Car free city centres?

http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2015/10/6-european-cities-with-plans-to-go-car-free/411439/

What are our thoughts on this in UK?

I am presuming deliveries are made out of hours?

It would need much, much better public transport and walking/cycling infrastructure.
Part of me also thinks it would send a good few back scurrying for the out of town, drive to the door big shopping centres?

Equally, I know deep down this would be a really, really good thing.

The irony is that the infrastructures already there if you remove the cars…..

Im pro car free city

It does worry me like you say that te ignorant will lobby the big box stores to go out of town – how ever as per certain us cities – it may let city centre rates drop and bring back indiidual shops with service rather than every town having the same multinational box shifters.

I live in milton Keynes, where large parts of the centre are pedestrianised, the cycling infrastructure is the best in the country, yet highest obesity rate in England
Why?

Because the roads are laid out on a I’ve grid, theres not really any traffic jams and its ideal for large retail parks that people habitually drive to,
Well IMHO anyway

Just pedestrianizing a city is the first step, lots more needs to be done

If you look at all of the examples they’re not proposing total car-free, just bits. Much like many British towns and cities.
But, yes, reducing motorised traffic within areas in towns gives benefits all round for, well everyone, except for those who have to drive to within 25m of where they’re going to.

We’ve been doing it on a small scale in Bristol for a couple of years. A couple of streets closing every Saturday and a larger number one Sunday a month. Reading the comments some people post you’d think it was the end of the world for the pro car. They’ve generally been very popular with loads of people wandering about. I’m all for it on a bigger scale.

Lets not confuse totally car-free with some pedestrian zones…

Having been to dutch car free cities – initially they had similar concerns as normal responses- then they had huge influx of people once they realised they were pleasent placea to live.

The dutch do have a different mentality though.

if we also (re)design our city centres as places where people/families want to live, then city-centre shops will have customers.

some city centres are eerily quiet after 5pm.

in other words, simply banning cars is only half the battle – if anything it’s the easy half.

a) ban cars
b) make cities nicer places where people actually live.

but of course, a helps with b.

The centre of Cardiff is fairly car-free already. The car parks are around the edge of town, people walk in.

It’s not a very large area that’s car free though, just most of the main shopping streets.

I wish the City of London was entirely pedestrianised. Although they’d probably need some sort of alternative mass transit like a good network of trains running in tunnels underground.. oh.. wait..

Part of me also thinks it would send a good few back scurrying for the out of town, drive to the door big shopping centres?

The thing is, a “drive to the door big shopping centre” is car free. That’s probably why people like them.

You can’t drive your car around Westfield or the Metro centre. You park on the outside and walk to and between the shops. You don’t have to worry about the kids getting run over, you can sit down for a coffee at a table in the ‘street’ without breathing in diesel fumes or trying to talk over the roar of HGVs. Then you walk back to your car and drive home. That’s how town/city centres should be.

I find it baffling that people can look at this:
and think that the shops would be better off if you put two lanes of traffic down the middle.

Cardiff doesn’t have an out of town shopping center because the actual center is so good. The planners had the foresight/fortune to create a shopping center in the middle of town. Maybe they had the land for it, whereas other cities didn’t.

The centre of Cardiff is fairly car-free already. The car parks are around the edge of town built on top of the shopping centres (St Davids 2, John Lewis and the Capitol), people walk in trundle round the car park to get as near to the lift nearest their shop the use the lift to go up or down .

I work in and cycle through town most days, the reality is more like that. The queues into the car park entrances cause so much pollution it’s unreal! Add in the taxis parking everywhere plus the buses and it’s chaos at times.

It’s not a very large area that’s car free though, just most of the main shopping streets.

Whilst every morning the rush hour is exacerbated by every HGV and van due to deliver to any of the businesses having to pile in at 8.30 to have a chance of getting all their drops done before they’re kicked off (forcefully by the mini-hitler in the golf cart and ticketed if not off by 10.01) at 10am sharp. They will then spend the rest of the morning fighting for the very few loading bays round the periphery (if there’s not a gaggle of taxis in them sat there with their engines running) then trying to push pallets of goods through a busy pedestrian area. In the meantime everyone in their cars heading for the car park is sat in a ring of congestion running round the city centre polluting the place.

