Traffic in U.S.
cities is a large issue.
For instance, in Los Angeles, the average
commuter spends nearly five cumulative days a year stuck
in traffic. In Midtown Manhattan, the average car
travels 4.7 miles per hour.
That's barely faster than the average walking speed.
So which is faster?
Walking one mile across midtown Manhattan or taking
the same route using a rideshare. To test this
producer Zach Green went from 47th and Madison over
to 47th and 10th Ave in a car while I walked the same
route.
And so right now I've been walking for about four and a
half minutes, and I'm pretty sure Zach is eating
my dust.
Yeah. This is the fabled start and stop of New York
traffic. About 5 minutes and 45 seconds into this
ride, we're finally crossing Sixth Avenue.
And I don't know if you can see it, but, we just passed
Liam. We just passed him.
Yes. He passed us again.
He passed us again.
Okay, so right now I'm about three ish avenue blocks from
the final destination.
His Uber ended up diverting to a different path instead
of going straight across just to avoid some of this
heavy traffic.
Here we go. We did it.
We did it. All right.
There he goes, my champion.
We're at 10th Avenue and 47th Street.
I want you to see this.
See that right there?
11 minutes, 56 seconds.
We beat Liam. We beat him.
In fact, here he is right now.
How do you feel being beaten by superior
technology?
By how much was it?
I got 11 minutes, 56 seconds.
I got like 15:45.
So that's honestly not that much.
That's just a couple of minutes.
So driving in this area is barely faster than walking.
Zach beat me by a few minutes, but his trip also
cost $15 and emitted about 400 grams of CO2.
However, the constant honking and need to dodge
traffic proved to be quite unpleasant for my walk.
But just a few years ago, this street was quiet and
mostly car free when COVID-19 hit New York.
During the pandemic, shutting down streets to
give businesses and pedestrians more outdoor and
social distanced space was a common trend.
But this concept of car-free communities or even
cities is becoming more popular.
So it shows this change in preference where people
actually want to be in dense urban cores, where
there's reliable transit and amenities within walking
distance.
As traffic rates rise and congestion becomes a bigger
problem in large cities, designing neighborhoods and
communities around people and prioritizing public
transportation instead of cars seems like a no
brainer.
It's imperative that we make all of our high-density
places as pedestrian-friendly as
possible.
To encourage people to walk ten blocks instead of
looking for a cab, for instance.
A recent report found that nearly 7,500 pedestrians
died in 2021 after being struck by cars — the highest
number in 40 years.
In U.S. cities like New York and San Francisco,
turning more streets into car free areas is becoming a
popular proposition.
It's about, also, turning the city of New York as a
most pedestrian-friendly, pedestrian,
cycling-friendly city in the whole nation.
People are recognizing that value has to be placed once
again on the human condition in the city for it
to be successful.
2021 was the deadliest year for New York City in about a
decade, with 124 pedestrian and 34 cycling and moped
deaths. But there's actually a rather simple
solution to this problem.
In 2009 after a spike in traffic accidents, the city
closed off Broadway right next to these sections of
Times Square in Herald Square.
I think there are a lot of places around the city in
all five boroughs that would benefit from that kind
of treatment.
Initially when this was turned into a pedestrian
plaza, there were worries that tourism and consumerism
would decrease.
The whole project could be renamed controversy.
I mean, it was controversial from from the
day we began and.
Foot traffic is actually up about 15% and Times Square
still sees 360,000 visitors a day.
Turning the area into a pedestrian plaza brought
pedestrian injuries down 40% in Times Square and 53%
in Herald Square within just a few years.
Still, though, the controversy was warranted.
Nobody had really ever done anything like this in a city
like this. New York is a special place and there's
only one Times Square.
And now the several hundred thousand pedestrians who
pass through Times Square every day can more safely
look at the large advertisements in all their
glory.
I think it's proved itself over and over.
It is a very good example of what you can do when you
take space away from single-occupancy motor
vehicles and give it to people on foot or on bikes.
This concept is known as "Autoluw" in the
Netherlands, roughly translating to nearly
car-free, where pedestrian and bike friendly plazas are
extremely common.
This Dutch urban planning environment is what inspired
the change in Times Square.
Just as the change was controversial in New York.
It was in Denmark, too.
So controversial that when this concept was rolled out
on a street named Strøget in 1962, Copenhagen's mayor
of town planning received death threats and had to
travel with bodyguards.
And it's become like one of the most successful
pedestrianized streets within Europe.
And it's even, it's even been a source of
international inspiration.
Nearly car free zones in cities like Copenhagen or
Amsterdam singularly allow public transportation and
emergency vehicles to use roads, making busses and
emergency responses much faster.
