Ironically, making Manhattan car free has been talked about since before I was born (1962). I’m amazed in a city with a majority of car-free households, plus a supermajority of people traveling in Manhattan by modes other than private auto, that this hasn’t been implemented yet. It’s an old idea whose time has come.

I live on Manhattan, just idly musing this over. I don’t own a car, hope I never will again. But every once a month or so, it’s convenient to rent a car at the garage on my block to drive somewhere rural that I’m heading to. It’s always my last resort: trains aren’t available and so on. Nice to have this option though without the neverending hassle of car ownership.

So: the thought experiment of a car-free Manhattan. How to schlep stuff around, take road trips to see our grandparents at the cabin, when needed?

This is correct. I was one of the ticketed people. They were nabbing people at random – not looking for interference with a vehicle, walking while texting, etc. The turning lanes were blocked by police cars. Police gave warnings to some, tickets to others.

I’m not seeing any major issues with not allowing private cars in Manhattan. You can move heavy stuff by hiring a moving van or other type of commercial hauler. As far as road trips, it’s probably faster to take the subway or commuter railroad out of Manhattan, then rent a car somewhere in NJ, Long Island, or one of the outer boroughs, as opposed to starting in Manhattan by car. Most days it takes an hour or more just to get in or out of Manhattan.

Honestly, I’m not seeing any showstopper besides politics to banning private cars from all the boroughs except Staten Island. Once cars are banned, there would be heavy demand for more public transit. We could initially run SBS or BRT while new subways were being built. The money the city saves from dealing with all the externalities caused by private autos would easily pay for all this new mass transit.

Banning private autos in Manhattan? Sure. It could and should happen. In the boroughs? I highly doubt it. As densified as they may be, the boroughs are NYC’s own inner suburbs, and as such, and folks are simply not going to give up car ownership. Not only that, but many owners, myself included, use them to get out of the city, which means that they type of low speed electrical vehicle you propose isn’t viable.

There are certain parts of the outer boroughs with heavy pedestrian traffic at levels close to Manhattan where banning autos would make sense. Downtown Flushing and Jamaica are two areas I’m familiar with which come to mind. Moreover, these aren’t great places to take private autos anyway. Traffic crawls and parking is hard to come by.

You obviously can’t ban autos from the entire city at once. I was thinking of a phase out. We start with Manhattan and some “downtown” parts of the outer boroughs. Over the next decade we build more subways, encourage infill development, in general make it easier to live without a car. As you do that, you can ban autos from larger and larger parts of the city. You may never get all of NYC 100% car-free, but you can probably get most of the places which matter car-free.

Electric vehicles come in all shapes and sizes. Many exist which are perfectly viable for out-of-town trips. There’s little reason 99% of vehicles in the US shouldn’t be electric within a decade. Range now can be upwards of 200 miles, and you can recharge in 20 minutes at a suitable charging station. That’s good enough to serve the transportation needs of 99% of the population.

I think congestion pricing to drive in and market-rate pricing for anyone crazy enough to want to own and store a car in Manhattan, coupled with a world-class transit system and as needed, conveniently located market priced car-sharing services (ideally, someday soon, zero emissions and with driverless technology available) is a great way to go. I would never choose to drive somewhere when a comfortable and safe foot / bike / subway / train option was available, but I’m willing to concede that occasionally walking a block to rent a car is the least worst way to go.

Walking around the Upper West Side this weekend, I was keenly aware that the victims of the pedestrian killings and maimings in the past ten days were hit by: a tour bus driver, a cab driver, an ambulance driver, the driver of a privately-owned Dodge (was he out of state? I can’t remember), a cement truck driver, an MTA bus driver, the driver of a privately-owned SUV, an unlicensed driver on a dealership test drive (did I remember that right? is that really possible?), and a 44-year-old driver in an SUV with Connecticut plates (no pedestrians injured in this fatal crash on a crowded Midtown sidewalk, amazingly). I don’t think zeroing on the local privately-owned cars would rid us of this senseless carnage. Can also say anecdotally that the most annoying/dangerous drivers I see on the high density, pedestrian-packed Upper West Side streets tend to be commercial truck drivers from the outer boroughs, and (if you must know), the solo minivan driver with Connecticut plates, beeping her horn cause she wants to turn left and then impatiently honking for a solid minute at the driver ahead of her, too clueless to know that he is yielding the left turn to about 30 pedestrians crossing the street ahead of him who have the right of way, but she doesn’t get it b/c I guess she’s got a Connecticut good-neighbor fest to get home to.

ps – if I watched NBC’s video with a sharp enough eye, after Kang Wong was roughed up he was surrounded by 7 (it’s 7!) officers. I still can’t believe that happened. And I can’t believe you can kill someone in the crosswalk and pay $300. Horrible.

What about using a taxi or car service to get to Fort Lee? There are all sorts of alternatives to private autos in cases where public transit is inconvenient or nonexistent. By the way, I regularly carry loads of up to 70 pounds on foot, sometimes for a mile or more, while shopping and I’m 51 years old. I carried 30 pounds two days ago 3/4 mile in 15 degrees, 20 mph winds, and corners full of snow mounds. Compared to that, schleping camping gear on public transit is a piece of cake. I totally understand the time issue you mention, however. That’s the real problem here. In a hypothetical world where cars were restricted from Manhattan, it would be far quicker to hop a subway from Manhattan to the Bronx, rent a car there, and cross the GW into NJ.

Or the ban could exclude rental cars. Rental cars aren’t as much of a problem as private autos because they’re parked for far less of the day. Also, by their nature they would often not even be in the city given that most city residents mainly use cars for out-of-town trips.

Don’t dismiss a ban outright. Any logistical issues of the kind you allude to can be worked out. I hold to my position that privately-owned autos just don’t belong in Manhattan. This would free an a huge amount of curb space to make deliveries more efficient, plus allow possible expansion of services like Zip Car.

Another overlooked positive side of a ban on private cars would be more political support/money for expanded public transit. That alone could fix some of the issues of public transit being highly inconvenient or unavailable at off-peak times.

I find it ironic how many people nowadays want to solve problems, but they also want to have their cake and eat it, too. It never works that way in the real world. You frequently post whenever the topic is pedestrian issues. You obviously want us to do something about the ongoing pedestrian carnage. And I support this 100% myself because I’m a pedestrian more often than I’m a cyclist. However, at some point if we really want to affect change, we’re going to have to do things which either make life a lot less convenient for private auto users, or we’re going to have to seriously look at solutions which far too many livable streets advocates just dismiss outright, like grade separation. There is a finite amount of space at street level. There are more users vying for that space than can be safely or efficiently accommodated. As an engineer, there are only two solutions-reduce the number of users, or make more space. We obviously can’t make more space at street level, so we need to make space above or below the street. If you find this too objectionable then the alternative is to reduce the number of users. The best place to start is obviously with private autos. They take up many times the space of people on foot or on bikes. But you seemingly find even this objectionable because it might cause you inconvenience on occasional weekend trips. Welcome to the world of modern politics where everyone wants painless solutions to problems. Sorry, but there are none here. The best compromise is the one I mentioned-consider excluding rental cars from a general auto ban. I honestly feel this will dilute the efficacy of my overall solution to reducing the street carnage, but I’ll settle for this over the status quo. Vision 10 is not as great as Vision Zero, but it’s certainly a lot better than what we have now, which is something like Vision 200.