I’m all for car-free town centres but removing the road has consequences which the planners don’t account for. Properly designed it would be great but Cardiff is a mash-up of a few different schemes and is a mess.

The car parks are around the edge of town built on top of the shopping centres (St Davids 2, John Lewis and the Capitol)

There must be dozens of car parks in Cardiff, only three are on top of shopping centres! And the point is that they are accessible from the edge of the city centre.

I have a feeling most people who use Cardiff don’t know what traffic chaos really is 🙂

Properly designed it would be great but Cardiff is a mash-up of a few different schemes and is a mess.

Hmm, it’s always been good for me. I wonder what I am doing differently?

The question is why do people drive into the city?
1. To work?
2. To live?
3. To shop?
If they really don’t want people to drive into city then they should simply take 1 or 2 or all of the above out and you will definitely get a car free city.

I say take out 1 & 3 and you will most likely reduce the traffic into the city … but you will also create ghost city.

😯

I never understood why they reopenned the roadsin Manchester after thd bomb. I’m hoping the closures for the new tram works stay in place afterwards. There’s next to no need for most people to enter the city centre in a car, especially with the free bus service.

The irony is that the infrastructures already there if you remove the cars…..

Exactly this. People (choose to) forget that city centre roads have been there long before (and were not intended for) cars.

As a compromise you could make all city centres one way and use the other lane (if there is one) as a bus/taxi/cycle lane. That way people who need/want to drive still can, but hopefully they wouldn’t as if there was the same volume of traffic driving would be really, really unpleasant 🙂

The most pleasant and popular shopping, loitering, strolling streets in Glasgow are the big long pedestrianised ones. Sauchiehall St, Argyle St, and Buchanan St. The surrounding streets while not car free have private traffic well restricted by bus gates, limited parking. Works not too bad. All made possible of course by the M8 urban motorway getting through traffic out of the city altogether.

The least pleasant streets are the north/south through bus routes clogged up with competing bus services and diesel fumes. Nothing to do with cars. Caused, in my opinion, by bus deregulation. Glasgow should have had peripheral bus services departing from each end of the city centre and free shuttle buses linking them with the inner city centre.

Cardiff allows lots of traffic to go through the centre of the city via Castle street, instead if pushing it out and around the city. making Castle street filtered permeability for bikes and closed to cars (it closes every time theres a rugby match or a rock concert at the MS anyway) would make it a completely different city (Nato managed it ;-).

The HGV thing on Queen St baffles me..someone somewhere has done a risk assessment that says its ok to mix HGV with school kids walking to school there yet bikes are banned.

There must be dozens of car parks in Cardiff, only three are on top of shopping centres! And the point is that they are accessible from the edge of the city centre.

90% (est) make a beeline to these 3 car parks. The LED signs encourage this as it shows that they’ve got spaces (admittedly the JL one always seems to be full) and like sheep they queue for these only, driving right past the rest. The queue for St Davids 2 regularly goes past the Motorpoint Arena and past the Atrium, everyone ignores the 2 car parks directly opposite the Atrium (probably because they’re more expensive and the walk isn’t exactly safe as they have to cross the traffic twice). Dumfries place is usually only half full as it’s the wrong end of town for the majority (the Capitol shops are struggling for business and have been ever since St David’s 2 opened) plus it’s more expensive.

It’s not helped by the owners of St David’s 2 taking a cut from the profits of the two car parks they lease to NCP (St Davids 2 an John Lewis) so they encourage their use through lower prices and only advertising those two on their websites.
Cardiff council have encouraged this with the LED signs and directions all leading to this one centrepoint. They also put pressure on the old £5 All Day gravel wasteland car parks just off Callaghan Square to close as they were diverting cars from the NCP’s.

Hmm, it’s always been good for me. I wonder what I am doing differently?

