Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars • Hacker News Board

Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

#201

Post by barrkel » Sun, Aug 07, 2016, 1:10 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #172

barrkel wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People would vote out politicians that put in place such obvious frustration-increasing measures. IMO the "solution" is necessarily holistic and incremental. Create a fast intra-city link, and you've effectively increased the density of the two areas joined by the link. If you think about space in terms of time required to go from point A to point B using a given subset of transport methods[1], fast point-to-point li…

I appreciate your interesting stance on this, but you're missing my point. I am not saying "ban cars and everything is fixed." I am saying "we will not fix our cities as long as we continue to invest in cars." The best way I can think of to get people to divest from cars in a fair, gradual, legal, cheap, and realistic way is to eliminate parking over time.

Did you even read what I said? I directly refuted your argument! Your suggestion is both politically difficult and would damage cities by decreasing the very thing that makes them cities: the time proximity between people!

Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

#202

Post by vasilipupkin » Sun, Aug 07, 2016, 2:09 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #191

ethanbond wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities can, have, and do function with fewer cars than most American cities. Reducing parking is the fairest way to reduce the usage and eventually necessity of cars. And again, it's far more realistic than hoping that a transit authority is going to find a buried treasure chest to invest in infrastructure while the public is investing more and more into cars.

Let's eliminate cars. How does one transport a week's worth of groceries for a family of 5 on public transport? Transportation is more than moving a person from A to B. If you want a real solution, provide tax incentives for companies to work remotely. If you eliminate commuters in those types of jobs that can work remotely, you solve almost all traffic problems. Does an insurance salesman really need to travel to an…

A family of 5 could have one car for that, instead of two like most American 5 person families

Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

#203

Post by vasilipupkin » Sun, Aug 07, 2016, 2:13 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #201

ethanbond wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your interesting stance on this, but you're missing my point. I am not saying "ban cars and everything is fixed." I am saying "we will not fix our cities as long as we continue to invest in cars." The best way I can think of to get people to divest from cars in a fair, gradual, legal, cheap, and realistic way is to eliminate parking over time.

Did you even read what I said? I directly refuted your argument! Your suggestion is both politically difficult and would damage cities by decreasing the very thing that makes them cities: the time proximity between people!

You don't have to eliminate parking at all to achieve this. All you have to do is shift city taxation towards taxing parking more in relative terms. Encourage people to use existing public transportation more

Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

#204

Post by superuser2 » Sun, Aug 07, 2016, 2:37 PM UTC

CalRobert wrote: post #195

ethanbond wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you take cars off the roads, people will rebuild (well, reorganize) their cities to account for it. Public transit obviously needs to be better pretty much everywhere in the US, but people also don't want to pay to make it better. I'm a proponent of simply wiping out parking in most areas. That will incentivize people not to drive, therefore to walk/transit, therefore to value the transit systems and the design of…

Too many people fail to realize that the parking we have now is largely due to developers being forced to add it by law, and not because the market demanded it. Your parking spot can add 30-50k to the cost of a unit. That really stings if you're told you have to have "free" parking in your apartment, when it really just means higher rents. Some good reading on the matter: http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/420…

There is a reasonable other side to this: when developers don't build parking but people still feel a need to have cars, tenants end up parking on the street. At any reasonable level of density there are more cars associated with a building than the curb space it occupies, so parking spills over all around the neighborhood.

Removing minimum parking requirements is reasonable, but it should be done in such a way that developers can't offload their tenant parking to public property, i.e. by also making the surrounding streets no-parking.

Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

#205

Post by TillE » Sun, Aug 07, 2016, 2:43 PM UTC

robk wrote: post #192

WalterBright wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent a week in Berlin recently. The transit system is so good I had no desire to use a car, and I traveled around the city to see the sights.

Unless you're trying to go somewhere important like say TXL airport. Sorry! That'll take an hour since you have to go train to train to bus!

TXL is a really quick bus trip from Jakob-Kaiser-Platz (U7). It's SXF where the bus takes forever.

Eventually this will be solved when the new airport opens along with its own S-Bahn station. Any year now...

Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

#206

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Aug 07, 2016, 3:14 PM UTC

> In America, we can’t even agree on the idea that cities are for people. We still decry bike lanes as a "war on cars," even in our allegedly progressive West Coast cities.

This seems disingenuous. I like bikes, but they are not more "people-y" than cars.

I think Bloomberg's filling-in of Times Square was more radical and effective [1]. By turning it into a pedestrian space, it's prioritized space for living and being over transiting. I'm hopeful about plans to turn the length of Broadway into a park.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Square

Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

#207

Post by jdavis703 » Sun, Aug 07, 2016, 3:16 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #191

ethanbond wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities can, have, and do function with fewer cars than most American cities. Reducing parking is the fairest way to reduce the usage and eventually necessity of cars. And again, it's far more realistic than hoping that a transit authority is going to find a buried treasure chest to invest in infrastructure while the public is investing more and more into cars.

Let's eliminate cars. How does one transport a week's worth of groceries for a family of 5 on public transport? Transportation is more than moving a person from A to B. If you want a real solution, provide tax incentives for companies to work remotely. If you eliminate commuters in those types of jobs that can work remotely, you solve almost all traffic problems. Does an insurance salesman really need to travel to an…

Strap backpacks onto the kids and spouse?

Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

#208

Post by jdavis703 » Sun, Aug 07, 2016, 3:17 PM UTC

superuser2 wrote: post #204

CalRobert wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many people fail to realize that the parking we have now is largely due to developers being forced to add it by law, and not because the market demanded it. Your parking spot can add 30-50k to the cost of a unit. That really stings if you're told you have to have "free" parking in your apartment, when it really just means higher rents. Some good reading on the matter: http://www.portlandoregon.gov/bps/article/420…

There is a reasonable other side to this: when developers don't build parking but people still feel a need to have cars, tenants end up parking on the street. At any reasonable level of density there are more cars associated with a building than the curb space it occupies, so parking spills over all around the neighborhood. Removing minimum parking requirements is reasonable, but it should be done in such a way that…

This problem can be solved by granting parking permits, and rationing them based on address.

Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

#209

Post by ethanbond » Sun, Aug 07, 2016, 3:34 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #191

ethanbond wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities can, have, and do function with fewer cars than most American cities. Reducing parking is the fairest way to reduce the usage and eventually necessity of cars. And again, it's far more realistic than hoping that a transit authority is going to find a buried treasure chest to invest in infrastructure while the public is investing more and more into cars.

Let's eliminate cars. How does one transport a week's worth of groceries for a family of 5 on public transport? Transportation is more than moving a person from A to B. If you want a real solution, provide tax incentives for companies to work remotely. If you eliminate commuters in those types of jobs that can work remotely, you solve almost all traffic problems. Does an insurance salesman really need to travel to an…

How wacky that so many other countries have already figured this out. And that humans somehow fed themselves for literally thousands of years before cars but suddenly we won't figure out how to purchase food.

Re: Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

#210

Post by Someone » Sun, Aug 07, 2016, 3:37 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #206

> In America, we can’t even agree on the idea that cities are for people. We still decry bike lanes as a "war on cars," even in our allegedly progressive West Coast cities. This seems disingenuous. I like bikes, but they are not more "people-y" than cars. I think Bloomberg's filling-in of Times Square was more radical and effective [1]. By turning it into a pedestrian space, it's prioritized space for living and bein…

"I like bikes, but they are not more "people-y" than cars"

I disagree. Consider these:

- Cyclists, like pedestrians, are outside. Car drivers sit inside, shielded by metal and, possibly dark, windows.

- Pedestrians and cyclists look each other in the eye way more than happens between car drivers and pedestrians/cyclists.

- The distance between cyclists passing each other is a meter; for car drivers, it is 3 meters or more.

- A cyclist sharing space with pedestrians can and will disembark and start walking if the space gets too busy; a car driver cannot and will not.

Compared to the difference between car drivers and cyclists, the difference between cyclists and pedestrians is minute.