this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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I've long been saying that a ~~handicapped~~ disabled person placard[1] should be your permission to drive within city limits, and other than that, you stay out of downtown areas of any city in your car.
There are various degrees at which we can service private cars. Massive parking structures ain't it, taking over all public spaces with roads ain't it. But a path for disabled people to reach their destination directly in a car or van seems reasonable and doable, and will still allow us to reclaim most of the public space and money we spend servicing cars now.
[1] This is the correct name for it. Honestly, my bad.
You don't need full-sized cars for in-city accommodation.
Exactly, and I strongly suspect that most in-city accommodation can be done with neighborhood electric vehicles (NEVs)
I’m a disabled person living in a city in the UK. We have a scheme that allows me to swap my disability benefits for a car or mobility scooter. The cars deemed suitable for disabled people using a collapsible wheelchair are “compact/small family cars” and that size is perfectly adequate.
My most recent car is a seat Leon - a self charging hybrid. The mobility scheme I mentioned is really pushing fully electric cars and I’d absolutely love one. But being disabled often means being poor and like many other disabled people I live in a rented flat. There’s no EV charging at my block of flats. There’s no EV charging in my local town. I cannot afford to move, I can barely afford to survive. There are just SO many obstacles that aren’t being addressed in the UK it’s beyond frustrating.
It depends on the city. Many american cities have so much suburban sprawl that you're just not going to plan your way out of car dependency in our lifetime. The progress that can be made in these areas right now is zoning to break up the massive single use neighborhoods.
Edit: "full size" could mean a couple of things. Mall crawlers and pickups are ridiculous here. Sedans, hatchbacks, and even crossovers make sense here, depending on your individual lifestyle and needs.
If you start building out transit before you can use it effectively, it can help guide the buildout. You can not only zone for many concentrations of buildings but commit to an incentive to encourage people to live there. “I want to move into this apartment building because it is a nice walkable area of shops, parks, restaurants plus they’re building a train station”
I don't disagree, but building transit for hypothetical use decades down the line is expensive and very unlikely to happen.
To be clear, I'm talking about places like where I live, i.e. no businesses at all for several miles in any direction. We need corner stores, neighborhood bars and restaurants, and retail space so people want to get somewhere that isn't miles and miles away.
Yeah I’m probably spoiled by some recent projects in Boston where I live.
That is simply untrue. Change can happen quite quickly if people care.
That level of change is rebuilding the entire surburb to be more dense. There isn't the building capacity to do this to all of them , even if by some miracle you found the money.
You can't make a bus route work when the area it's travelling through is so spread out, it has to stop too much and drive for too long and costs more than it can make in fares.
If you want to change America then good luck, but it'll be your grandchildren that get the benefit should you succeed.
I in no way implied you did. My comment is an important note for others.
I agree with your point as a disabled person - and here in the UK we kinda have this system. My car is registered disabled and therefore I can drive into LEZ, ULEZ and CC areas for free automatically. It’s a literal life saver when I survive off benefits, physically cannot use public transport, but I’m treated at hospitals in the very centre of London.
But the term “handicapped” is outdated and is considered offensive by some. Perhaps stick to “disabled people” instead.
Honestly should have checked myself before I wrote it out like that. Feel like I already knew this. In any case, fixed.
We all make slip ups, it’s all good 👍🏼