This blog
post is in regards to the article posted by BBC; Can a city
really ban cars from its streets? Written by
Jack Stewart.
I will in this
blog post review the article and discuss, from my point of view, if this is
feasible or not.
The article
describes the plan that the German city Hamburg is planning to eliminate all
car traffic from the city within the next two decades and instead introducing
what they call "Green networks", a network of parks, playgrounds,
sports fields etc. covering around 40% of the city. By doing this, they claim
to remove the need for transportation with cars as, according to them it will be
easy enough to navigate on foot.
So, is this
feasible?
I do think it is a
great idea to start with. We have to acknowledge the fact that we are polluting
the air in big cities and something needs to be done to break that trend. To
remove all cars from the city is though, in my eyes, wishful thinking and not
really feasible. I do think that we could be able to remove traffic from
certain areas of the cities, but not entirely. There are some pointers
where I feel that we have unanswered questions to adhere to before we can even
think about removing roads and their cars.
·
Emergency situations in the city center
o Without
roads, how will ambulances, fire trucks and police navigate the cities in case
of emergencies?
·
Long distance commuters with cars
o Where do all
of these commuters park their cars if all of the area inside the city is banned
for traffic?
o They need to
provide all commuters, which are commuting by car, with parking outside the
banned area of the city
·
Senior citizens
o Those of us
that have problems walking, how will they cope with public transport?
o They often
require personal assistance like, for example, taxi rides
Maybe these questions already
have answers by the city of Hamburg, but from where I’m standing, with only
what’s described in this article- they do have a series of questions to
adhere to before considering to move ahead with the plan.
