Qagggy 
2008 v. 2023: I don’t think people realize the extent to which parked cars degrade public space.
jcalais@qag When you think about it, it's pretty insane that virtually all bigger cities have designed the infrastructure around car-traffic above ground. What if we had underground infrastructure with highways, massive parking garages, and branching smaller lanes to the most important hubs in the city. Then, above ground it would look like your second picture.
Stephen Gentle@jcalais @qag Underground road tunnels are insanely expensive, and all it would do would be to move the traffic congestion (and accidents) underground.
Can’t get around the limitations of the extreme space inefficiency of cars - even a single bike lane can move more people per hour than a few lanes of road, and trams and trains so much more, it’s hardly worth comparing!
Stygian Lizard
legumancer Davy@shadyspotlight @jcalais @qag Rochester NY had an extensive streetcar/trolley/lightrail system and a subway line in the 1950s. When the streetcar system aged enough to need a refurbishment project, auto industry lobbyists bribed the city council to scrap it and replace it with busses (so that cars wouldn't have to wait behind streetcars - ignoring that busses of the time were loud, smelly and a less comfortable ride). The same thing happened in lots of other small cities at around the same time.
I live in a town of 8,000 people that's very walking accessible because it's so dang old, cars weren't invented yet when the overall layout was established. They've made it work as a destination for people who arrived from the surrounding rural areas by car, by making a few large parking lots around the edges of the town core.
I agree with underground roads not being the most practical option.
Khada'an@legumancer @shadyspotlight @jcalais @qag Man, I grew up in Rochester and that story always makes me sad and frustrated by what could have been. It's tragic.
@Khada_an @shadyspotlight @jcalais @qag I lived there for several years and it was such a frustrating thing to learn.
Sadly, they also caved in and blocked the subway entrance by Dinosaur BBQ to build more "luxury mixed use housing and retail" priced too high for any city residents to actually afford. I'm pretty sure those luxury apartment buildings are some kind of tax or money laundering scheme. No one wants to pay higher rent than East Ave or Park Ave to live downtown and watch the cops arrest people at Family Dollar multiple times a day.
@legumancer @shadyspotlight @jcalais @qag I've been baffled by the city officials choices for years. Rochester is such an old city with so much history and they've somehow just managed to keep making it -worse-
@Khada_an @legumancer @jcalais @qag My own city used to have a trolly system that was pretty popular, but they tore it out during WWII, and there's never been much effort to bring it back. They do have a bus system now, but the website is horrible to use, designed in 1997, and the buses don't seem to go anywhere useful (mainly getting folks from depressed neighborhoods to where they might work, so useful for them, but not for folks with cars.)
lux ⛥@legumancer @shadyspotlight @jcalais @qag I live in Kansas City MO, and our first streetcar line since the 50’s opened in 2016. It’s free to the public and has really contributed to the revitalization of downtown. There’s a couple extensions in development, with more planned, that have me excited for the future. I think it’s a very slow process here in the US, but cities are starting to become less car-dependent.
Fair enough! I've just seen that there are actually extensive street networks underneath Helsinki, which is a very small city. With traffic lights and roundabouts. I think they are supposed to be service roads, but the network felt pretty robust and goes straight through the city below ground. I can't help think what it woudl be like if above ground streets were just blocked off and replaced with underground routes.