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

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#141

Post by Fricken » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:08 PM UTC

claydavisss wrote: post #96

montenegrohugo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In relation to the transportation-problem being discussed, autonomous vehicles are much better than normal privately owned cars because (in theory) they do not need any parking, at least not in premium inner city ground. They can just drive away and park somewhere where they aren't disturbing anyone, and come back when needed. Alternatively, if they are part of a car sharing service, the % of time the car is not bein…

100% wrong....autonomous vehicles will result in vastly more cars on urban roads, idling or driving around in circles waiting to do profitable work...it will shortly become an epidemic requiring congestion legislation think about it....if you set up an autonomous ride sharing service, your path to profitability lies in having cars closer to prospective riders. so it makes total sense to put as many cars on the road a…

There isn't really much political will to mitigate car dependency and curb sprawl, but if hypothetically there were, it would still take half a century of concerted effort to reshape our cities into something a little less dystopian, and in that meantime autonomous vehicles would be very effective for shuttling people between their homes and major transportation hubs, because busses on feeder routes just don't work very well out in the burbs.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#142

Post by alkonaut » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:08 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.

Is that urban planning or suburban planning? Are we talking about better planned (more walkable) inner cities, or are we talkingt about a long term shift in what people wants, such as people not wanting a private back yard?

Because outside of cities, as long as people have detatched homes on reasonably sized lots, getting around requires a car. There will simply not be the density needed for efficient public transportation.

While I might agree that the idea of large suburbs with detatched homes is probably not very sustainable, I don't see how they aren't here to stay (together with the cars required to live in them)

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#143

Post by Uberphallus » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

claydavisss wrote: post #103

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

When you have things at walk distance you don't need to buy 40 pounds of groceries. That's a US suburban problem.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#144

Post by lallysingh » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:09 PM UTC

claydavisss wrote: post #96

montenegrohugo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In relation to the transportation-problem being discussed, autonomous vehicles are much better than normal privately owned cars because (in theory) they do not need any parking, at least not in premium inner city ground. They can just drive away and park somewhere where they aren't disturbing anyone, and come back when needed. Alternatively, if they are part of a car sharing service, the % of time the car is not bein…

100% wrong....autonomous vehicles will result in vastly more cars on urban roads, idling or driving around in circles waiting to do profitable work...it will shortly become an epidemic requiring congestion legislation think about it....if you set up an autonomous ride sharing service, your path to profitability lies in having cars closer to prospective riders. so it makes total sense to put as many cars on the road a…

As many cars as concurrent rides the market demands. There's always an upper limit.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#145

Post by iainmerrick » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:10 PM UTC

twoodfin wrote: post #93

adrianN wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There won't be many pristine woods left if everybody lives like you though.

I think you’re underestimating the total acreage of “pristine” wilderness in the United States. Any realistic demand for a lifestyle like koolba‘s would find ample supply.

I’m not so sure. How much land would you need to be completely isolated, no other houses in sight? A square mile? More if you live high on a hill (which many people would like to do).

Wikipedia says the area of the USA is only 3,794,100 square miles, so there aren’t very many square-mile patches to hand out compared to the size of the population.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#146

Post by masklinn » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:10 PM UTC

close04 wrote: post #134

montenegrohugo wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unde…

> 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.

That's not quite true: by completely splitting car traffic and pedestrian traffic on different levels, you can create a city which is much denser and easier to walk because you don't need large car streets, and at the bottom you don't need pedestrian affordances alongside car traffic. Plus by banning car traffic far away you disincensise car traffic within the city: it's usually easier to walk, bike or take public transport than go to the bottom, get into your car, drive, park over there and go back up.

Louvain la Neuve works on that model, the city is built on a huge concrete slab and entirely pedestrian, with car traffic and parkings underslab.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#147

Post by Sharlin » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #81

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…

> This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing, but cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward. It's not limited to the US. Even in Europe (at least in France where I live), we have a lot of protests whenever there are measures against cars. A few days ago, there was a no-car day in Paris, you could see people on social medias extremely angry.

Cars are the ultimate tragedy of the commons. People want to use cars but at the same time don’t want the negative externalities caused by everyone else using cars too – congestion, noise, pollution, road surface erosion. Because that selfish individualistic viewpoint gets us nowhere, a coordinated approach is needed.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#148

Post by gaius » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

dexen wrote: post #107

claudius wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 whatev…

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

All the talk of banning cars seems to come from people so privileged that other people invisibly provide all the services of the road network to them, delivering their stuff and so on. I mean if a person’s entire life is based on Netflix and Amazon and Uber Eats in an apartment full of stuff that just magically appeared sure they don’t need a car, and no one is forcing them to buy one. But they are so vocal that everyone who hasn’t chosen that lifestyle should be penalised, and they can’t even clearly articulate the alternatives. An hour outside London “public transport” is one bus in the morning and another in the afternoon. But yeah, let’s all get self-driving trams or something on every B-road...

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#149

Post by bluGill » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:11 PM UTC

Many cities in the US have banned cars from a significant number of Downtown Streets. We call them skyways for the most part, though sometimes they are underground. It works well, keeps cars out of the way of people. It also makes for a nice environment to walk around.

Our zoning is such that those streets close at night, and I wouldn't recommend them in the late hours before they are officially closed.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#150

Post by jfroma » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:12 PM UTC

There is a pedestrian city in my province (Córdoba, Argentina) called La Cumbrecita. You leave your car in the entrance to the city in a parking lot and you can walk the entire town.

First time I visit there made me wonder why not all towns aren't pedestrian like this. I mean most towns have nice sidewalks and are walkable but why not just banning cars. In addition to having less noise I can imagine plenty of other benefits.

> [La Cumbrecita] is completely pedestrian and reminiscent of the small German towns of the fifteenth century. One can hike up through the town (and then down) to the waterfall, a truly paradisiacal experience.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Cumbrecita