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Something special is happening in Barcelona

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Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#11
post #6
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly "critical mass" protests in London, which were in endless trouble with the police. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/nov/26/critical-mass-lon... Having children do it does decrease the chance of being broken up for obstructing cars.

Oh, same name so these are almost certainly related. I didn't know about that.

"critical mass" is monthly event in many cities.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#12
If you read this, or other things about reducing car traffic in Barcelona, one should keep the following in mind: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/lafabricadelsol/en/noticia/...

6000cars/km² in Barcelona.

San Francisco/Oakland metropolitan area has 4000/sq mi... 1540/km²

Guttenberg, NJ has the highest in the US with 20,600/sq mi (8000/km²)

Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.planetizen.com/node/45622%3...

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#13
I live there too, and traffic here is pretty busy. Personally I don't really understand why so many people drive. Because public transport here is extremely efficient and cheap. I don't even own a car here and I'm really happy to no longer need one.

But if I had kids I wouldn't really let them participate. Even with the police escort, they might lose the group and be on their own in this busy city.

I'm from near Amsterdam myself and there cyclists are the kinds of the road. Here it's very different.

The mayor is very green and she's trying to pedestrianise a lot, but it's limited to a few lane closures and a handful of "superilla" test blocks. I think there is a lot of resistance to it. I really support her efforts but sadly she doesn't seem to be that popular. She also tried to clean up an area near the seafront with seedy nightclubs and casinos but got a lot of flak for that. I often see graffiti blaming her for stuff :(

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#15
post #8

This has been going on in Guadalajara (México) for like 10 years or so (before the pandemic). It got so big that at one point the city decided to close some of the main roads every Sunday, making them exclusive to pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, or whatever-thing-that-is-not-a-car.

I thought that was because of a lacking density of parks in the city.

What is the optimum density of parks in a city?

A possible suggestion is to change our metric for success from financial gain to connectedness.

For city planning, like everything else, that could be achieved using a Sierpiński triangle: lots of space in the middle (with walking & bike paths) and high-density on 3 sides. Are there any SimCity players here who could simulate this for us?

Whether the city is willing to re-zone accordingly is the bigger question. I pray that San Francisco's leaders will re-zone before the earthquake does it for us.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#16

Some pictures show there is perfectly working cycling path next to road. As someone who walks and uses bus, I have little sympathy for such stunts. Just another privileged group stealing public roads. Next time it will be politician and his convoy.

"Stealing public roads", you do realise the roads are for people, not just motor vehicles? Especially in densely populated cities.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#17
This is a surprisingly clever idea. (Or maybe I am not clever enough to come up with stuff like this.)

As explained the followup tweets: By extending the route to cover multiple schools, with fixed arrival times at each destination, people can join and leave the "bike bus" as it passes through. Even regular business commuters are joining the bike bus.

I love it.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#18

This has been going on in Guadalajara (México) for like 10 years or so (before the pandemic). It got so big that at one point the city decided to close some of the main roads every Sunday, making them exclusive to pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, or whatever-thing-that-is-not-a-car.

But that is exactly what is happening here -- that they are closing the roads where these people are biking, on morning commute rush hour times. Otherwise the story is just "kids go to school on bike".

During rush hour, we're in a hurry to meet other people and serve them. So we're trying to optimise for time, and that's right, we should go to work!

On the way home though, if we optimise for connectedness by being willing to stop and pick up litter on the way, the whole city will be clean!

This idea didn't actually came from me. It was UncleBob - Expecting Professionalism that our wonderful manager Michael chose at work on 2021-08-09. I bike to and from work every day, so decided to apply the "clean as you go" philosophy to every area of life, to love my neighbours the trees, birds, eels, snails. And it's brought a lot of "thank you"s, which multiplied happiness :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSaAMQVq01E&t=2021s

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#19

This has been going on in Guadalajara (México) for like 10 years or so (before the pandemic). It got so big that at one point the city decided to close some of the main roads every Sunday, making them exclusive to pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, or whatever-thing-that-is-not-a-car.

I think that's a little different, a ciclovía[1]. We have them here in Portland OR, one weekend a month in the summer.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciclov%C3%ADa

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#20
This would be incredibly frustrating to me as a car driver. I don’t think having shared roads for a vocal minority of bikers makes sense. It basically slows down everyone to bike speed, which I realize is the unspoken strategy of bike activists, and it is also why I am against supporting bike-friendly policies in their current form. It makes more sense to have cities build raised biking/walking lanes outside of the traffic (on pillars). Why aren’t cities exploring such strategies to accommodate those who like the fast point to point benefits of cars alongside those who are OK taking it slow or going out for a bike ride?
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