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Something special is happening in Barcelona

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Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#121

Post by adrianN »

yokaze wrote: post #92
mastax wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Paris has a population density of 20000/km², and Manhattan of 28,872/km². Population density is correlated with car density up to a certain point.

Usually up to the point where giving 50-100sqm of road to 1.1 people traveling in a car prevents more people from living in the area (because all there is is roads and parking), and more scalable infrastructure is built.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#122

Post by adrianN »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #120
pastacacioepepe wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Guys and girls. This starting to look exactly like communism Is this some kind of a joke I don't get? If you're serious tho, it sounds like a positive to me. > Cars are not the enemy They are. Most modern cities are an unlivable toxic mess thanks to the fact we based transportation on private cars. There is no clean tech that can sustain the large scale usage of cars we currently have. Even electric pollutes a lot…

>” They are. Most modern cities are an unlivable toxic mess thanks to the fact we based transportation on private cars.” This is rhetorical hyperbole that undermines your position. If cities were actually “unlivable” then people wouldn’t be living there and it would cease to be a city. Toxic is also an exaggeration.

You can say that about literally everything that we did in the past and don't do anymore because we finally came up with better alternatives. Take the mining industry for most of its existence for example. Working in the mines was a literal death sentence, yet people did it voluntarily. Even children. Why? Because there were no alternatives for them.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#123

Post by gfxgirl »

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #38

I used to live in Barcelona, the infrastructure is definitely anti car in every aspect, it's desired to be. For such a large city, the car traffic is minimal, there are not enough parking opportunities, especially at the beach. There would be space, but the government knows better, if you have ever been in a tourist destination in Spain during peak season you will know that there is no way to accommodate all the cars…

Visiting Barcelona it didn't seem remotely car "unfriendly". In fact the opposite, much of the city was a boring grid and lots of streets full of fast moving cars.

It's seemed very far from the "ideals" of say this channel's opinions on cities designed to be "anti-car"

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#124

Post by chagaif »

frereubu wrote: post #40

I had an idea similar to this, based on my experience of Critical Mass cycle rides in London: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass_(cycling) It was called "Cycle Pods", which would be mini-critical mass rides for commuters. You'd probably need between five and ten riders who cycle the same route each day at a roughly similar pace, so you could register with a route and see whose rides were similar to yours. Th…

A friend of mine tried together with me to start something similar to what you're describing but for people. We started in the city Bern in Switzerland but added the idea to a wiki hoping someday other people will copy it in other places around the world! Unfortunately it is in German but maybe auto translate is enough?

Here's the wiki: http://youcantalktome.net

And here's some pictures of stickers we printed out and handed out: http://youcantalktome.net/pmwiki.php?n=Main.Vorlagen

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#125

Post by usrusr »

whazor wrote: post #33
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…

Agreed on the shared roads, but in cities it is better to put the cars on pillars. Removing cars from roads does wonders and makes neighborhoods look much nicer. Instead of the pillars you can remove cars from most roads and have limited one-way roads that are fast and without traffic lights. The cars can park in a parking garage and continue on foot/bike/tram. I believe this is faster for the cars as well.

> Removing cars from roads does wonders and makes neighborhoods look much nicer.

Certainly not when you bury them under pillars for cars. Or is there any example where the area beneath the raised highway isn't the worst part of town? What you'd need to do is bury the cars. Side effect: less car traffic, because people tend to not really enjoy driving in tunnels. Unfortunately, it's very expensive and much of the underground space in cities is already spoken for.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#126

Post by jltsiren »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #107
qgadrian wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People who live in the city live it, people (specially rich people) who drives from outside the city hate it.

Yes I think one thing is kinda missing in this setup. The public transport in Barcelona is absolutely excellent. But there's no great way to get into it from the outside if you come by car. Most cities I know have Park & Ride facilities at the outskirts near ring roads. Barcelona doesn't seem to have these (though perhaps I'm missing them as I don't own a car). But I know my colleagues who come from outside are alway…

That's a choice dense cities have to make. Is the city primarily a place where outsiders come to do business, or is it a place where its residents live? If the latter, then you don't want to make coming by car too easy, or you get too much traffic that makes the quality of life worse.

