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Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

theguardian.com

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Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#101

Post by claudius »

gaius wrote: post #76
michaelbuckbee wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like we should be charitable on the actual wording of the statement as the speaker is being quoted in their non native language. I read this as more that we can't just default to subsidising private cars in a public space. Roads, parking and other infrastructure that de facto subsidize and encourage private car usage but which often are considered "free".

Roads, parking and other infrastructure that de facto subsidize and encourage private car usage but which often are considered "free". Taxes on fuel raise £50Bn/year for the exchequer, which is double the amount spent by the government on all transportation of all kinds. No one considers it to be “free”, and in fact drivers subsidise everything else.

How many of those £50Bn need to go to the NHS to treat illnesses caused by drivers?

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#102

Post by dsfyu404ed »

>pedestrianised all 300,000 sq m of the medieval centre

It's a lot less impressive when you realize that they just banned cars from the area that was optimized for foot traffic anyway. Good on them for not trying to go to far and force people to walk/bike in areas designed for cars.

>"while people claim it as a right, in fact what they want are privileges."

Tangent: This is probably the most European quote ever. Roman senators, medieval lords, members of parliament, Napoleon, the Kaiser, etc, etc. could have all said this.

>And the same shopkeepers who complain are the ones who have survived in spite of the crisis

Surviving in spite of the crisis does not make the crisis fun or necessary. It took a lot of boarded up shops before my city took away the bike lanes and put back the on-street parking (no, the failed businesses did not coincide with the recession if anyone was wondering). You gotta do what works even if it's not what fits your political objectives. If an area of the city was designed for pedestrians that's probably what will work best there. If an area of the city was designed for cars then that's probably what will work best there. It's a disservice to taxpayers to use their money to jam a square peg in a round hole or vise-versa.

>The works were all financed locally and received no aid from regional or central government.

Good on them for not asking for a handout.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#103

Post by claydavisss »

nobody271 wrote: post #91

I walk to the grocery store most days. It seems to kill several birds with one stone: - unwind after work - get exercise - get outside - time to think You would think it would be a lot more popular but it's not. It seems more like there must be something wrong with you if you walk on a daily basis lol. ... societal norms I guess.

Come back when you are seventy and tell us if you still enjoy cycling with forty pounds of groceries

This entire thread is predicated on building cities for young single men

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#104

Post by abrowne »

Semaphor wrote: post #31
pjc50 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's very subjective, quite a lot of people do that year round in a lot of European cities. Certainly it's viable in southern Europe where it rarely snows.

Even here in Germany many people ride their bikes all year around.

Even here in Minneapolis many people ride their bikes all year round, with fewer riding when it is extremely cold or snowy, but coming back out when it warms up just a little.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#105

Post by boobsbr »

thales_m wrote: post #82

What about people who live inside city limits but work elsewhere? For example, I currently reside in Washington, DC but work about 30 min away. There is no public transportation to my work. At night, I park in a garage but there are others who park on the street and commute out of the city every morning.

You're out of luck, the sentiment in this thread is you should just ride a bike.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#106

Post by m_mueller »

Tor3 wrote: post #39
Keyframe wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the culture shocks from Europe to US (California) was that there are places where you can't do shit without a car. Like, no place place to walk along the street to get from point A to B.

I was visiting a customer site near Miami, some years ago. I opted for not renting a car, I could easily go to the customer's site by taxi. But then some components got stuck in customs, and I had to stay the weekend. It turned out that the hotel was its own enclave if you didn't have a car! I couldn't walk to the shopping mall, or a nearby restaurant, I tried everything. Just couldn't get there. It was like being in…

You mean there were no sidewalks?

That's the thing, often in the US I felt very boxed into a place, simply because I couldn't just do a Cartman and 'go home' (or someplace else).

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#107

Post by dexen »

claudius wrote: post #95
dexen wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't the wording, it's the hare-brained idea that public and private shouldn't mix and cooperate. Flip the statement, make it about education - "How can it be that private benefit – the education – is financed by the public money?" - to clearly see the implications. We finance the baseline of education/transportation infrastructure from public funds because we believe that improves productivity, and perf…

Then as you say don’t simply ban "private property occupying public space" but require some degree of efficiency when doing so – people can occupy public space, but like with all resources, they must be considerate and efficient when doing so and not let it go to waste. A simple requirement would be a strict upper limit of 1m²/passenger at all times for vehicles and pedestrians. Trivial to fulfil for considerate mean…

>A simple requirement would be a strict upper limit of 1m²/passenger

I beg to differ - this doesn't gracefully handles special cases. Both my disabled neighbor or my friend taken by ambulance to the hospital (made up examples) would fare far worse than in the current system.

We already have have a better system to divide that among people - those who care highly about particular issue can reserve more space or whatever with small green tokens.

>if you want to lug two tonnes of steel around with you

An easy snark, but this two tonnes[1] reliably brings home a week worth of groceries, drives me 2hrs to meet family, and occasionally delivers tools and materials to various points. All that on the cheap, and with easily calculable costs. Prohibiting it by governmental fiat would surely give us various nice well understood savings, but would cause a lot of loss, both direct and via lost opportunities. I'd be much more reliant on service providers - typically large companies - that would provide the service at the time, cost and quality level I would have little to no control over.

Thanks, but no thanks; I don't want to be any more dependent on goodwill of businesses than I already am.

[1] 1090kg in my case, to be exact.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#109

Post by chrisper »

adrianN wrote: post #11
rnatkins wrote: post #4

>How can it be that private property – the car – occupies the public space? Regardless of what you think of this policy, this is the level of reasoning of a 14 year old.

Free parking is not a human right.

Neither is having side walks, trash cans, benches,...

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#110

Post by shackenberg »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #60
mantas wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then Berlin is rather car-friendly by Euro standards..

Berlin is the most car friendly city in Germany, both east and west (and the united city) spent a lot of money on car friendly streets - and still is. It's funny that the German political party SPD which is responsible for most of this now wants to rebrand itself as bicycle friendly. But the largest sausage producer in Germany is now also the largesg vegan 'meat' producer. And soon pigs will fly.

This hyperbole is obviously wrong or do you have any facts to show it?

I don't know anyone enjoying taking the car in Berlin and one is often faster with public transport or the bike in the city center.

> rebrand itself as bicycle friendly Shocking! Political parties changing course to adapt to change in popular opinion.

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