/r/fuckcars leaking into another sub, this time /r/London:
Of course, nobody is pointing out the obvious that a one-day trial is not going to be representative of a permanent change. Fairly reasonable to suggest that a lot of the crowd were drawn to the street in advance because of the novelty of there being no traffic, and that after a few years (or more likely, a few weeks) the novelty would die down a bit.
If you remember my earlier posts in this thread, I defended the "new urbanist" community. That's because I was looking at the situation in the US and assuming that's what they were pissed about and want to change. But in the real world, that's not what's happening. Instead these initatives are happening in cities like London, Oxford, and Barcelona - cities where it's already incredibly easy and convenient to get around by walking, cycling, or public transport. These are not cities that can in any sensible way be described as having an issue with "car dependency".
It feels as if both the US and Europe are moving even further in opposite directions from each other, and in both cases, away from a sensible, ideal middle ground that would benefit everyone. In the places where this anti-car attitude could genuinely help,
we instead have bills that would limit pedestrian infrastructure projects. But in the places where this anti-car attitude is entirely unnecessary and irrelevant, we have ever-increasing pedestrianisation initatives. In both cases, nothing is being improved, it's just the two groups that are already marginalised (non-drivers in the US, drivers in Europe) being marginalised even further.
TL;DR: I just wish the US and Europe would stop turning into respective parodies of themselves on this.
