Reflection 1 - Can a city really ban cars from its streets?
This first reflection will cover the article by BBC. The article is about the concept of having the urban parts of a city completely free from private vehicle and how the german city of Hamburg has initiated plans to be 40% car free within the next 20 years. They also cover the fact that a car takes up to three times as much energy to transport a person than a train would do. 1,668 BTU compared to 4,218 BTU where BTU stands for British Thermal Units per person and mile.
The BTU for traveling with airplane was 1970 twice as high compared to cars but by packing the people together more tightly this has changed. To be able to have the same BTU the car needs to have at least 2.3 people on average each trip rather than the current average of 1.38.
Hamburg is not the first city to have this goal of less cars in the urban areas but it is an ongoing trend among cities around the world. Many european cities introduce a congestion fee to make it more expensive to take the car during peak hours.
While the article describe the goal and gives some fact about the negative impact of cars it gives little to none input of how to solve the issue or which problem might occur. With this reflection, im going to give some thought about the value of the car as well as trying to solve the goal of how a city like Hamburg can become free from private cars in the future.
The BTU for traveling with airplane was 1970 twice as high compared to cars but by packing the people together more tightly this has changed. To be able to have the same BTU the car needs to have at least 2.3 people on average each trip rather than the current average of 1.38.
Hamburg is not the first city to have this goal of less cars in the urban areas but it is an ongoing trend among cities around the world. Many european cities introduce a congestion fee to make it more expensive to take the car during peak hours.
While the article describe the goal and gives some fact about the negative impact of cars it gives little to none input of how to solve the issue or which problem might occur. With this reflection, im going to give some thought about the value of the car as well as trying to solve the goal of how a city like Hamburg can become free from private cars in the future.
First of all we need to have a look as why the car is used and to what purpose. The main reason to take the car is, in today's society, shopping. People like to have a place to put their groceries and does not care for taking the subway with multiple bags. If i went by bicycle then i could carry even less back home. This is not really organized for doing the weekly shopping of groceries. One soution to this might be to have delivery of the things you buy to your home.
There are already stores who offer home delivery for a fee. This is ok if you buy all your groceries at the same store and have them deliver it all. However, if you go to multiply stores and buy not as much then this would be a really expensive option. My idea here is to solve this with a special delivery company where you can drop all your items at and after the day is over, they deliver it all. The different stores might have some deal that when you spend money there, then they cover a percentage of the delivery fee. The more you shop at that store, the more they cover.
The second issue with the car ban is that some cities doesn't have as developed public transportation and this would mean that it gets more and more difficult to get to the urban parts of the city. There might be elderly people who just cant go there by bicycle and this would render them more and more helpless if they need to go to a doctors appointment. There are already special transport services who can be used to help these people. If not always, just for the transition time when the public transport system is being developed to cover the entire suburban parts of the city.
The main aspect of this reflection is to illuminate the issues of car ban and how we can get there. However, this can't be done over a night and we need to account for the problems which arise before we ban the only solution.
