Count On NYC To Go Car-Free....

On Sat, 17 Apr 2004 07:24:47 -0400, 127.0.0.1 wrote:
On Sat, 17 Apr 2004 02:01:50 GMT, Brian Wickham
wrote:

On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 16:20:06 -0400, 127.0.0.1 wrote:

On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 14:54:47 -0500, TCS
wrote:



You'd know it as the truth if you'd ever visited the city or lived there.
then why do the city housing projects have parking lots for the
tenants?

Let me guess. For their cars?

Here's another. why are the lots filled all day, every day?
because many public housing tenants don't have a job


Now I'm certain. You're a pathetic little troll high on crack.
plonk

127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 wrote:
Miguel Cruz wrote:
127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 wrote:
TCS wrote:
You'd know it as the truth if you'd ever visited the city or lived there.

then why do the city housing projects have parking lots for the
tenants?

What city housing project has a parking lot for tenants (other than a couple
spots out front for deliveries and handicapped drivers)?

most of them

In that case surely you could name one unless you were completely blowing
smoke. Let's have one in Manhattan, since that's where the conversation has
focused.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu

On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 04:19:17 GMT, Rita
wrote:

Borough % with zero vehicles
Total 5 Boroughs 54%
Manhattan 77%
Bronx 60%
Brooklyn 54%
Queens 34%
Staten Island 20%


Well, this confirms what has been true about NYC for a very long time:
In Manhattan, you might as well do without a car. In the other four
burroughs, there's the issue of covering the gaps between the transit
lines in and out of NYC -- the busses may not go everywhere you want.
That's why my maternal grandfather bought a car when he moved his
family to Queens Village in the '20s. And it probably accounts for
higher levels of car ownership outside Manhattan.





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On Fri, 16 Apr 2004 05:39:36 GMT, Miguel Cruz wrote:

..... Of the dozens of people I knew in college who grew up in NYC, only
a handful even knew how to drive. These days most of them have learned it,
here in DC the vast majority of my friends who live in the city proper
do not have cars, and a few never learned to drive.


This explains something -- why there seems to be this dichotomy
between "pedestrians" and "motorists," as if the two groups are
mutually exclusive. Well, for people who never learned to drive, or
drive very infrequently, that may be. But in the rest of the world
(that is, outside the Beltway and/or West of the Hudson), things get
blurrier. For instance, when I drive down to the Ithaca Commons,
leave my car in a parking garage, and go around on foot, crossing the
street between a couple of the shops I want to go to, what am I? If a
motorist always drives and never walks, and a pedestrian always walks
and never drives, then I have to be in no-man's-land!

Let's make it even more confusing: During a trip to NYC, I plan to
stay in Elmsford, and for the "city" portion of the trip, drive to a
Metro North station, take the train to Grand Central, and walk and use
transit around Manhattan. I never use public transportation home in
Upstate NY, but I use it more in Manhattan after driving to
Westchester County. What now?

Reality may be a lot more "multimodal" than some think, mainly becasue
you get out of the freakin' car. Occassional drivers are at the other
extreme, mainly walking, biking, or using transit, but sometimes
driving. This is one of the markets car sharing services like Zipcar
are going for.

We might as well stop acting as if pedestrians and motorists are
mutaully exclusive, when in fact, most people are a little of both.




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On 17 Apr 2004 01:25:34 -0700, (Joey Jolley)
wrote:

Nope. No cars at all. That's the future, including in NYC.


Doubt it.




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Michael Gallagher wrote:
Reality may be a lot more "multimodal" than some think, mainly becasue
you get out of the freakin' car. Occassional drivers are at the other
extreme, mainly walking, biking, or using transit, but sometimes
driving. This is one of the markets car sharing services like Zipcar
are going for.

We might as well stop acting as if pedestrians and motorists are
mutaully exclusive, when in fact, most people are a little of both.

While you're right that the distinction isn't as harsh as it sometimes
seems, there's definitely a polarity.

One of the ways this manifests itself is in very different concepts of urban
geography.

There are places that my suburban driving friends find easy and convenient
that I wouldn't dream of going to because they're hard to get to by
metro/bike/foot.

And likewise there are places that I find very convenient, that those people
avoid because it's so difficult to find parking.

This results in a warping of the internal map of an area. Within a city,
where a bike is substantially faster than a car, distances seem contracted
to me and elongated to some others. And in the outskirts, where physical
distances are long and roads boring and unpleasant to bike on, distances
seem much farther than they really are, while the comparative lack of
congestion and traffic controls makes them feel shorter for drivers.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu

Rita wrote:
A factor that affects my perception of "distance" is how interesting the
venue is to walk in. I can buzz around NYC without concern for how far
I am walking, but take me to suburbia visiting my kids and a walk around
a boring neighborhood with nothing to look at except houses, cars, few
people on the sidewalks, if, indeed, there are sidewalks, and a few blocks
begins to feel like miles.