But in American cities like New York, cars still usually
take priority.
Right now, nearly a quarter of Manhattan is dedicated to
space for cars in the form of roads and parking.
That's a greater amount of space than two Midtowns.
But if you remove all that traffic, suddenly you have a
giant street with nothing to do.
So it's got really wide lanes and tiny little
sidewalks. So you could see how those streets could be
made into more real estate.
You could build in the street potentially more
apartments. You could create parks in the street,
you could widen the sidewalks, you could make
restaurants in the streets.
You could do so many things with the space left over
that is provided for cars today.
There is one project in the U.S.
putting this concept to the test.
Culdesac is a real estate developer building a car
free neighborhood in Tempe, Arizona.
With retail space e-bike garages, over 1,000 bike
racks, on-site EV car share and ride share pickup zones,
every immediate need is a short trip away for
residents of the community.
It has also partnered with Lyft, giving residents a
discount and it connects to the local light rail system.
The Tempe neighborhood is expected to open to
residents later in 2022 and will have more than 600
homes once complete.
It has raised 200 million in real estate capital so
far, and the company says it has already started on
its next set of neighborhoods in growing
cities around the U.S.
While there are other car-free communities and
vacation destinations like Mackinac Island, Michigan
and Bald Head Island, North Carolina, Culdesac markets
itself as the first community built in the U.S.
that's explicitly designed to be car-free.
But it represents a larger trend.
Young people broadly are kind of dissatisfied with
the status quo of what cities look like.
There's this big push for like walkable cities and
transit rich places.
And I think that you're starting to see that with
this generation.
That's Paul Stout.
He's amassed a substantial audience of over 200,000
followers on his TikTok account, Talking Cities.
Stout largely appeals to Gen-Z about the benefits of
good urban design, city planning and mass transit.
It's something I've seen too, with like just within
TikTok and YouTube and all sorts of other social media
is like this sort of like urban planning space has
just kind of blown up in the past couple of years.
Younger generations are more frequently seeking
alternative modes of transportation to driving.
And you can see this in a number of trends, but I
think the first one I point to is the drop in Gen-Z
getting driver's licenses.
And that drop is substantial. In 1988, 77% of
18-year-olds had their driver's license.
Now that number is around 58%.
This means they're relying on Uber, Lyft, bikes, or
public transportation more.
But public transportation can still be unreliable in
some cities.
One of the biggest obstacles to more people taking the
bus now is that they're not reliable because they tend
to get stuck in traffic behind private motor
vehicles. And if you get a lot of those private motor
vehicles out of their way, then the busses will be a
lot faster.
Some groups have pushed for the reprioritization and the
implementation of car-free zones to ease congestion in
much of Midtown and Lower Manhattan.
This is something that many of us saw in our
neighborhoods with the initial spread of COVID.
Streets and parking spaces around the world were
replaced with areas for outdoor shopping and dining.
That I think really opened up a lot of people's eyes to
the potential for reducing the amount of car traffic in
New York City. You were able to cross the street,
walk down the middle of the street in a lot of places,
and that lasted for a few months.
There was a big boom in cycling at the beginning of
the pandemic. People felt it was a safe way to get
around.
A coalition of over 80 groups, including unions and
public health organizations, backed a goal
to convert 25% of New York City space taken by cars
into space for people by 2025.
And New York City only recently started adding bike
lanes at a rapid pace, including protected lanes
that have a barrier, keeping drivers from parking
or swerving into these lanes. As part of a street
safety plan, Mayor Eric Adams announced over $900
million going towards protected bike lanes,
designated bus lanes and tracking reckless driving.
For far too long, our cities have been just
basically, vehicle focused.
Now the city is working on adding an additional 250
miles of what's considered "class-one lanes." That's
2.5 times the amount of protected lanes that were
constructed from 2007 to 2018.
And it took a spike of cyclist deaths in 2019 to
get the city to begin prioritizing bike-related
infrastructure.
We've made great strides with with cycling in New
York, but there's still a significant room for
improvement. There's likely a segment of the population
who doesn't feel it's safe to ride yet.
And when you prioritize bikes and other modes of
modes of transportation in the way that we currently
prioritize cars, you see a lot more use.
But of course, we can't forget about the cost for
the redesign of Times Square and Herald Square
alone, it was around $90 million.
And I would say that that number is quite deceptive
because a great deal of it, I believe 40% of it went to
things underground that you can't see.
Creating pedestrian centered areas almost always comes
with contention.
Locals worry about a lack of consumer traffic
delivery-related issues and emergency vehicle access.
And it's just completely not not the case.
