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Notes -
Ssome questions (not a gotchas) to try to probe your sense of dystopian:
If they had just removed a central road and made it ped/bike only, would that be comfortable to you?
How do you feel about toll roads generally? What about modern highly automated toll systems?
How do goods get into local stores? Vans and trucks? Then very few vehicular roads can be removed. Particularly not those roads used to reach local shops.
How it works in Europe is that vans and small trucks are allowed in in the early mornings to restock shops and then the road is pedestrianised during business hours.
A van can traverse a cobblestone path if it's wide enough, you don't need a proper road which such a small amount of vehicular traffic.
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Either making the central road car-free or a permanent toll road would be preferable in my eyes. The core of it is that I already find the omnipresence of security cameras in the UK to be unsettling and the measure here doesn't go far enough in visually distinguishing the new state from the old (i.e. the way installing a large toll booth would, even with the same automated systems) to remove the nagging fear that fines for driving in other locations could be added in the future without public knowledge.
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