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

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#661

Post by TomMarius » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 1:21 PM UTC

mesofile wrote: post #388

abrowne wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even here in Minneapolis many people ride their bikes all year round, with fewer riding when it is extremely cold or snowy, but coming back out when it warms up just a little.

What’s interesting to me about Minneapolis and other northern cities where there are a lot of cyclists is that they very often have far more people riding to commute or do other practical tasks than any number of other cities with much milder climates. In the American south, where you never see snow, commuter cyclists are practically nonexistent. Obviously there is a climate challenge of a different sort, but not ins…

Heat is way worse than cold. Many people can't do harder physical activities once it's around 30 degrees Celsius and/or humid because they would pass out (me included, when it's over 28, I just drive everywhere because I can't stand it outside). The idea that someone in their full health would force me to bike onto the steep hill where I live (and 18 km away from my workplace) is extremely unsettling to me. Public transport is not an option - it takes 50 minutes that way (while just 12 min by car) and the buses and trams are constantly overcrowded, late (or don't arrive at all) - and you definitely can't transport a server (or groceries for a 5-member family) that way.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#662

Post by adrianN » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 1:24 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #614

jimmaswell wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Easy in the US 2. You can get a good reliable used car for under $1000 easily, and I use mine every day 3. Not a big deal 4. 3 5. I don't mind paying taxes for infrastructure 6. 5 7. Acceptable risk for the massive benefit to me 8. Efficiency is constantly improving and there are no emissions from an EV 9. How is that any different from how we shape the landscape for our own benefit in every other way?

40 hours a week at federal minimum wage is $15,000. AAA considers average car ownership cost to be at $6,000 a year. https://www.moneycrashers.com/living-without-car/ That is a ridiculous cost to just throw on poor people. And this is assuming a poor person has a full time job with no dependents, and has no other competing concerns for money.

The average car ownership cost is probably not very relevant for the type of cars that people on minimum wage drive.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#663

Post by gpm » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 1:26 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #637

gpm wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To everyone above wondering why people think self driving cars will help. This is why. Eliminate the driver and taxis become way cheaper (probably cheaper than owning a car). That means people like alkonaut here will be far more interested in just not owning their own car that sits idle except when they are personally driving it. Which reduces the amount of space we are spending on car storage.

why people think self driving cars will help Why do you think they will be cheaper? Get ready for surge pricing being the norm. If you don’t have a vehicle of your own, you’ll have no choice but to pay. That’s why investors are willing to pour untold billions into this, they expect a massive payoff.

Because people are frickin expensive.

I'm sure that investors will extract a nice sum of money, but it's their ability to outcompete taxis on price that will allow them to do that. Or to put it another way they don't need to extract $30,000/car/year^1 and competition means they won't be able to.

^1 what ddg tells me the average US taxi driver salary is.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#664

Post by jorgemf » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

Nasrudith wrote: post #499

jorgemf wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free resources shouldn't be an excuse to use them wisely. I get your point, but it is not a good reason why we cannot do things better.

Resources are optimized relative to their current values. Medieval construction was often labor intensive because it was the cheap part compared to materials. City housing got disrupted by a new technology, cars that made additional cheap real estate more available for use. Central planning can theoretically avoid some growth pitfalls "skipping to the end" but in practice it has often had limited success beyond zonin…

> Resources are optimized relative to their current values

I see that as the problem. We have limited resources and don't care very much about the future of them. Current value vs long term value.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#665

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 2:17 PM UTC

topmonk wrote: post #615

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What really amazes me is the creation of new "Shopping Centres" - miles and miles of independent stores and nothing between them but parking lots. They took the mall and scaled it up so everyone gets a store, and now if I want to go to two places I have to actually drive from one to the other because it's nothing but parking lots and pedestrian hostile roads separating them - sometimes it's a two minute drive, but th…

I wonder, when/if autonomous taxis come about will the whole attitude of catering to cars over than pedestrians will cease. If people don't have cars, parking won't be a problem, and walking from one store to another rather than paying for a taxi would become preferable. Then more people would have the awful experience of walking half a mile through a giant paved parking lot which would motivate people to change it.