And you look at thriving downtown areas in European
cities that are, you know, mostly pedestrianized
streets. And business is great.
The quality of life is great.
People are happy.
Consumer traffic often booms, so much so that the
economic output in Times Square outpaced the rest of
New York City by 9% from 2007 to 2012.
Now, does this mean that Times Square should be
recreated everywhere?
No, it does not mean that.
It only means that in dense, urban conditions that
have suffered for many decades, it's possible to
reevaluate those and place in new design strategies
that also help organize the infrastructure in these
areas for a better future.
To change the status quo.
Local governments can either use persuasion or
punishment. The persuasion being increased cycling
infrastructure, pedestrian plazas and public
transportation. And the punishments being reduced
parking space, paid parking within a city, fewer gas
stations and congestion tolls.
Probably you should try everything that anyone has
ever invented to deal with that.
New York City could be implementing tolls by the
end of 2023.
That would charge drivers $23 to enter the lower third
of Manhattan.
Some cities that have cameras to enforce against
drivers failing to yield to pedestrians who are crossing
a street with the light at a crosswalk.
So that's an aspect of technology that could
certainly be deployed.
There are with congestion pricing, you can do variable
tolling that changes by time-of-day or based on the
amount of traffic volume at any given time.
However, congestion tolls and paid parking would
greatly favor those who can afford it, and having a car
could quickly become a luxury for the more
fortunate. So Prieto-Curiel suggests persuading could be
more effective. Charging time instead of money,
making driving and parking inconvenient and time
consuming could have a potentially greater impact.
What if public transport was faster than going by car?
What if public transport you have a station close to your
home, one station close to your destination, and you
know that you can get there faster than by driving?
Eventually you do. Eventually you actually
switch into this system.
Recent technological advancements like sidewalk
delivery robots, ride share apps and e-scooters and
bikes all play major roles in making a community like
Culdesac feasible.
While some might have hoped would be traveling in
pneumatic tubes and flying cars, considering some fans
say George Jetson was born in the year 2022, futuristic
forms of transportation are unfortunately a bit more
down to earth.
There are many ideas and many things that smart
cities can help become more friendly and more livable
for everyone. Right around my house, people tend to
leave their scooter so that going from my house to the
metro station, I can just grab one of these scooters
and get to the metro station within 3 minutes.
Well, certainly in recent years, especially with all
the kind of personal mobility gadgets that
appeared on the sidewalks and on the streets, there's
a great deal of experimenting and
willingness, I think, to try out those things.
Personal cars are usually parked 95% of the time,
taking up an enormous amount of space.
And many people think that rentable autonomous electric
vehicles could be the answer.
Having cars that we only have possession of when we
need them are always in motion.
So they don't take a parking space, use clean
energy and can pick you up and drop you off with the
use of an app. Seems like an ideal scenario, right?
Definitely. No.
This is one of the tricks that has happened throughout
decades. That is, we just need one extra bit of
technology and that is going to help us then this
is going to be perfect, right? All these
technological ideas that an autonomous car is going to
fix our city sounds exactly what they were saying in the
50s. But what works?
Metro public transport, something that is shared,
walking, cycling, something that adds cycling mobility,
something that doesn't require an individual
infrastructure because that's the issue with cars.
In metropolitan areas.
There's also been a noticeable push to
rejuvenate mass transit systems.
President Biden and the U.S .
Department of Transportation announced a $20 billion
investment in public transit this year.
In their prime era, there were around 17,000 miles of
streetcar lines in the U.S.
But by the 1950s, loads of American streetcar networks
were rapidly becoming obsolete in the face of a
vehicular revolution.
Cities like Los Angeles used to be largely dependent
on their streetcar network.
But now the City of Angels is notorious for getting you
stuck in traffic in 90 degree weather with
essentially no convenient public transportation
options. However, in 2017, Los Angeles started to show
a shift in priorities and announced it would be
spending $120 billion over 40 years on its transit
system. Kansas City had one of the most substantial
streetcar systems in North America that began operation
in 1870 — initially being pulled by horses.
But by 1957, the entire system was shut down, making
way for cars which were becoming increasingly
popular. But starting in 2014, the city began
reconstructing a modern streetcar route that's
nearly identical to the last one that was in
operation about 60 years prior.
Once there's an emphasis on the quality of the public
realm, you're making life better for many, many
people.
And there's a lot of, I would call it like
incumbency bias with car centric design.
So much of the US looks like this and we're so used
to it. So it's very easy to look around and see like
examples from Japan and Singapore and like Western
Europe and many places that are like significantly more
walkable. I think a lot of young people have seen that
online and they've been like, 'Hold on a minute, why
don't we have that?'