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Something special is happening in Barcelona

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Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#21

Post by throwawaysea »

Fargren wrote: post #4

Reminds me of Masa Crítica in Buenos Aires, a monthly event where lots (probably around a hundred, maybe two?) of bikers would pedal from the city center to the outskirts, to show support for the rights of people using bicycles.

Critical mass events are incredibly disruptive and are an offensively aggressive act to those who are just trying to go about their day and use the infrastructure for its funded intent - which is to say, cars and other motorized vehicles that move at higher speeds. It’s one thing to advocate for changes through proper political channels. It’s another thing entirely to hijack infrastructure, clog intersections by circling up, and violently harass drivers (what I’ve seen in SF). That’s not a protest, but a riot, and participants should be arrested and charged.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#22

Post by throw63738 »

_Wintermute wrote: post #16
throw63738 wrote: post #14

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.

Some people use bus!

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#23

Post by yodsanklai »

throwawaysea wrote: post #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 t…

Car pollute, are extremely dangerous to other road users, and take a lot of space on the road. Cars in city should be the exception, not the rule.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#24

Post by moralestapia »

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #19
moralestapia wrote: post #2

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

Sure, the thing is that it started as civic movement aimed at 'reclaiming' the streets from cars, which was very similar to what OP posted.

Eventually it got quite large, i.e. thousands of people on each gathering, and it became some sort of peaceful rally that happened every week. In the end, the govt. had no choice but to concede them certain things like ciclovías, cycling roads, legislation, etc.

I lived in the city for a while and let me tell you, it is AMAZING to have all that much space just for walking around, talking, having coffee, whatever, even if it's only for one day a week.

I want to emphasize on the scale and impact of said project, it is ~30 km of roads that are completely closed for cars for the whole day. The roads that close are (check this out!) the most important ones, running through the middle of the city. At the beginning, people were worried that this would have some negative effect as, you know, the main roads would be completely closed; but today, a decade later, there have been zero negative consequences for that. Most people that live nearby just run their errands walking because they know they can't use their car anyway. Cars are not as important as people seem to believe and I would argue that they're more harmful as a whole than if they weren't there at all.

I am super thrilled about projects like -> https://culdesac.com/, hopefully I can retire to a place like that.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#26

Post by AlotOfReading »

throwawaysea wrote: post #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 t…

Have you ever spent time in BCN? Unless you're way out in the suburbs of Badalona, there's very little reason to use a car for commuting. Secondly, raised lanes are horrendously expensive, ugly, and reduce street level light. Any city where they're the default is going to be a city where bike infrastructure effectively doesn't exist.

Cities should serve people, not cars.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#27

Post by mastax »

yokaze wrote: post #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...

Barcelona has a population density of 16,000/km², while the city of San Francisco has a density of 2,419/km².

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#29

Post by throwawaysea »

yodsanklai wrote: post #23
throwawaysea wrote: post #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 t…

Car pollute, are extremely dangerous to other road users, and take a lot of space on the road. Cars in city should be the exception, not the rule.

> pollute

I consider the level of pollution to be minimal. It’s not even noticeable in many US cities. Plus this is also always improving, particularly with increasing popularity of hybrids and electric cars.

> extremely dangerous to other road user

First off, “extremely dangerous” is hyperbole. The number of fatalities on roads is very low, and it will keep getting lower as safety features like blind spot monitoring become standards. Roads are already incredibly safe - in the US the fatality rate is something like 1 per 100 million vehicle miles.

But safety is also why roads should be reserved for motorized vehicles. Your assertion also seems very one sided. Safety is a two way thing - a substantial portion of bikers put themselves in danger by riding where they really shouldn’t.

> take a lot of space on the road

They also provide a lot of utility, which is why taxpayers funded roads and parking spaces to begin with. I, and I suspect most people, don’t mind using space for things that are high value, like cars.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#30

Post by pedalpete »

throwawaysea wrote: post #21
Fargren wrote: post #4

Reminds me of Masa Crítica in Buenos Aires, a monthly event where lots (probably around a hundred, maybe two?) of bikers would pedal from the city center to the outskirts, to show support for the rights of people using bicycles.

Critical mass events are incredibly disruptive and are an offensively aggressive act to those who are just trying to go about their day and use the infrastructure for its funded intent - which is to say, cars and other motorized vehicles that move at higher speeds. It’s one thing to advocate for changes through proper political channels. It’s another thing entirely to hijack infrastructure, clog intersections by circ…

This is why I stopped attending, and I think it harmed the effectiveness of the movement.

In Vancouver, we were having a great ride through the city. We may have been delaying traffic a bit, but that's fine. Then they decided to ride up the Lions Gate Bridge (the main artery in and out of the city) and stop all traffic going in both directions for about 10-15 minutes.

The friends I was with all agreed we wouldn't participate again because of those actions.

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