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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

#191

Post by rimliu »

lloeki wrote: post #79
Freak_NL wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please send a note to the Dutch (and the Germans, the Danish, the French, the Belgians, …) to tell them to stop riding their bicycles in the midst of winter. In the past five years there was one day when I couldn't cycle to work due to black ice covering most of the roads, and even that resolved itself in the afternoon. Snow just means you need a bit more dexterity than usual. As for comfort; proper clothing means yo…

> black ice ... snow The ultimate irony of the point attempted to be made is that people don't drive when ice or snow cover on the road (or suck at it, take undue risks, fail to, and ram into curbs/cars/people).

What? People drive on the ice and snow all the time, what are you talking about? Not all countries have mild climate, you know.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#192

Post by bryanlarsen »

village-idiot wrote: post #51
hannasanarion wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of the geography. Southern California and Arizona especially were impossible to live in until after Air Conditioning became cheap and widespread in the 1950s. At that time, modernism in architecture and city planning was at its peak: build it big, build it simple, and build it for cars.

The good news is that droughts will forcefully solve this problem in places like Arizona and SoCal. The bad news is that droughts are coming.

Desalinization is expensive compared to pumping water out of the ground, but it's dirt cheap compared to ubiquitous air conditioning and/or depopulating cities.

The coming droughts will affect agriculture, but not the cities.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#193

Post by dsiegel2275 »

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.

Hey, I'm taking my family next year on a 10 day trip through Galicia, and was considering spending some time around Combarro, Pontevedra, etc. Can I get your thoughts and opinions on places to stay, things to do in that area? siegel dot darren at gmail

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#194

Post by jandrewrogers »

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…

This has been modeled and studied extensively by the car companies to understand market sizing in a fully autonomous world. Everything points to a rather dramatic reduction (integer factor) in the number of cars on the streets, which needless to say is a dire outlook for those businesses.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#195

Post by Sharlin »

claydavisss wrote: post #133
dagw wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, that's the problem with the tyranny of the majority. The fact that people want unsustainable living doesn't mean unsustainable living should be encouraged. See also Hume's guillotine [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#196

Post by Xylakant »

pcmonk wrote: post #154
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…

How do you do this with kids? Suppose you're taking three kids to an event or a climbing gym or whatever and it's further than walking distance. Can biking be made safe enough, or if it's further, is it reasonable for them to bring them on the metro? What if it's three kids ages 5 and under? This is an honest question. I live in a city with public transport now and I much prefer it for myself, but when I think of how…

I don't own a car in Berlin and I either take public transport or a cargo bike. Any long-john style cargo bike can fit 2 kids at least, most three-wheeled models easily fit up to 4.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#197

Post by oftenwrong »

jayess wrote: post #132
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.

There is an "activation energy" to walkability. If you drop pedestrian-only development into a car-dependent area, nobody is going to visit.

Personal preference is largely a reflection of the status quo, and in the US the status quo heavily sculpted by federal policy that has favoured car-oriented development for 60+ years.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#198

Post by CapricornNoble »

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…

There ARE some great suggestions in the article, namely underground parking, roundabouts instead of stop lights, and banning street parking. Now, to YOUR points:

"Mass transit": Shared and claustrophobic space with other travelers. "Biking lanes": Requires exposure to the elements. Depending on where you live this is already a non-starter if you don't want to arrive at your destination drenched in sweat. "electro-scooters": I've been on one of these in Vietnam. Doesn't carry 2 adults well and has the same weather problems as the peddle-powered version. "Elevated footpaths": I live in an urban conglomerate in Asia with ~1.1 million people. A typical day of running errands can easily rack up ~50+km of driving because of the distances between either people I know or businesses carrying niche products. There's no way in Hell I'm covering that ground on foot, in 34deg C weather with 90% humidity.

The city in the article is (1) miniscule at ~85,000 people and 15-20km across at its widest and (2) possesses a pretty mild climate. All of the transportation assets you propose as "solutions" are fine....if you live in California or a similar "Mediterranean climate". Most humans don't.

"But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society."

Why so quick to jump to sweeping, society-altering prognostications based on conclusions which you yourself recognize as applicable to a small-scale and optimal use case?

Your suggested alternative transport means all severely restrict your freedom of movement compared to a private automobile as they come with range and/or comfort compromises. They would shrink the options of citizens for long-distance ground travel as well (say goodbye to road trips).

"Of course this is a very small town and these changes do not scale up as easily as one would like"

Yes, and given that 22% of humanity lives in urban areas of 1 million+ [1] and 40% of humanity in cities over 100,000 [2], it might be premature to call people to political action to hasten the death of the automobile when you don't have a solution that scales well.

[1]https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.URB.MCTY.TL.ZS?view=...
[2]http://www.newgeography.com/content/005933-world-urban-areas...

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#199

Post by keeganjw »

jayess wrote: post #132
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.

Interestingly enough, my medium-sized city made its main retail street pedestrian-only in the 80s and it is booming. There's no way they'd ever allow cars on it again. People love it. Our downtown is fairly dense and has three universities nearby. They built two parking garages next to it to give people a place to park and they seems to operate close to capacity most of the time. So it has these things going for it.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#200

Post by CydeWeys »

rimliu wrote: post #191
lloeki wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> black ice ... snow The ultimate irony of the point attempted to be made is that people don't drive when ice or snow cover on the road (or suck at it, take undue risks, fail to, and ram into curbs/cars/people).

What? People drive on the ice and snow all the time, what are you talking about? Not all countries have mild climate, you know.

Many people don't though (look at how attendance rates plummet at schools and businesses on heavy snow days), and of those who do drive anyway, the accident rate is highly elevated.
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