The eco-town proposed here goes a long way to minimising the impact
cars have on our communities.
But for some of us it doesn't go far enough. Some of us would
like to get away from cars completely.
Carfree
One option would be to take, say, a 6th or a 3rd of the town, and
remove all the cars and roads to make that section completely carfree.
The ring road along the edge of town would remain, but all other
roads would be replaced with small alleyways (for access to back
gardens) and larger gardens.
Car-lite
Another option would be to flank non-carfree streets with 2 carfree
streets as shown below.
The shared roads would be widened slightly for the parking of carshare
vehicles.
Such an arrangement would be less authentically carfree, but has a
number of advantages.
It allows delivery vehicles to deliver goods to within 150 metres of
every house without leaving the road network, keeping vehicles off
pedestrian streets as much as possible. And it means that, even
living in a completely carfree street, you're still only a 2 minute walk
away from a carshare car when you need one.
