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Those darn Leftists! Imagine the paradise if we made protesting illegal and just let corporations and government have full control over our lives.
Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"
71–80 of 994 posts
Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"
#72[dead]
Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Might I suggest bikes are a great form of private mobility?
I hold out hope that many more Americans will get E bikes, and demand separated bike lanes. There's plenty of room for them on most American roads especially newer suburbs.
American Fietser is in Carmel, Indiana and evidently loves using his Urban Arrow everywhere.
Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"
#74I think the thing that really struck a chord with me about car-centric development, as someone who lives in a city with fairly poor public transport (by certain standards, it would actually be quite good if it were in the US) and where driving is the norm for getting around - Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers. We spend many tens of billions of dollars a year on roads in my state and traffic in…
Car oriented people seriously underestimate how many people that can be transported in a subway train and how much highway space it would take to transport the same number of people in cars. One subway line can transport more people than even the widest existing highway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif... (edit: spelling)
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Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"
#75My favourite thing about living in the Netherlands is that kids have freedom. They can bike to school, their friends’ houses, sports, town etc and parents aren’t their taxi. Growing up in suburban California I was basically in an outdoor prison until I could drive.
I was fortunate to raise my kids in an exurb that's popular for scenic and uncongested roads. We get a lot of road bikers on the weekends. That means it's relatively safe for kids to ride their bikes all over town. This gave my kids a lot of independence at a younger age than most.
Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"
#76I think the thing that really struck a chord with me about car-centric development, as someone who lives in a city with fairly poor public transport (by certain standards, it would actually be quite good if it were in the US) and where driving is the norm for getting around - Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers. We spend many tens of billions of dollars a year on roads in my state and traffic in…
Car oriented people seriously underestimate how many people that can be transported in a subway train and how much highway space it would take to transport the same number of people in cars. One subway line can transport more people than even the widest existing highway. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif... (edit: spelling)
I've seen many times how some people react to a single bus lane or even a tiny bicycle lane as though cars are getting the raw end of the deal when 90%+ of infrastructure is for cars.
Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"
#77North Americans visiting Europe often grapple with why they enjoy European cities more than North American ones. It's often perceived as an architecture issue ("Europe has historical buildings that we don't have") but very few notice that the main difference is the urban scale and the resulting walkability. The Netherlands has plenty of modernist and even brutalist architecture yet every city there is a pretty nice p…
Important to note is how most cities have two (or more) zones; the old inner city for leisure, tourism, shopping and going out, the suburban areas around it where most people live, and industrial / office building estates where most people work.
Amsterdam is a great example [0] and well-known for a lot of tourists, with the city center being the tourism hub, the zones around it for living, west/northwest for industry/shopping, south for highrise offices and football stadiums, etc. Most tourists won't go that far out though.
[0] https://www.amsterdamsights.com/about/neighborhoods.html
Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Public transit needs a lot of money and time so I'm not sure it's even doable for many NA cities. One middle point I think might be more reachable is to build good transit for the busiest part of the city (downtown) and build large parking lots around the terminals, so people can still drive to the terminal and then switch to bus. I live in a suburb on the Montreal island and this is the model the city is trying to b…
Most of the time aspect comes from excessive regulations and approvals and always, always giving jobs to the lowest bidding contractor. The lowest bidder is always the most expensive, and they always waste time far beyond schedule to burn more money, yet North America as a whole just won't learn from the past 70 years and keeps doing the same thing. I visit China sometimes and it's seriously just wild seeing a town s…
It's because in the West, we decentralized and privatized too much. Interests at local/national/global level are divergent and misalign all the time, which makes everything take more time.
Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Growing up in suburban California I was basically in an outdoor prison until I could drive. Having grown up in the Netherlands and having a decision to make where we want our kids to grow up (US spouse), this feels painful to read. I suppose the SWE salaries aren't worth it. Also this is one of the best towns to cycle in the Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TuGAHR78w&ab_channel=NotJu...
It seems like those comfy US coastal salaries usually buy you either: - A largish house in the subs, and a nice car that you'll be seeing a lot of, unfortunately. - A tiny house closer to work. While European SWE salaries are significantly lower, they can generally buy you a decent house close to work.
For a period in my 20’s when I wasn’t well paid I lived in some nice places car free (San Luis Obispo, Santa Monica, Berkeley) but this was when rent was cheap and I didn’t have a family.
Even in Europe it’s hard to find a decent affordable home where you can raise a couple kids in places you can live without a car.
Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Public transit needs a lot of money and time so I'm not sure it's even doable for many NA cities. One middle point I think might be more reachable is to build good transit for the busiest part of the city (downtown) and build large parking lots around the terminals, so people can still drive to the terminal and then switch to bus. I live in a suburb on the Montreal island and this is the model the city is trying to b…
Most of the time aspect comes from excessive regulations and approvals and always, always giving jobs to the lowest bidding contractor. The lowest bidder is always the most expensive, and they always waste time far beyond schedule to burn more money, yet North America as a whole just won't learn from the past 70 years and keeps doing the same thing. I visit China sometimes and it's seriously just wild seeing a town s…
> Most of the time aspect comes from excessive regulations and approvals
Well... given you're comparing to China... regulations and approvals have a point. China just openly sharts on nature, the environment and the rights of its citizens - the Party and its interests always come first.
> I visit China sometimes and it's seriously just wild seeing a town suddenly have a metro system go from not existing to being fully functional and world-class compared to anything in the west within the span of a few years.
Easy to do when you got the perfect combination: a lot of young single poor men that can be shuffled around the country because they got nothing tying them down to a specific place, combined with a lot of hard dollars from exports.
And China has another incentive... the threat of gulag. When a project gets screwed up, someone or their entire family ends up gulaged, and usually it's going to be someone from the CCP when someone higher-up thinks it's a good time to audit projects of the underlings to have some fall guys to take the usual "corruption" blame.