Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

greeneuropeanjournal.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 994 posts

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#111

Post by basilikum »

newyankee wrote: post #82
silvestrov wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

How about if cities were built in such a way that you would just have buildings and podium being pedestrian and bike friendly with all transportation network being 1 level underground (or 2 levels) all as self driving EV pods. This may increase the no of possible 'roads' and does not sound as far fetched in terms of overall costs. Emergency vehicles can be given an exemption to operate on the podium

Tunneling underground is extremely expensive. Individual self driving pods aka cars are very expensive. But most importantly cars do not get more efficient in capacity just because you put them underground, plus now you have to build entrances and exits to the underground system everywhere. Traveling also becomes a lot less appealing when you're in a black tube all the time rather than seeing the city around you. It's also not possible because the underground is not just unoccupied but there is already other existing infrastructure down there.

What you are describing is just a much less efficient, worse version of a subway.

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#112

Post by nakamoto_damacy »

I was walking in a narrow street in Granada, Spain yesterday and two guys on their scooters where going at 40mph, on a street meant mostly for pedestrians. They pollute like cars (the stink is the same, even if smaller engine.) When people talk about cars ruining cities designed for walking, they should include scooters. They look cute in movies but they are not so pleasant to have around in practice. I don't mind the electric scooters the type you stand on because if you're going really fast on a narrow pedestrian and you hit someone it won't be so fatal, and you will get hurt probably equally, so people generally don't ride them at maximum speed. Also, they're essential for take-away food delivery.

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#114

Post by walthamstow »

arethuza wrote: post #99
dijit wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's why you build stations periodically and run trains at faster speeds than cars. I always found it infuriating to have a discussion like this with people who prefer to fly. For example, a flight from Copenhagen to Stockholm (or, Malmo to Stockholm) is about 50 minutes. But a train is four hours.. clearly the train is slower! Except the train takes you into downtown Stockholm- no express train, no getting t…

Pretty similar for me - I travel to London from Edinburgh quite a lot and I much prefer taking the train.

Before Brexit I got the train from London to Amsterdam. 3h45 direct, clean, comfortable and so much more civilised than flying.

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#115

Post by gspencley »

silvestrov wrote: post #52
stephen_g wrote: post #4

I 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)

From an efficiency point of view public transportation makes a lot of sense.

From a quality of life point of view, I have never been comfortable being crammed into a sardine can with that many other people. I've done it. I've never enjoyed it. I do look forward to travelling to the Netherlands one day and I will enthusiastically use public transit there just as a personal experiment to see if my experience differs enough from the subway transit in Montreal or Toronto that gave me nightmares and has me thinking every time I travel there: "Even if it takes me 4x as long to get to my destination, driving is still better than this."

The parent poster made an interesting point that resonates a lot with me. Better public transportation will get people off the roads which will make quality of life better for drivers. I don't see myself ever not being a driver. I need that little bubble that separates me from other people. I don't even like walking on sidewalks in busy metropolitan areas because of the amount of other people and the "over stimulation". And yeah, that's a me problem. Do what you like, just don't take away my means of being able to achieve a little bit of solitude.

It's not pro- public transit and better urban planning that bothers me. It's the anti-car "lobby".

Then again, big city living isn't for me anyway (obviously). I will always choose smaller to mid sized cities, and possibly even rural at some point in the future, for the personal reasons outlined above.

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#117

Post by maweki »

newyankee wrote: post #82
silvestrov wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

How about if cities were built in such a way that you would just have buildings and podium being pedestrian and bike friendly with all transportation network being 1 level underground (or 2 levels) all as self driving EV pods. This may increase the no of possible 'roads' and does not sound as far fetched in terms of overall costs. Emergency vehicles can be given an exemption to operate on the podium

pods (i guess 2 to 4 passengers) simply do not scale. It doesn't matter whether you put them underground or not. The only solution is for people to not use them.

One part of the solution is bikes, the other is mass transit. What self-driving EV pods may be able to do is be people mover for the last mile to a mass transit hub. But for individual traffic across longer distance it simply does not scale.

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#118

Post by trial3 »

forinti wrote: post #76
silvestrov wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

unfortunately i think the crab bucket mentality kicks in when sitting in stop and go traffic and seeing someone breeze by in a bike lane makes people so enraged they’re against cycling infrastructure for the rest of their lives

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#119

Post by outime »

Pontevedra has around 80K inhabitants, so it's practical to design it this way. But when cities are much bigger, problems start to arise. Not everyone can afford to live in the center (nor is there space for them, and building taller than a certain number of meters or floors is often forbidden for various reasons), so people begin moving farther out.

Sure, there's public transport... but only until it takes six times longer than driving a car - and that's not even counting all the issues public transport has in many places, which some people deny even exist, although doesn't matter to me because I just experienced them first hand way too many times (I have never owned a car until recently).

At that point, you might as well move farther out to a nicer house, less expenses and just drive a bit longer.

Re: Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"

#120

Post by aunty_helen »

stephen_g wrote: post #4

I 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…

This is level one understanding of public transport systems. “We should build metros and then everything will be better”

There’s cities that are not setup for efficient public transportation or walkable living. Redesign it from ground up and put a metro smack bang through the middle. Until then, it’s just not going to work.

People, and especially people who like the idea of walkable cities that reside in council chairs, often miss this fundamental step.

“Build it and they will come” won’t get you housing density, small local retailers, geographic compression of services, suitable climate, a different way of living. All key ingredients for walkable cities with well served public transport.

Post reply on HN