Park & Ride is something that rarely makes economic sense. If you have a location with good public transport connections to the city, you probably want to build housing there. Alternate uses of the land – and parking in particular – are less valuable. Because people don't want to pay the market price for the land for parking, Park & Ride only works with heavy subsidies. The subsidies are usually implicit and implemented via zoning regulations, because taxpayers would revolt instantly against explicit subsidies.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#127

Post by senectus1 »

milderworkacc wrote: post #116
senectus1 wrote: post #110

roads are expensive infrastructure, I don't know about Barcelona but in Australia the roads are paid for by the drivers (at least atm the fossil fuel drivers), how will the maintain and pay for new roads if they take them over with cyclists? for the record, I cycle, drive a hybrid and am looking to buy an electric car. I'm not singling out cyclists as a hate target. I'm genuinely curious how this is going to work.

Roads here aren’t really paid for by motorists at all, it all comes out of general revenue (local rates, state revenue and commonwealth grants where appropriate). Fuel tax is just another tax, same as the Medicare levy doesn’t actually fund Medicare. The move to electric vehicles and bicycles does create a revenue shortfall, but that’s all it is - not any kind of structural issue that needs clever new thinking. Imple…

It may end up being a very significant shortfall, as the vast majority of drivers that CAN go bicycle, or electric are inner city. High population density means the largest slice of the tax burden.

I dont think there is a way we can do this, or allow offgrid without a socialist leaning tax hike to everybody.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#128

Post by maccolgan »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #75
maccolgan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>take a lot of space on the road That's the point, cars deliver a lot of personal space & comfort that really make it attractive vis a vis public transport.

Try Cambridge in England just once. The commuter gridlock is appalling. On a bicycle you could just zip by the madness, and you don't even need much fitness.

Cambridge is hardly a modern city, with any form of space anyway.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#129

Post by jjav »

SkeuomorphicBee wrote: post #45
throwawaysea wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is a very clueless take. Cars disruptively and offensively aggressively hijack that infrastructure every single day, then cyclists claim back one single road for only two hours a month and you claim they are the disruptive ones? They are not clogging intersections, they are using them. The intent of the infrastructure is to move people, cars and other motorized vehicles hijacked it and excluded other users. And…

> Cars disruptively and offensively aggressively hijack that infrastructure every single day

If roads were built for those cars, one can't claim they hijack it when that's what it's for.

We can argue it shouldn't have been built that way, but given that it was (in the US anyway), there's no hijacking involved in using it as designed.

Re: Something special is happening in Barcelona

#130

Post by mtekman »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #111
yawaworht1978 wrote: post #38

I used to live in Barcelona, the infrastructure is definitely anti car in every aspect, it's desired to be. For such a large city, the car traffic is minimal, there are not enough parking opportunities, especially at the beach. There would be space, but the government knows better, if you have ever been in a tourist destination in Spain during peak season you will know that there is no way to accommodate all the cars…

> It's very bicycle friendly, own parts of the roads, unobstructed by cars Only in some streets. Many streets don't have cycle lanes. Or only in one direction, and it's not really clear where to find one in the direction you're going. It's a bit of maze trying to figure it out and in the end you just end up in between the cars.. The crossings aren't that safe either because turning traffic doesn't have their own gree…

Cyclists are still given the stink eye in England if they even consider cycling on the pavement (I was once physically assaulted as a teen by a 'concerned citizen' for doing such a reckless thing), despite it being completely normal in other European cities.

Before the bike lanes were common, you had to cut your teeth zipping between the cars in the narrow roads, keeping up with traffic speeds, annoying every driver who gave you an inch, terrifying bewildered tourists, and watching your face get smashed by door after door after door.

When the cycle lanes were rolled out, things became much safer between bikes and cars, but now all bikes are herded together and you experience a bike lane traffic as Mr Expensive Latex seems to have no idea how to pull over to let others pass whilst he's busy clicking in his shoes.

It's very safe now. I kind of miss the mad chaos London used to be when cycling, when only the dumb and the brave dared to battle the busses. When you'd get to work pumped with the adrenaline and the knowledge that you survived the journey

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