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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

#551

Post by lagadu »

_pmf_ wrote: post #176
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.

This is pretty funny because in most situations public transport is a significantly faster means of getting to work than cars are over here.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#553

Post by dredmorbius »

nraynaud wrote: post #220
sxv wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I grew up (Huntsville, Alabama), if you saw a pedestrian or cyclist around town you would assume they are homeless. After living in SF and Montreal and traveling in Europe, I can't see myself going back to a "car-first" city. Which sucks because that's pretty much all the US offers.

There was the author, Bill Bryson, moving back to the US after a few decades un the UK. He would take a stroll, and his neighbors would constantly offer a ride, thinking his car broke down or something.

See also Larry Mc Murtry's Duane's Depressed.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/duanes-depressed_larry-mcmurtr...

Or of course, Bradbury.

https://genius.com/Ray-bradbury-the-pedestrian-annotated

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#554

Post by sebringj »

JaggerFoo wrote: post #545
sebringj wrote: post #279

I don't know why this didn't occur to me but in San Juan Capistrano, CA, I enjoy that place so much with my kids because of the fairly large area where cars have to have very slow speed limit or no cars allowed at all and pure walking which was far better even. There is such freedom allowing your children to laugh and play and walk on their own pace without worrying they'll be run over and having to strictly hold the…

What area of SJC are you talking about? I go there quite often and would like to see this for myself. Especially the area where no cars are allowed. Cheers

"No cars allowed" possibly service vehicles to the shops? But I never see cars and looks like they are never supposed to drive there. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/ZOOMARS,+31791+Los+Rios+St,+... See near Zoomars and Regency Theaters as the start of it where you park then you can walk past the station and go to the coffee shop and go to the restaurants etc there are never cars in there or any traffic

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#555

Post by rootusrootus »

the_clarence wrote: post #541
ghaff wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the time these discussions seem to take place in a foreign language where you recognize the words but they just don't make sense. Personally, it's hard for me to imagine not having a car, much less not having a driver's license, because so many things I do are utterly dependent on driving even if I both worked and lived in a city (neither of which is the case). I need a car to transport my boating equipment.…

I don’t have a driver’s license. Almost none of my friends have one. I don’t understand the need to have one besides the occasional “I need to do something on holidays that requires a car” and even then I would say: rent one.

> rent one

Not without a driver's license you won't... ;-)

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#556

Post by rootusrootus »

lagadu wrote: post #551
_pmf_ wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is pretty funny because in most situations public transport is a significantly faster means of getting to work than cars are over here.

Just goes to show that context matters. If everybody in this entire discussion understood that, there would be a lot fewer comments.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#557

Post by kenmicklas »

It drives me crazy seeing people claim to "just" prefer living in the car-oriented suburbs when

1) that lifestyle is vastly subsidized by economic activity generated in the cities

2) the biggest reason cities are unpleasant is (surprise) the high density of car traffic and noise!

The mass distribution of personal cars is going to go down as the greatest mistake in societal development.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#558

Post by x220 »

breatheoften wrote: post #419

Its insane to me how large space-wise small towns in the us (Oregon in mind as I write this) are — with a huge percentage of the real estate devoted to parking lots. Even setting aside the traffic, it’s silly to walk across these towns because businesses are separated from each other by massive parking lots. The traffic is often amazingly inhumane. Many of the small towns in Oregon are formed on either side of the ma…

Chalk it up to the fact that almost literally every European city developed while people still traveled on horses, and nearly every American city saw 90% of its development when cars existed. If Americans already need cars because cities are so far apart and it isn't yet feasible to rely on public transportation across states and the country, why bother making cities that resemble European, pre-steam engine city layouts unless you are dealing with a city like New York or Los Angeles, where there is no practical reason to leave?

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#559

Post by breatheoften »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #493
wool_gather wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes they're a bit overly quote courteous unquote -- stopping unexpectedly to let you cross, holding up traffic behind them, or waiting too long to turn onto the road you're on so that they end up behind you when they could have easily gone in front and been on their merry way, etc. Not that I want to complain -- I'll take this any, any day over the drivers in certain other northern cities named after 70s rock b…

Peeve: these folks often don't realize there are other sides/lanes of traffic that they aren't able to stop. So the pedestrian still can't cross because of other lanes, but now the good Samaritan is just holding up traffic and slowing everyone down. Including the pedestrian who would normally wait for traffic to clear. Paradoxically, in these encounters I prefer the "rude" drivers that get out of the way as quickly a…

I think this is a pretty interesting phenomenon and I often struggle with how to handle it. I have pretty severe defensive navigation requirements where I tend to require active perception of velocity change before I trust obstacles are going to behave in the manner I expect ... and I think that mentality often leads to these kinds of outcomes.

I was recently in Amsterdam where there are many many bikes and many variations on the scenarios that can cause this to occur. I felt like I started to observe communication on the faces and trajectories around me that tried to convey a message about a kind of conscious morality for influencing the outcomes that results in these scenarios. There seemed to be a kind of social encouragement toward modulating one’s trajectory when possible in advance of where uncertainties could cause delay in order to have the effect of minimizing the required velocity changes — an expression that seemed to say “if you put yourself into a situation where uncertainty about your trajectory is likely to cause a group velocity decrease, you haven’t found the ideal path. Keep an eye out for opportunities to improve the group outcome in the future and have a nice day.” (Edit: Culture in the Netherlands is rather amazing)

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#560

Post by btrettel »

corndoge wrote: post #466
sunshinelackof wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Portland and Eugene love to boast how bicycle friendly they are, but neither are really commutable by anything besides a car for most people. Which is why most cyclists are so prolific -- it's hard to be a cyclist by circumstance. Riding your bike inherently comes with crossing a dozen intersections beaming with cars that treat you like you don't belong on the road. A solution is to level the planes of separatio…

Cyclists really don't belong on the road. It's such an odd collective viewpoint that a vehicle which virtually always travels far below the speed limit should be allowed alongside vehicles that travel at the speed limit. I think this is because we conflate the benefits of cycling and the value of making our public infrastructure amenable to cycling with the opinion that cyclists should share highways with cars. It's…

> It's such an odd collective viewpoint that a vehicle which virtually always travels far below the speed limit should be allowed alongside vehicles that travel at the speed limit.

Most cyclists are slower than the speed limit on most roads, but this does not occur "virtually always". Don't assume. Check the speed limit and the cyclist's speed!

As a cyclist, I find it really irritating to be dangerously passed by a driver, seemingly as punishment, catch up with them at a stop light, and then have them chew me out for not going the speed limit, when I actually was going the limit or faster. It's not hard for a fit cyclist to go the limit on a 15 or 20 mph road, particularly downhill. The problem here is that many drivers think anyone not going 30+ mph on those roads is being a jerk, and unfortunately some of those drivers believe dangerously passing slow vehicles is an acceptable response to their impatience.

But the reality is this: Going 30+ mph in a 15 mph zone is being a jerk!

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