Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars
1–10 of 243 posts
Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars
#2Great idea! The only puzzling point is the 10 km/h limit. In my experience it's almost impossible to go that slow. Better to set the limit at 20 km/h and cope with the conditions of the road. It will be slow for bicycles too. It forces bikers to go on the roads for cars or be very patient. Maybe it's the intended effect but I don't approve it.
Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars
#3I love dense walkable cities, though I'd love to hear more about traffic capacity on the outer streets (for example, by getting rid of parking there), then of course the numbers on the briefly mentioned parking plan, and whether subway capacity will be increased (yay), etc.
I ask because I dearly hope that it works, pedestrian-dominated city areas are wonderful. I especially love the idea of getting parked cars off most streets. I've always hoped self driving cars will reduce the need for parking , but I'm just a dreamer and these guys have to make a real city work so I'd love to hear the math on it.
EDIT: it looks like bike sharing ("Bicing") and a new "Orthogonal Bus System" are key aspects of the transportation plan:
Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars
#4Great idea! The only puzzling point is the 10 km/h limit. In my experience it's almost impossible to go that slow. Better to set the limit at 20 km/h and cope with the conditions of the road. It will be slow for bicycles too. It forces bikers to go on the roads for cars or be very patient. Maybe it's the intended effect but I don't approve it.
> Great idea! The only puzzling point is the 10 km/h limit. In my experience it's almost impossible to go that slow.
Are you in europe? Keep in mind most EU drivers drive stick, and most cars in barcelona would be "city" cars, C-segment or below (compact and smaller in US segmentation). Depends on the exact car of course, but in my experience 1st and slow 2nd should be well into that range, and trivial to achieve on flat road (either gas up in 1st, or if the car has enough torque shift to second and idle along).
Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars
#5Great idea! The only puzzling point is the 10 km/h limit. In my experience it's almost impossible to go that slow. Better to set the limit at 20 km/h and cope with the conditions of the road. It will be slow for bicycles too. It forces bikers to go on the roads for cars or be very patient. Maybe it's the intended effect but I don't approve it.
The article does note that the plan also includes a lot of new bike lanes.
The idea here is for the superblocks to be pedestrian friendly, i.e. they're effectively big sidewalks with a limited amount of slow moving local vehicular traffic. Unless you have segregated lanes, bike traffic under those circumstances can't just zip along as if it's on a road.
(Habits in this respect do seem to vary by country. I was just in Japan and found I needed to be very aware on sidewalks because there were a lot of bikes. I needed to be very conscious not to make changes of direction without first checking that there wasn't an approaching bike behind me.)
Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars
#6I love dense walkable cities, though I'd love to hear more about traffic capacity on the outer streets (for example, by getting rid of parking there), then of course the numbers on the briefly mentioned parking plan, and whether subway capacity will be increased (yay), etc. I ask because I dearly hope that it works, pedestrian-dominated city areas are wonderful. I especially love the idea of getting parked cars off m…
How exactly self-driving cars would help for pedestrian-dominated urban areas?
Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars
#7Very interesting idea. However, losing two through-streets out of every three will triple the traffic on the remaining through-street.
The people living on the interior of the superblocks will enjoy a more peaceful car-free environment, but the people overlooking the through-streets will experience more noise, pollution and congestion.
I wonder how Barcelona plans to compensate the residents of through-streets for the newly introduced inconvenience (and predictably lowered real-estate value with respect to their neighbours).
Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars
#8I love dense walkable cities, though I'd love to hear more about traffic capacity on the outer streets (for example, by getting rid of parking there), then of course the numbers on the briefly mentioned parking plan, and whether subway capacity will be increased (yay), etc. I ask because I dearly hope that it works, pedestrian-dominated city areas are wonderful. I especially love the idea of getting parked cars off m…
How exactly self-driving cars would help for pedestrian-dominated urban areas?
You could send the car back home after it drops you off, or release it to pick up someone else. That is, if it is fully autonomous. I suspect that long before then, the "self driving" term is going to get abused by marketing until it means nothing more than "autonomously maintains RPM relative to pedal angle".
Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars
#9On some superblocks it seems to me they could connect the corner blocks instead of the center block as the one way lanes. This would leave the old middle roads free of cars altogether giving pedestrians more space and maybe let the cars go a little faster (10 km/h is rather unbearably slow slow).
Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars
#10Very interesting idea. However, losing two through-streets out of every three will triple the traffic on the remaining through-street. The people living on the interior of the superblocks will enjoy a more peaceful car-free environment, but the people overlooking the through-streets will experience more noise, pollution and congestion. I wonder how Barcelona plans to compensate the residents of through-streets for th…
The residents will not get any compensation. That's just the way it works in Spain.