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• How poor public transport explains UK’s productivity (CityMetric)
• Vancouver widens sidewalks to adapt to increasing density (Globe&Mail)
• Delhi’s new restrictive parking policy (TheHindu)
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Local councils like Tower Hamlets should stick to their guns when trying to reduce car use,in Barcelona,Spain there was opposition to superblocks that blocked through traffic
from motorists but after a few months the residents become use to the superillas and opposition declined.The War On Cars podcast ep 24,Aug 19 2019 has interview with David Roberts
https://thewaroncars.org/2019/08/19/twoc-bonus-barcelonas-superblocks-with-david-roberts-of-vox/ and he has written a 5 part series in Vox on superillas/superblocks in Barcelona
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/9/18300797/barcelona-spain-superblocks-urban-plan
Delhi’s parking policy looks good on paper, but it will live or die by the effectiveness of the enforcement. Unless they have an end to end process which is effective, issuing parking tickets will quickly become an exercise of waste paper. And without that working, even towing away will not solve the problem. Before civil enforcement in London, drivers knew it would take a tow truck at least an hour to make a round trip to the pound and back, so would queue up to fill the space vacated by a towed away vehicle.
The CityMetric article linking productivity of cities to the efficiency of their public transport is interesting – certainly one would like it to be true. However, it compares Birmingham with the European equivalent only, yet the researchers themselves admit that the relationship between city size and productivity also holds for the USA, where public transport (outside a few exceptions such as NewYork) is largely absent and where it does exist mostly relies on buses, like Birmingham. This seems to me to cast some doubt on their hypothesis.
@silenos
I would posit that where productivity is concerned, its ‘transport’ that’s actually the key determinant, not whether it’s public or private.
The main difference between Birmingham and a US city of similar size, is that Birmingham has far closer to a European city layout in density and road layout, which makes it distinctly inefficient to attempt to use private transport as the predominant means of transport. The article leaves that part out.
I’d also suggest on productivity grounds that the US City probably doesn’t fare that well either versus a continental European city, but I don’t have the data to back that up unfortunately……
Re Quinlet. ‘Before civil enforcement in London, drivers knew it would take a tow truck at least an hour to make a round trip to the pound and back, so would queue up to fill the space vacated by a towed away vehicle’.
I am reminded of the Minder episode in which a London gambler played by Anthony Valentine was going abroad. He parked his car in a No Parking zone just as the Traffic Warden was coming. When Arthur Daley observed that it was bound to get towed away he said ‘Where else in London can you park a Lotus Éclat for a week with absolute security for so little outlay’.