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

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#171

Post by tudelo » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:30 PM UTC

brightball wrote: post #165

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…

I don't think cars are going anywhere for a while, but I'm very interested to see all of the alternative fuel options that show up eventually (CNG, Hydrogen and Electric so far). I currently drive a Volt...and it's wonderful. Chevy is really missing out on a lot of potential free press by not putting a bigger emphasis on it. I went from spending over $400 / month on gas to about $20 / month. You get the ability to cu…

How the hell did you spend 400 a month on gas?!?!?!

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#172

Post by dsfyu404ed » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:31 PM UTC

vbuwivbiu wrote: post #151

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…

1977

The area was closed to vehicular traffic in 1977. The article about possibly replacing the pedestrian mall is 1997. Construction began in 2005. The area reopened to vehicular and pedestrian traffic in mid 2006. The article about the results and other cities considering the same is 2007.

All of which is in TFA[1] the person you're replying to linked

[1] https://www.metrojacksonville.com/article/2007-may-learning-...

I'm not sure if it's what you intended but implying the whole thing is from 1977 is misleading.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#173

Post by close04 » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #146

close04 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Th…

So the plan is to duplicate all needed infrastructure underground? Basically the equivalent of streets, parking lots, everything plus the added elevators to the surface) will now be moved on several levels of underground? The BC FAQ suggests it will have to accommodate current traffic. Isn't this an enormous waste that will only move traffic congestion underground? You can already reap most of the benefits without enormous investments in tunnels.

I will point out the fact that according to Wikipedia Louvain la Neuve has ~30.000 inhabitants and ~30 square Km (12.5 sq mi). It is also 2Km on the longest side. How do you see this applied to New York or London, cities that need it the most?

And why is it better to still spend billions moving infrastructure underground instead of shrinking what's already available to the point where pedestrians get the vast majority of space and the infrastructure only serves the needs of public services?

> banning car traffic far away you disincensise car traffic within the city

I don't know what "far away" means but in reality drivers still go out of their way to drive the car. Think about this: they are willing to spend hours in traffic jams. You think an elevator ride to level -4 will discourage them?

P.S. I'm using info from BC [0] and their vision on this looks a lot like "let have the same traffic as today but on many levels of tunnels". Only the company drilling the tunnels walks away happy. You just pay a crapload of money to hide some of the issues of urban traffic.

[0] https://www.boringcompany.com/faq/

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#174

Post by eloycoto » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #155

eloycoto wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, Van and trucks can enter the city the first time in the morning, so things are ok, and there are no problems for that. The city itself is a "round island", so cars can go close to the estuary and be close to the city, so get into city center takes less than 15 minutes.

>and there are no problems for that. Forcing all deliveries to happen in the early morning sounds like a massive pain in the butt. For example: Forcing a lunch/dinner restaurant to have people there early to deal with inventory or delivering inventory to a diner during breakfast rush are both far from ideal. Any industry that routinely has to get materials (e.g. skilled trades) delivered will be inconvenienced by not…

>Forcing all deliveries to happen in the early morning sounds like a massive pain in the butt.

>For example: Forcing a lunch/dinner restaurant to have people there early to deal with inventory or delivering inventory to a diner during breakfast rush are both far from idea

TBH,restaurants the most happier with this changes. More people in the streets means more customers. If the van can get into the door, there is an entry zones, where delivery can be done with less than 5 min walk.

Disclaimer, my father is a deliveryman for restaurants.

> Any industry that routinely has to get materials (e.g. skilled trades) delivered will be inconvenienced by not being able to take delivery during mid-morning or after lunch, this can unnecessarily stretch out jobs (and cost more $$).

Nope, those industries are not in the pedestrian zone, in Galicia, there is a lot of industrial areas for that matter.

For white-collar, these entry areas, allow delivers to walk less than 5 min, so it's ok.

Is not walk/no-walk, the city did awesome to allow entry zones and make the walking culture for all of us.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#175

Post by cf141q5325 » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:32 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

70 year old people are exactly those who already walk to the next shop multiple times a week. You should keep in mind that this article is from Europe. Its walking short distances and even shorter shopping lists.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#176

Post by _pmf_ » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:32 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…

> This may be shocking to people with an American upbringing

This might be shocking to you, but I'd like to get to work in 15 minutes instead of in 45 minutes while suffering the bodily odeurs of a hundred co-travelers, overlaid with the subtle smell of my wagon having been used as a urinal for a decade, thank you very much.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#177

Post by meguest » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:34 PM UTC

alkonaut wrote: post #128

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…

> cars (especially privately owned ones) just do not make sense going forward Inside cities that is. One must remember that a lot of the people that move around in a city every day don't live in the city. And for many of them a car is a requirement anyway. For me the car is a sunk cost - I have it for the rare times I need it (I don't need it to go into the city), but buying/maintaining/insuring it is mostly a fixed…

This is normal for people who work in London and live in the commuter belt around it. Most of these people have a car but walk to the station, or drive to the station, and then take a train into London. Once in London these people then take the tube, buses, bikes or walk to get around.

The car still gets used outside work to get groceries, pick up kids from schools and of course at the weekends.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#178

Post by CalRobert » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:34 PM UTC

Not sure what your situation is but there are a fair number of options for people who are decent programmers to move to Europe permanently..

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#179

Post by nobody271 » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:34 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

If all you're getting is dinner that's only a couple pounds tops. But I walk. Cycling wouldn't be difficult at all.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#180

Post by dexen » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:35 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #148

dexen wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Funny you should say that. Next step is people self-segregating into pedestrian cities and car cities or city districts; of high-paid knowledge-based jobs living in tranquil peace vs. of people in low-paid menial jobs, living in ever worsening conditions.

Right now I enjoy the perks of having everything near by in the city center, but if my city went pedestrian-first, I would move to the countryside and simply drive to customers when the need occasionally be. But that's feasible only because after all those years, only since I'm in senior technical position in knowledge based sector, and could easily work remotely, and also could work 20hrs-week and earn well enough.

But that's not possible for everybody right now.

No such luck for young people who are just launching their careers, or who are for whatever reason having local responsibilities like, for example, a sick parent. Doubly no such luck for people in service economy "gigs", working for peanuts and by necessity having to perform labor at their workplaces.

Truly, a perspective of privilege.