I feel like you'd end up with a micro-payment type system - it'd be $1 to cross a parking lot or two and you'd have fields of parking lots everywhere to house the cars that would serve the instant demand people would expect.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#666

Post by TomMarius » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

gerardnll wrote: post #36

TomMarius wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hahaha you’re definitely wrong. 3/4 if not all year, bike and sure, motorcycle is factible. (Spain and I’m sure the half of Europe)

I'm definitely not wrong, I'm just living in the other half of Europe. And that's my point - there is the other half, you can't do blanket statements like "cars should be banned". Cars need an update, but motorized 4-wheel individual transport has its place, maybe not in your city, but definitely in mine.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#667

Post by snarfybarfy » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 2:27 PM UTC

honkycat wrote: post #319

I really dislike cars and being around cars. They are noisy. They ruin the air quality of a city. They take up massive amounts of space through parking that could be better used. They force the public to subsidize car owners. They kill people through both air pollution and through collisions. They dominate a city's life in an extremely unattractive way. I base a lot of my existence around avoiding cars and living in…

> I really dislike cars and being around cars. They are noisy. They ruin the air quality of a city.

I guess you are not alone. Given a certain location, the singlemost important indicator of your house price is the amount of cars driving by each day.

A factor of 3 in my immediate neighborhood:

$15k per m^2 in a cul de sac vs. only a 100 meters apart $5k per m^2 next to a 4-lane road with quite some traffic.

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#668

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 3:17 PM UTC

MrEfficiency wrote: post #25

betterunix2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took major redevelopment for many US cities to become car-centric, so I am not seeing why we could not do another redevelopment to create pedestrian-friendly cities.

>so I am not seeing why we could not do another redevelopment to create pedestrian-friendly cities. We have 2 local cities that made themselves bike friendly. Property values are going up in that area. However, the people living there were already 10%ers. Its cool to see lots of bike lanes and walkers, but they also managed to price the people that cant afford cars out.

[deleted]

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#669

Post by corndoge » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

bertil wrote: post #652

corndoge wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States is not Spain. Nitpick all you want - the vast majority of populated places in the US will never ban cars, at least for the foreseeable future.

corndoge, it sounds like you assume that (an unnamed) we has to be in the United States. I’m going to sorely disappoint you there… However, if you want to talk about the United States, I would agree with you that it’s going to be expensive to shift the suburban sprawl away from personal vehicles. As much as that particular urbanisation failure is seen as typically American, it’s far from the exclusive option there. Y…

   it sounds like you assume that (an unnamed) we *has* to be in the United States.

I wouldn't say this to anyone on hn who uses "we" without a qualifier because I assume as a matter of course that everyone on this website is aware that there are non American users. The pedantry here isn't appreciated.

   I’m going to sorely disappoint you there…

   You will be surprised

Re: Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

#670

Post by breatheoften » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

seszett wrote: post #646

breatheoften wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vari…

> Keep an eye out for opportunities to improve the group outcome in the future and have a nice day. I think what you describe just minimizes fuel consumption though. I had not really considered that people might view it differently but thinking back on my experience in Canada, I remember being surprised at how much people would accelerate when the light turned green and how hard they would have to brake just seconds…

I think what I was trying to describe does more than minimize fuel consumption — at least assuming as I sort of was trying to imply that changes in velocity are a message passing component that is part of a distributed “proof of consensus awareness” which is then employed to maximize the likelihood of involved parties converging on the same set of safe trajectories. If applied widely — I think the principle results in reducing the number of interactions where trajectories come too close for safety margins and cause involved parties to introduce extra delay due to uncertainty in the other agent’s behavior. If you modulate speeds in order to reduce the occurrence of delay-from-uncertainty, you can ensure that one party doesn’t experience any extra delay at all rather than both being likely to, which is a net win as well as win-win as the person who does stop or experience delay will wait less time in total for the obstacle to clear.