You’re a local who knows where they are and the short cuts to get to them. You may also be approaching form a different direction to the hoardes coming down the M4, A48, North Road and the A4232. Most visitors don’t or can’t be bothered to find them and just follow the main routes.

Cardiff allows lots of traffic to go through the centre of the city via Castle street, instead if pushing it out and around the city. making Castle street filtered permeability for bikes and closed to cars (it closes every time theres a rugby match or a rock concert at the MS anyway) would make it a completely different city (Nato managed it ;-).

That system used for the NATO summit worked really well as everyone was going in the same direction. It was suggested to the council that it should be permanent but they refused it as ‘the clear roads would encourage more people to drive into the city centre’ 😕

The HGV thing on Queen St baffles me..someone somewhere has done a risk assessment that says its ok to mix HGV with school kids walking to school there yet bikes are banned.

The shops can only be delivered to from the front on the whole after the rear accesses were removed when the street was still open all day. These were then developed so they cannot be re-instated. All the protests by the shops about access have been ignored.
There is also a lot of near-misses involving pedestrians daily, partly caused by the stalls and fairgound rides forcing the LGV and HGV’s to weave down the street from side-to-side. There have been 2 pedestrians injured this month to my knowledge. One of my colleagues actually ran over an elderly gent on Queen Street in the spring, thankfully nothing more than a few cuts and scratches. Bikes are correctly banned form these streets as an extra user in the mix would be a sure-fire way to have deaths on our hands.

I regularly have to drive a 6 ton LGV down Queen St, St Mary Street/High Street and up Working Street/The Hayes. What I see daily is totally different to what the regular person sees when shopping in the afternoon. Cardiff Council are known to actively put anything they can in the way of shops getting their deliveries during the day. They cause delays by insisting on every vehicle logging on to each street by giving the registration and your destinations, a nightmare if you have multiple drops! They exacerbate this by having four barriers for this but only one person answering the buzzers. Drivers can easily be stuck at one for 2-3 minutes. Drive past the castle between 9 and 10 am and you’re pretty much guaranteed to see a queue of delivery vans blocking off on e lane and the bus lane waiting to be let on.
I have also worked in Bristol and they have the right idea with delivery access behind the shops available 24/7, forward thinking. No need for barrier controls or any policing of time windows.

I’m all for traffic-free shopping centres with managed delivery access and ample parking, even P&R systems if planned correctly. Sadly Cardiff is not a good example when you scratch below the surface.

Sorry for the rant about this but it is a major concern for me and my colleagues. None of us like working the city centre as it’s an accident waiting to happen.

Of course I’m looking at it from a pedestrian point of view..

Malaga old town/centre is largely pedestrianised and loads of streets are being transformed to expand the area. Cycles are permitted and the police get around in electric cars and on electric motorbikes (never seen them elsewhere). It makes you want to be on the street and cafés and bars can double their space outside. The elderly, infirm and wheel chair users are much in evidence. Obviously the weather helps but yesterday there was a carnival parade of star warriors and it was very very busy. Money must have changed hands big time. I hope this is the future but I fear the UK lags behind being a ‘nation of shopkeepers’ who always seem to vote for easy access for polluting vehicles. When the street is closed for Feast Day where I live, a newsagent stands outside his shop, legs akimbo and a face like thunder because his customers have to walk 100 yards to get their Sunday paper even though the streets have about 2000 extra people walking about. Sadly these types of attitude seem to form the backbone of the current government’s thinking.

There is also a lot of near-misses involving pedestrians daily, partly caused by the stalls and fairgound rides forcing the LGV and HGV’s to weave down the street from side-to-side. There have been 2 pedestrians injured this month to my knowledge. One of my colleagues actually ran over an elderly gent on Queen Street in the spring, thankfully nothing more than a few cuts and scratches. Bikes are correctly banned form these streets as an extra user in the mix would be a sure-fire way to have deaths on our hands.

