Life in the Spanish city that banned cars • Hacker News Board

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#131

Post by simias » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:03 PM UTC

TomMarius wrote: post #14

montenegrohugo wrote: post #3

This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward. Cities get bigger and denser, and wasting a big % of land on parking spaces, roads, intersections and accepting a horrible air quality (that reduces citizen life spans and health quality) and noise pollution just does not make any sense anymore. Carse are effective in less dense…

On top of other issues, most of Europe also enjoys a 4-season year - meaning that a bike or scooter is safely and comfortably usable around half of a year, definitely not more.

I ride a motorcycle year long in Paris, it's definitely not comfortable during the harshest winter days but with proper gear it's definitely doable. Spring and Autumn is fine, you just need waterproof gear for rainy days. At lower speeds and with exercise keeping you warm riding a bicycle is probably even less of an issue.

Sure, on rainy or super cold days it's not like it's as comfortable as a car but you'd have to pay me to drive a car around Paris or any big european city at rush hour.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#132

Post by jayess » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:03 PM UTC

montenegrohugo wrote: post #3

This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward. Cities get bigger and denser, and wasting a big % of land on parking spaces, roads, intersections and accepting a horrible air quality (that reduces citizen life spans and health quality) and noise pollution just does not make any sense anymore. Carse are effective in less dense…

My medium-sized city made its main retail street pedestrian-only in the 80s. It quickly died and nearly all stores went out of business. The road was re-opened to traffic and now the area is booming.

One size doesn't fit all. What is your personal preference may not be others' prefereces.

Making a blanket statement like cars "are not effective in today's society" is profoundly off base.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#133

Post by claydavisss » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:03 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #72

koolba wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In cities sure, but there’s plenty of us who do not want to live in cities. Heck, I don’t even want to live within eye sight of neighbors, stores, or really anything else except some pristine woods. That’s not possible without a car.

Sure there are always going to be people like us who want an 'archaic' life style which require an archaic mode of transportation, but the world shouldn't be optimizing for these people, and I see nothing wrong with making these people pay extra for the externalizes their lifestyles impose.

But in the US, it is the (vast) minority who wants to live a pedestrian lifestyle.

If you look around the US you will see that even today, investment in suburbia far outpaces investment in "urbanism".

Trucks and SUVs are slowly cannibalizing sedan sales in the US. So not only do people like driving, the vehicles they tend to purchase are increasing in size.

If you are suggesting that society somehow prioritizes the 0.3% of young single males who want to live as pedestrians in urban cores...put it to a vote and watch what happens.

This entire thread is about optimizing cities for young single males. I can't wait until HN turns a median age of seventy...everyone will be in here screaming about a society that punishes the aged.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#134

Post by close04 » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:04 PM UTC

montenegrohugo wrote: post #32

dmos62 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconded, Ghent in belgium is also pretty cool car-wise. It has so-called pedestrian-centric planning. For example, the city centre may not be entered with a car, only by foot, bicycle or public transport. It's great. I enjoyed Musk's Boring Company's presentation, where they talk about some problems with transportation today and present some solutions, with emphasis on transportation within city borders [0]. [0] htt…

Yeah, underground transportation is definitely one solution that can help solve the transportation problem. The Boring Company seems to be more US focused, so maybe it can help with the "bigger" challenges that the US is facing in de-caring their cities.

This isn't necessarily a transportation problem. The question is "what kind of transportation?". A full (electric) bus is vastly more efficient than 20-50 SUVs carrying nothing more than their driver regardless if you do it on the surface or underground. And you don't need tunnels or even most of today's infrastructure if most surface traffic is public transportation.

Musk's idea basically focuses on moving cars underground if I understood correctly. It should focus on moving most of the public transport underground and simply "decommissioning" some of the road infrastructure from the surface.

   A large network of tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, 

   no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels).

That's not the solution if still you plan on having every person and their car move around. Maintaining the infrastructure for cars on the surface is already expensive and inefficient. Suddenly we can do it better or cheaper by multiplying it underground? You won't get rid of any of today's problems except one: drivers will be able to move from one side of a city and create a traffic jam on the other in no time.

Tunnels are great if you plan on connecting a few hubs spread around a city. From there you can use the most efficient surface transportation available. A bike, a bus, a tram, even on foot.

One lesson that most city planners learned in time is that the more infrastructure you build for cars, the more cars you'll have clogging it. The solution is o discourage the reliance on cars in cities and it worked every time it was applied.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#135

Post by hyperpape » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:04 PM UTC

nrjames wrote: post #100

Raleigh converted Fayetteville Street to pedestrian only back in 1977. It ended up killing all of the businesses there. https://www.wral.com/news/local/story/163829/ The city reopened it to traffic, however, and "revitalized" the area, resulting in a booming downtown economy: https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-... I love pedestrian districts in cities. Copenhagen comes to mind. However, pedes…

True, though I don’t know if it would have the same effect today. There’s 5000 people living downtown today, which is very new.