I neglected that aspect - you're entirely right.

In general, I find that the fewer people out, the less I enjoy the walk.

miguel
--
Hit The Road! Photos and tales from around the world: http://travel.u.nu

On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 18:31:53 GMT, Miguel Cruz wrote:

There are places that my suburban driving friends find easy and convenient
that I wouldn't dream of going to because they're hard to get to by
metro/bike/foot.


Yes, and this is where a service like Zipcar can fill that gap.


And likewise there are places that I find very convenient, that those people
avoid because it's so difficult to find parking.


Right, so this is why my family figures the two best way to visit
Manhattan are to (a) leave the car back in The Other Cortland and take
Greyhound (or Amtrak?) all the way in; or (b) drive to a suburban
motel, stay there, and take the train in when required.

This results in a warping of the internal map of an area. Within a city,
where a bike is substantially faster than a car, distances seem contracted
to me and elongated to some others. And in the outskirts, where physical
distances are long and roads boring and unpleasant to bike on, distances
seem much farther than they really are, while the comparative lack of
congestion and traffic controls makes them feel shorter for drivers.


Well, even that's realtive. Where I live, in upstate New York, things
are not as packed in a Westchester County! So what you might see as
so hopelessly spread out you wouldn't bother, to me is packed and
congested to the point I wonder how anyone can consider it "low
density."

It's all relative, realtive location that is.




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On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 22:15:35 GMT, Rita
wrote:

I can buzz around NYC without concern for how far
I am walking, but take me to suburbia visiting my kids and a walk around
a boring neighborhood with nothing to look at except houses, cars, few
people on the sidewalks, if, indeed, there are sidewalks, and a few blocks
begins to feel like miles. So I can understand why suburbanites seem to
not walk much ....

Well, not really.

I've lived in a suburban neighborhood for thrity years now, and when I
was a kid, we'd take our dog for walks around the neighborhood. It
wasn't "boring" at all. When the weather's nice, you see people
walking their dogs, etc, kids going back and forth, no problem.

The real hardcore walking would be in someplace like Carousel Mall.
Bascially, you are not allowed to drive in the mall, so anyone meaning
to shop to they drop has to use shoe leather to get between the
stores. Some malls also have mall walking groups that are allowed in
before it opens and walk the length of it for exercise.

It's also worth noting that here in The Other Cortland (
http://www.cortland.org ), Main St. -- the "downtown" -- is a five
minute drive from the "outskirts." I've gone back and forth between
them for years without thinking twice about it. Ditto going down to
the Ithaca Commons, which is only five minutes from Pyramid Mall, and
there was a time I would hit both in one day. IIRC, Ithaca's bus
system, TCAt ( http://www.tcatbus.com ) has three routes to the mall,
and some years ago, those routes accounted for a growth in TCat's
ridership.

"City" and "suburbs" don't have to be separate unless want them to be.



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In article ,
Michael Gallagher wrote:

On Tue, 20 Apr 2004 22:15:35 GMT, Rita
wrote:

I can buzz around NYC without concern for how far
I am walking, but take me to suburbia visiting my kids and a walk around
a boring neighborhood with nothing to look at except houses, cars, few
people on the sidewalks, if, indeed, there are sidewalks, and a few blocks
begins to feel like miles. So I can understand why suburbanites seem to
not walk much ....

Well, not really.

I've lived in a suburban neighborhood for thrity years now, and when I
was a kid, we'd take our dog for walks around the neighborhood. It
wasn't "boring" at all. When the weather's nice, you see people
walking their dogs, etc, kids going back and forth, no problem.

The real hardcore walking would be in someplace like Carousel Mall.
Bascially, you are not allowed to drive in the mall, so anyone meaning
to shop to they drop has to use shoe leather to get between the
stores. Some malls also have mall walking groups that are allowed in
before it opens and walk the length of it for exercise.

It's also worth noting that here in The Other Cortland (
http://www.cortland.org ), Main St. -- the "downtown" -- is a five
minute drive from the "outskirts." I've gone back and forth between
them for years without thinking twice about it. Ditto going down to
the Ithaca Commons, which is only five minutes from Pyramid Mall, and

Uh, isn't Ithaca Commons that carfree shopping strip downtown and
Pyramid Mall is a large mall well north of Cornell? Take more than 5
minutes between the two, even if by car and you used NY 13/17 and sped
through town.