How many people have bikes killed this year? The LGVs and HGVs in a pedestrian area is the risk. That and the manner of driving. Disabled drivers used to be allowed in the ped precinct in my town but are now banned because accidents and near misses by a minority who still had the mentality the motor vehicle was at the top of the user hierarchy and drove accordingly.

Goods vehicle access to pedestrian precincts should be restricted to off peak hours. All deliveries before 8am.

BillMC – Member

I hope this is the future but I fear the UK lags behind being a ‘nation of shopkeepers’ who always seem to vote for easy access for polluting vehicles. When the street is closed for Feast Day where I live, a newsagent stands outside his shop, legs akimbo and a face like thunder because his customers have to walk 100 yards to get their Sunday paper even though the streets have about 2000 extra people walking about.

I think most high streets in UK are the “same” with large companies dominating all available spaces. Yes, you do get a few independent shops but not many. All my friends that visited UK said the same thing … the high streets are the “same”. i.e. the shops. 😆

As for a face like thunder that’s common in the UK because you owe them a living. My Texan cowboy friend found it surprising that such attitude still exist in UK. He told me these people lack business sense and hence their business should deserve to go bust. Ya, they get jackshit! (Texan accent) I don’t disagree as I saw how they treated some of the customers.

Pretty decent essays there from Molgrips and Milky on the situation here in Cardiff, we’ve got a car free day planned for next year at some point, but it’s a gimmicky crowd pleaser than than a proper trial IMHO. As they’ve said a square mile or so of the city centre id pedestrianised but it’s the touristy / shopping part, not the areas where people work.

Personally I don’t think it’s workable for Cardiff at the moment, public transport is at capacity already – the trains coming from the Vale, Gwent and the Valleys look like cattle trucks and I don’t see where they could put any new lines in, I guess we’d have to rely on buses – not sure I’d enjoy that, they banned cars from St. Mary street for a few months and allowed buses, they drove it like it was some kind of racetrack.

Also you’ve got the problem of traffic in the suburbs – a lot of the time the only way to get from point to point is via the roads that skirt the city centre, add that to millions and millions of pounds of newish car parks going to seed and the question of actually getting stuff into the city – I wouldn’t fancy putting a tower server and 20 desktops on the train.

How many people have bikes killed this year?

There is a constant problem with pedestrians being hit by bikes despite the cycling ban. No deaths from that but put bikes and trucks together and you will have problems, especially as most people seem to cycle against the flow of the delivery vehicles. Add in the various bits of street furniture corralling them into a direct collision path an you have issues. As for vehicle stats? No deaths for 3 years. That death was a drunk student falling over in front of a HGV while running in front of it during Fresher’s Week and was not blamed on the driver at all. One incredibly close call last August when a young child was playing hide-and-seek under a box van as it pulled away from in front of Next. The council responded by announcing:

All deliveries before 8am.

Actually 8.30 but it was rapidly dropped after loads of shops ran out of stock. The majority of shops don’t open until 9.30 or 10am, the companies refused to pay the extra wages for 2-3 staff to arrive early.

Shops need stock and that gets there by a vehicle of some kind. Unless you provide rear/alternative access for those vehicles then conflict is going to arise.

There is a constant problem with pedestrians being hit by bikes despite the cycling ban. No deaths from that but put bikes and trucks together and you will have problems,

Any stats? Firstly experience elsewhere suggests mixing bikes and peds isn’t a problem, secondly if there is currently a ban then the cyclists using the area may not be representative of the general cycling population. Cyclists choosing to ignore a ban may also be riding with less care than most cyclists would.

Not one accident involving an adult pedestrian and a cyclist was recorded at any of 21 sites in the previous fifteen years. There had been only one accident involving a child pedestrian and a cyclist in that fifteen year period.

The central conclusion of this TRL study – and one repeated by the DfT guidance – is that

Observation revealed no real factors to justify excluding cyclists from pedestrianised areas, suggesting that cycling could be more widely permitted without detriment to pedestrians.

Cycling in pedestrianised areas

Reducing car use must mean encouraging cycle use not discouraging it by banning bikes from some areas.