When I go downtown, I usually don’t park on Fayetteville, I usually park a few blocks away and walk.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#136

Post by xienze » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:05 PM UTC

maaaats wrote: post #113

gaius wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society For people with a very limited lifestyle restricted to a few city blocks perhaps this is true. But the majority of people do not live that way and have use cases for cars that you have not considered in your analysis. change always requires some sacrifice, By other people, funnily eno…

The point would be to get rid of the reasons people need cars. By rethinking urban planning, infrastructure, public transportation etc.

Yes, just wave a wand and instantly transform thousands of existing low-density cities and suburban neighborhoods into little European villages. I’m convinced, cars will be useless in short order.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#137

Post by tetromino_ » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:06 PM UTC

fredley wrote: post #2

Pedestrianisation works well in European cities, especially small ones. It's quite common here in the UK, often there are strict time limits on when delivieries can be made, e.g. 6-8am when barriers are open to let vehicles in and out. However this model just does not work in the US, outside of very few places. US cities are designed for cars, and without major redevelopment everything's just too far apart - even wit…

> there are strict time limits on when delivieries can be made, e.g. 6-8am when barriers are open to let vehicles in and out.

That is nuts.

That means a plumber, electrician, home appliance deliveryman, mover, etc. can only handle one job requiring a vehicle per day. He will have to charge 3-4 times more for his services than someone working in an area where it's feasible to finish 3-4 jobs in a workday. The costs are of course passed on to the customers. Is their car-less life worth living in a pigsty that they can't fix up because laws force contractors to charge exorbitant fees?

That means any business will want a dedicated vehicle to haul what they need in the 6-8 am window. This is not just grossly economically inefficient (no outsourcing delivery to third parties), it results in more vehicles sitting idle during the day, using up parking space!

And that means moving is a nightmare. Moving a two-bedroom apartment worth of stuff into or out of a truck is, realistically, at least a four hour job. That means a cross-town move that could be done in one workday with sane laws will take at least four workdays (two to load the truck, two to unload) in your crazy UK town. Imagine the costs. How is it moral for you to shackle your people to the land by making relocation unaffordable?

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#138

Post by masklinn » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

dmos62 wrote: post #20

montenegrohugo wrote: post #3

This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward. Cities get bigger and denser, and wasting a big % of land on parking spaces, roads, intersections and accepting a horrible air quality (that reduces citizen life spans and health quality) and noise pollution just does not make any sense anymore. Carse are effective in less dense…

Seconded, Ghent in belgium is also pretty cool car-wise. It has so-called pedestrian-centric planning. For example, the city centre may not be entered with a car, only by foot, bicycle or public transport. It's great. I enjoyed Musk's Boring Company's presentation, where they talk about some problems with transportation today and present some solutions, with emphasis on transportation within city borders [0]. [0] htt…

> Seconded, Ghent in belgium is also pretty cool car-wise. It has so-called pedestrian-centric planning. For example, the city centre may not be entered with a car, only by foot, bicycle or public transport. It's great.

Louvain La Neuve (in french-speaking belgium) has an interesting take on this: the entire city is on a concrete slab, topside is entirely pedestrian, and underslab hosts car streets and parkings.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#139

Post by skh » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

rqs wrote: post #127

skh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived for a while in Berlin. Coming back to the U.S. the first thing I noticed were too many billboards and ugly parking lots. Each store has its own parking lot. Largely underused. No nice paths to traverse the bleak endless parking lot landscape. It’s ugly and wasteful. It’s hostile to pedestrians and discourages people from going outside to just wander. Even in relatively walkable communities like the one I live…

Just a side question: Did you also happen to found that you're more likely to going into a store when walk by it compare to drive by? (assuming you can park your car right at the spot and no charge)

I don't know the answer to this. In Berlin I had no car and walked everywhere near my flat. Just strolling around I would end up finding shops, cafes, whatnot. When I used public transportation I had a destination in mind. So it was more purposeful and I didn't normally casually find a store when I used public transportation.

Now that I'm in the U.S. except for one street I never casually go to a store. Everything is purposeful. In the U.S. I go to the store because I need to and it's not a chance encounter. I know where I'm going and what I want to get.

Though I hate the huge, ugly parking lots and what they represent. I tend to purchase stuff online and rarely go to a store these days. I do try to go for walks frequently but that is to get outside and I don't shop when I do this.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#140

Post by eloycoto » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:07 PM UTC

yAnonymous wrote: post #116

eloycoto wrote: post #87

Hi! I'm living in one of the closes villages around Pontevedra, I'm heabilly use the city, and I'm doing some remote job for an SF startup. If you have questions, I'm happy to help and provide feedback.

What do people do who have to commute to the city for work? What do you do when you have to buy a few boxes of beer for a party that are too heavy to carry? How do emergency services work?

1) There are a few types: - Working in the city center --> Walking mainly. - Working outside of the city --> Cars/bus

The city that has banned the cars is the city centre, but is a round island, so in 10-25 min walk, there are parking slots, where you can drive from.

2) Shopping trolley, instead of buying a lot one day, you ended that each day you pick up a few things. (And this is great, 15 min day walking)

3) All the emergency services can go to the city centre, so cars are banned, but if you have an event or emergency cars can get into, here is the common sense rule.

And there is a benefit here, kids are in the street, and due a lot of kids in the street, that moves the street from unsafe, to full of #know people, that make things super safe.