NB: I believe this topic has been discussed much better many times elsewhere on the net and in print. I am writing simply to clarify my own thoughts. I apologize for the primitive graphics.
The primary goal of many urban planners and other urban advocates is to create walkable cities. These are or would be places where the vast majority of trips urban residents make in their daily lives are done with a combination of walking, cycling, buses, bus rapid transit, trolleys, trams, light rail, subways, regional rail, and "micro-mobility." The latter is an umbrella term for short-range transportation devices that operate at speeds above walking but below cycling. They include e-scooters, e-skateboards, and human-powered equivalents. The combination of modes would enable people in cities to live without cars, or at least without using cars on a regular basis.
Some urbanists take the idea of living car-free even further, and imagine cities that are largely vehicle-free. The built form they desire would be so compact that most public rights-of-way would be scaled to pedestrians, cyclists, and micro-mobility users. Vehicles would only be occasional intruders on most streets, and some rights-of-way would be so small that no normal four-wheeled vehicle could ever enter. I disagree with that goal, and believe the idea of reducing streets to sizes that made sense when all vehicles were either human-powered or animal-drawn is misguided.
There is no doubt that human-scaled cities are highly enjoyable. Pre-automobile areas in cities like Venice, Sienna, Canterbury, Lisbon, etc, are both wonderful places to visit and popular places to live. But they are also inconvenient places to live, and are often dominated by tourists and younger people. Making cities vehicle-free would just exacerbate the inconveniences.
There are a large number of business and public services that have a reason to regularly send vehicles into high-density urban areas and park close to residences or neighborhood businesses for varying amounts of time. Below are some examples.
| Type of service | Example |
|---|---|
| Personal deliveries | meals, groceries, medical supplies, mail, packages, laundry, dry cleaning, furniture |
| Business deliveries | produce, dairy, meat, baked goods, beverages, dry goods, office supplies, general retail, documents, medical samples |
| Public services | police, fire department, emergency medical service, public works |
| Private services | plumbers, electricians, HVAC technicians, appliance repairpersons, movers, cleaners |
| Transportation | taxis, shuttles, public buses, school buses, paratransit |
The vast majority of those services are best provided with vehicles. For instance, plumbers that come to repair a sink will be more likely to complete the job on the first visit if they have the necessary parts in their truck instead of having to drive back to their warehouse if they don't have the item needed. And they will complete them faster if they can park close to the residence and can run down quickly to get necessary supplies rather than walking a block or two to the spot they happened to find after circling for 15 minutes. Public services such as fire departments usually have an exemption to double park when attending to emergencies, but they are not always on deployed for an emergency. Many fire departments engage in inspections to see if business meet fire safety regulations, and should not block regular travel lanes when they do so. Produce distributors visit many of their customers daily, due to how quickly the merchandise spoils, and do so in large, refrigerated vehicles that drive considerable distances from the warehouses where they are based. Having to make more trips due to reduced vehicle size would increase the cost of food and meals. And so on.
Transit buses are another type of vehicle that should not be discouraged or banned. Rail-based transit has a role to play in many cities, but the infrastructure is more expensive to construct. Buses have a lower up-front cost and can be adjusted to match ridership demand more easily. Bus routes can be designed to intersect and feed rail transit, or to provide another layer of longer-distance transit for where rail transit doesn't reach. Buses work better when they can keep moving at a reasonable speed. This means limiting stops, and limiting the number of interruptions to travel. Interruptions can be caused by traffic, and by stopped vehicles which buses have to maneuver around, or even wait for until they are moved.
The types of vehicles that are most likely to block a bus are commercial and public service vehicles, of course. They double-park because curbside spots are usually taken up by personal vehicles that are parked for extended periods. The specifics vary from city to city, but in all, some personal vehicles are in metered spots in choice locations in front of commercial establishments, but many are in un-metered spots on mostly residential streets. By reducing the number of spots available available for personal vehicles, more commercial and public service vehicles could park out of the way of traffic, and specifically buses.
Implementing a car-unfriendly but vehicle-accommodating streets in already dense areas would require several relatively easy - though potentially unpopular - steps. One would be to plate register or tag each class of vehicle - government, commercial, and personal - separately, so they could be easily identified. Another would be to determine if areas need to be metered for personal vehicles, and when. Another would be to enforce parking regulations for the un-metered sections. Commercial vehicles would be banned overnight and allowed during the day (5AM-7PM), while personal vehicles would be allowed at night (5PM-5AM). After that, some fine tuning would be needed to see if there are some classes of vehicles that are evading the general goal, or if metered areas need to be resized.
There could be other sets of policies that would achieve the same goal of allowing for commercial and public vehicles easier parking in dense urban areas. But the main point is that planners should recognize that they exist and are a part of modern urban life. The fantasy of everyone living in a medieval-scale city is not going to come true, and vehicles need to be accommodated and managed.
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