue would that cost NYC annually? (Including tolls which don't go directly to the city, but which the city would end up paying out as the revenue would be gone to MTA, etc).

George, Curious how do repairmen who need to bring equipment, delivery etc work in Paris? And what do people do who live in Paris but need to commute out of the city say for the weekend or for their livelihood?

For deliveries etc, they use a combination of bikes, hand trucks, and mini-trucks like this (which has a Paris license plate):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/southerncalifornian/42859395350

For people who want to leave the city for the weekend, they have far better train networks in Europe than we do here. The suburban trains there run all the way from the far east to the far west straight through the city, as opposed to terminating at a station. Imagine being able to take a single train from the central terminal at Newark Airport through Penn Station then Grand Central and onward to Terminal 4 at JFK in the span of about an hour.

It's a question of priorities - they prefer public transit over cars. NY prefers private cars and subsidizes them heavily with free real estate, free roads, etc.

Paris model seems a little extreme from a commercial point of view but I would be supportive of charging for parking every where including in boros. Some type of monthly permit to park in the neighborhood of your residence.

The only problem with Paris’s wonderful mass transit is the problem with their unions, which like to go on strike very often, totally screwing up the system and the transit passengers

Just to keep MCR happy, I agree with 300_mercer.

Yay! I’ll take consensus anywhere I can get it. Now if we can just bring George into line, all will be good.

I have been to Paris twice. Once approximately 10 years ago, making it my most favorite city in the world, and recently for the second time. Certain parts of Paris are disgusting! I wouldn't consider living there is someone paid me! YUK!!!

Nowadays, I would say... Singapore has become a favorite of mines as far as living in a city. London, NYC, Miami.... Paris has gone down the drain.

Superlun, You do not mind the heat in Singapore and having to stay air conditioned indoors a big percentage of time?

Separately, I think when it comes to the choice between cities, there are many factors - opportunities, type of job one has, people, ties to community, family, lifestyle, cost of living relative to earnings, and weather to name a few. Hence, hard to rank cities in general. Also, a solution for cars which works for Paris may not work for New York due to established norms / habits / politics / commercial reasons. People do not like big changes in a democratic and diverse society but there is always room for slow improvements.

Paris absorbed more than its share of asylum seekers. They congregate in one area that Parisians have long avoided.

But real estate there is booming. Ever since Brexit and the election of Macron. Which points to my theory that the quality of government in a city and its country is critical to property values.

@George - Is it still the 19th arrondisement? That is the only part of Paris I wandered into on one of my exploratory walks some 30+ years ago where I felt like it was a different country altogether.

Macron is more popular than Mayor de Blah Blah? I know de Blas is scraping the bottom of the barrel but didn't think Macron was doing much better.

Separately, I have so many memories of Paris as a high school exchange student... Greve was the first new word I learned on the way to my host family's apartment from the airport; I believe the railroad workers were out. Also my host sister's best friend (ethnic French) blasting Queen's Mustapha out the window of her 19th Arrondissement apartment. Good times. My host father had a fender bender trying to drive me around the Arc de Triomphe, where the lack of lane markers reminded me of driving in the Middle East. It's certainly good to hear that Paris has reduced car traffic, and I agree that NYC could do more for both traffic and street parking.

To add to alexikeguchi’s point, as we’ve touched on before, Macron to DeBlasio is not apples to apples- who is the Mayor of Paris? Macron is the Head of State (POTUS if you will, Cuomo is you wanted to view EU as US equivalent).

I would prefer that they just tax cars so that people have the option to use it for critical things and create carve-outs for essential services.

Then slowly you can shift behavior without creating chaos. It's a pretty dangerous idea to just flip this overnight.

Also, at minimum, they need to make sure residents can park their cars in their neighborhoods or garages and drive out of the city!

Some competent leadership on the matter of reducing private cars would be one way to draw people back into the city. So far it's not happening.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/10/nyregion/nyc-streets-parking-dining-busways.html

Quote:

City officials have not presented any overall vision or comprehensive plan for redesigning the streets to accommodate more uses and have said they are waiting to see emerging traffic patterns as more people return to work and schools open for some in-person learning.

For now, they have taken a more piecemeal approach, including adding batches of open streets every few weeks and announcing five new busways to speed up service by taking cars off busy arteries.

But critics have faulted what some describe as the city’s reactionary approach and contend that the moment is ripe for an ambitious blueprint, much like other cities are adopting to permanently redraw the streetscape.

“I think we’re missing a huge opportunity,” said Bruce Schaller, a consultant and former city transportation official. “This is the time to reconfigure the streets. Traffic will fill however much — or however little — street space it’s allotted. Now is the time to literally redraw the lines.”