How to quickly upgrade cities

When I open my window I hear the traffic outside. I never quite feel relaxed. My concentration is easily derailed by motorcycles, car alarms, and the sounds of stop and go traffic at the intersection. When I talk to people about denser city design as a necessity, I get a lot of push back. They say it’ll be expensive to change things and they value their current low-noise living space (I point out law mowers and leaf blowers in the suburbs but that’s a whole other topic).

The solution I’ve come up with is to have borrowable light weight electric vehicles (think golf carts with an enclosure) that operate in a designated area where cars are banned. This can accomplished with low cost car barriers and road paint. Unlike the mainstream solution of everyone converting their ICE vehicle to an electric car, this is an actual feasible solution given the amount of materials it would take to make enough batteries and motors to support light weight vehicles instead of the increasingly popular extra large trucks. A golf cart weighs between 800 to 1000lbs (~ 360kg - 450kg). A 2024 Rivian R1T (electric truck) weighs over 7000lbs (~3175kg).

The weight difference between these types of vehicles represents an order of magnitude more road wear, more metals and rare minerals needed for their construction, and deaths from collisions. It may make sense to be in a larger vehicle for travel between cities or in rural areas, but in a dense city there is no benefit since the ideal speed for moving everyone around without gridlock is well within the capability of golf cart sized vehicle.

A fleet of municipally managed light electric cars and taxis would require far less maintenance and resources than traditional ICE or electric cars, but I also understand people’s main objection: I already have a car and I like driving it. If desired, people could park their current vehicle at the edge of the no-car zone in a designated car park. For some this would be a bit inconvenient if they had to walk or ride to their vehicle as part of their trip, but for many others it would be an opportunity to get rid of their costly private vehicle or perhaps join a car share program with others to rent out their “get out of town” vehicles to people for weekend adventures outside of the city.

One thing that makes me optimistic about this plan is the adoption of less useful electric scooters. Apparently people are ok not owning their mode of transportation in some cases, even if that means being at the mercy of drivers who can kill you with a small lapse in concentration. A city with walking, bikes, trains, buses, and lightweight rent-able vehicles as its main transportation strategy would be quiet and peaceful in ways I think most people can hardly imagine. Whatever hardships would entail from not having a multi-ton truck at your immediate disposal would be more than offset by the benefits of not being entirely dependent on loud, deadly, and expensive private vehicles.

And what would we do with all that extra paved space that was once the domain of cars? Street fairs, tiny homes in parking lots, hydroponic urban farms, food carts, outdoor dining without the noise of traffic, and many other things that were once limited to college towns and places built before cars became mandatory.

( I am experimenting with spontaneous writing and less editing.)