Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone" • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by tirant » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

outime wrote: post #119

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…

It's not about being bigger, but having high population density.

Obviously in larger cities it will take longer to travel from one extreme to the other, but that is a similar problem as trying to travel to another city. Trips that are 20km long need to be treated as such, no matter if they're in the same city or not.

Some suburbs in Barcelona and Madrid have more than 20K hab/km2. And they are expected to have as low car transit as other European cities with around 3K to 6K hab/km2.

It is obvious that even though lots of people might be able to switch to alternative ways of transportation car is still extremely useful for many use cases.

The solution is the right city design: more populated areas in the district centers, and less densely populated areas towards the outskirts. Spain is terrible at this, as they design high density areas everywhere. Americans do the opposite, it's mostly all low density.

A balanced solution is how dutch cities are designed. You can live in your own garden house, while having access to commerce, offices in higher density areas, just by 5-20minutes by bike (up to 5-6km).

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

#172

Post by pclmulqdq » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

jeromegv wrote: post #160

pclmulqdq wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also design things so that people are not crammed in at a rate of hundreds of thousands per square km. Then, car-based infrastructure gives you a lot of freedom to place homes and businesses far apart and have reasonable travel time and capacity for everyone. When I moved from Manhattan to an "evil" suburb full of "stroads," my door-to-door time to pretty much everything decreased. Getting rid of waiting for…

Sure. Now tell us how much time it took to get to your office in Manhattan and how much it cost to park there. The suburb is built around the fact that people live there but travel to the main city every day. Now if you have decent train service to the main city, this is starting to be interesting urban design.

There is great train service from the suburbs to Manhattan, but I worked from home and moved to a different metro area. As it stands, parking by the office in the city I live near is about $150-200/month. Taking the train there and back every day from somewhere in the city would be about $150/month.

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

#173

Post by q3k » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

daveliepmann wrote: post #48

mytailorisrich wrote: post #22

Taking car transport to the extreme is bad, but the narrative that life in a small flat and commute by public transport is the future is dystopian, too. The "air pollution" argument is disappearing fast as well with the ongoing transition to EVs. What we need is a good balance. Pedestrians, bicycles, public transport, and cars.

[flagged]

Also tire noise and pollution, and an even higher road maintenance cost (as EVs tend to be heavier than ICE cars).

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

#174

Post by AlexandrB » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

sebstefan wrote: post #157

AlexandrB wrote: post #153

One factor here is the perception of safety. To choose public transit over a car, you have to feel safe walking to/from the station and you have to feel safe riding the train. This is especially true if you are at a physical disadvantage because of gender, disability, age, whatever. Because it's a perception thing, this is not just about statistics. A dirty, chaotic subway station just feels threatening to passengers…

[flagged]

No amount of "transit is more efficient" statistics is going to convince someone to ride it if they feel unsafe. Pretending that these are not real concerns just makes sure that we'll keep building monster highways.

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

#175

Post by Ajedi32 » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

gspencley wrote: post #115

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)

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 en…

Exactly. Cars are a better experience in almost all cases, but also have higher marginal costs. They also take up a lot of space, which in a dense city where space is at a premium makes them even more expensive due to the cost of things like parking and big roads.

The solution isn't to force people into one option or the other. It's to make all options available at market rates and let them chose.

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

#176

Post by potato3732842 » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #159

gspencley wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 en…

> It's not pro- public transit and better urban planning that bothers me. It's the anti-car "lobby". The absolute worst are the "war on cars" people. Not the people who are "anti-car", because while there are some, there's really not that much, so you don't hear those people. No, the people who argue that spending a dime on anything that's not for cars is a "war on cars" and will vociferously reject any investment in…

>The absolute worst are the "war on cars" people. Not the people who are "anti-car", because while there are some, there's really not that much, so you don't hear those people. No, the people who argue that spending a dime on anything that's not for cars is a "war on cars" and will vociferously reject any investment in public transit. And those tend to be the people who run transportation departments!

These people are just the inverse of the equal(ly stupid) and opposite idiots who think all the problems in society are the result of cars or some other mis-allocation of resources toward transportation. They're incredibly small incredibly stupid groups who's extreme(ly stupid) opinions anchor the discourse, to the detriment of all the adults in the room.

You see this pattern of crap on every issue too, not just cars/transportation.

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

#177

Post by Etheryte » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

outime wrote: post #119

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…

Cities can scale far further than that and cars make the situation worse, not better. The Amsterdam metropolitan area houses in the ballpark of two and a half million people, most of them not living in the city center.

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

#178

Post by lukan » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

trial3 wrote: post #118

forinti wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Or some of them can make the mental transition towards "hey, I could also be the one enjoying a free ride instead of being stuck in my car here"

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

#179

Post by sebstefan » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

alerighi wrote: post #122

The problem that car solved years ago, is the following: you can develop a city without cars up to a point where the distance that you have to move to get to your work, or the supermarket, the hospital, etc is at max some km, let's say not more than 10/20. That has the consequence that all people wants to live in the city center, and not in peripherals areas. This has the consequence of making the cost of an house (o…

There's simply not enough space in a city to accommodate everyone's car. Houston is 70% roads+parking lots and they're still congested

Live remotely in low density villages in italy if you want, you can accommodate everybody's car just fine there - but when you need to visit Milan, don't complain that it won't let you bring a car in with you and they kindly ask you to leave it outside & take public transit to reach the center.

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

#180

Post by sandworm101 » Wed, Sep 10, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

gspencley wrote: post #115

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)

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 en…

>> 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.

Exactly. Not everyone wants to live in a "walkable" city. I would hazard that most in fact don't. A city is a place you go for services. It is where the big shopping centers and hospitals are. It is where the corporate HQ is. But people want to live in a more suburban or rural environment. Personally, I don't want to go shopping ever other day at a boutique corner store. I want a time-efficient big costco run every few weeks, something not possible on public transport. I want a yard where my dog can hang out unsupervised without worry about stranger dogs coming around. I want to set off fireworks on holidays. Listen to a country-western station. That is the lifestyle that a great many people dream of living.

I used to work with a guy from Belgium. He is now in Canada. The guy works in IT (secure stuff, government) but he loves animals. So he commutes over 50 miles to work each day. Doing that means he can have a hobby farm where he keeps a few horses. He bought an old tractor and is looking at growing/bailing his own hay next season. His lab just had puppies. His kids are growing up on a "farm" but go to a great school and have faster internet than I do in my "big city" apartment. Such a lifestyle just isn't possible without easy personal transportation.