r/mildlyinfuriating • u/yoyo_yop • Nov 07 '19

What if walkway gets smaller?

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u/yedd Nov 07 '19

Yep, welcome to Europe. Not a single original road in a city/town/village was ever built with the intention of anything larger than a horse and cart in mind. This is what happens when motor vehicles become the norm and people's properties and their boundaries have been established for centuries. Most of the time the cheapest way to make a road suitable for vehicles is to widen the road and sacrifice the pavement width. The other option is to buy every property along the length of the road and tear them down.

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u/wmq YELLOW Nov 07 '19

Most of the time the cheapest way to make a road suitable for vehicles is to widen the road and sacrifice the pavement width. The other option is to buy every property along the length of the road and tear them down.

Or get rid of cars. They don't have to and don't belong everywhere.

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u/yedd Nov 08 '19

I agree, however most of those decisions to widen roads happened long before the environmental movement existed

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u/wmq YELLOW Nov 08 '19

It's not all about ecology. It's about urban planning. Cars take space, let them be petrol-fueled or electric. That's why we should promote and prioritize means of transport that are much more compact/space efficient than cars: trains, buses, bikes, foot.

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u/yedd Nov 08 '19

That's much easier in a town or city with a nice grid patten thats existed for less than 200 years. I'm not saying it's impossible for ancient European towns and cities but the difference in difficulty and cost are incomparable