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?'
It looks like the concept is getting popular. Some of the language feels like they just discovered electricity. Guess it has to happen in american cities before it can be accepted.
I saw a really funny comment thread on there.
First person said:
First reply:
Second reply:
LOL
I enjoyed the part refuting electric cars as a 'solution', stating that they are just another example of people trying to peddle new-tech to fix traffic. I only wish it could of given a better reason why (but understandably why they didn't, as it could just be a lack of time.)
I’ve dreamed of moving to a walkable city someday, mainly Europe or Japan, but if the US gets this together maybe NYC will be a good option. It’s sad that this country once had the cities designed for people, then it was all torn down to build for cars, and now after way too long they are planning on hopefully making it for people again.
Damn CNBC is based, they keep releasing banger after banger.
That was a good video.
My immediate impression of this video is that such an amateurish, lethargic voiceover is on a CNBC conglomerate video.
D
This is extreme. They are not "banning" but ensuring there are areas with zero vehicles. Investment in walkability and variety of public transportation are great for quality of life.