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

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

#181

Post by notTooFarGone »

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…

>Sure, there's public transport... but only until it takes six times longer than driving a car

if everyone is driving, noone is. This is simple game theory and a system fault happens when there are too many cars. You can't widen city streets.

For example: public transportation in NY is often faster and cheaper than a car + parking.

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

#182

Post by potato3732842 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #175
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…

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.

>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.

And then you instantly run into the problem wherein people lie in all sorts of ways in order to justify distorting the market to their benefit or preference.

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

#183

Post by MangoToupe »

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…

I of course understand this attitude, but it fills me with hopeless dread that this country will never be able to do anything hard again. Our addiction to cars is one of the hardest to swallow and easiest to fix problems, and yet the will to do so is simply non-existent.

To convince an American to give up on any collective, just point out they'll be mildly inconvenienced. No wonder we never even tried to fight our carbon emissions.

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

#184

Post by haspok »

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…

> But when cities are much bigger, problems start to arise.

Actually, the bigger the city, the more efficient public transportation is. Just look at LA with it's 16 lanes of car traffic, and compare it to London - the fundamental difference being that LA has no real public transport and London has an extensive tube and train network. Oh, and London has about twice as many people as LA... which one would you rather be a commuter in?

Just an example: a colleague of mine was commuting from Reading to Canary Wharf (before the Elizabeth line even), this is now an hour long train ride, if you tried to take it by car it would be double that - and then you'd have to find parking for your car in Canary Wharf, which is not easy and very expensive.

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

#185

Post by Aurornis »

dijit wrote: post #96
npteljes wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there's a lady next to you on the train that covered herself in perfume. Or urine. Or they want to beat you up, or worse. I can't imagine good public transport without the "good public".

Come to Europe, especially northern Europe. The wealthy population also take public transport, it's sort of expected that its for everyone... this seems to alter the behaviour of people in a positive way. Maybe through enhanced enforcement by police? or perhaps social conditioning through higher expectations? idk. US Public transport is not a model of what public transport is like; it's only an example of failed infr…

> Come to Europe

Anecdotally, among myself and my friends we have more stories of problems with theft and encounters with hostile people from very brief travels to Europe than all time spent on public transport in the USA. To be fair, I haven’t lived in NYC where public transport is famously more dangerous.

I also suspect that foreigners are more targeted for wallet thefts while traveling in Europe.

However, watching multiple friends get pickpocketed on European public transport and having to shake some sketchy people who were being aggressive with women in our group during our brief travels shattered my illusions that European public transport is universally superior in safety.

Edit to add: I also thought it was funny when we met up with someone’s friend in a populous European city who refused to ride public transportation with us. He would drive his car from point to point and meet up with us at the destination. He seemed to believe that the underground was not something people his age liked and was surprised we were riding it without a second thought.

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

#186

Post by ahoy »

freetime2 wrote: post #133
CalRobert wrote: post #19

My 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.

> Growing up in suburban California I was basically in an outdoor prison until I could drive. Just as a counter point, I grew up in suburban Massachusetts and this wasn't the case for me. My friends and I rode all over town on our bikes. Bike lanes weren't a thing back then at all, and this was in the 90s when violent crime was at its peak in the US. We just tried to stick to streets with less traffic, rode on sidewa…

New england's suburbs & small towns are the outlier in the US. I grew up in the south and my experience exactly mirrors that of the CA resident you're responding to.

No amount of cultural change is going to make suburban charlotte a good place for 8 year olds to bike alone.

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

#187

Post by mschuster91 »

anonymars wrote: post #140
mschuster91 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, the Americans literally dug up a lot of the public transit infrastructure they had. Tramways and cable cars used to be widespread. You'd need to lay down all that track again.

What's wrong with buses?

Compared with light railway/tram, they need more energy per km traveled due to friction and malleability losses in the tires, they emit fine dust from tires and brakes, and usually they pack significantly less people than a railcar so you need more vehicles and especially more drivers for a bus network.

I'll admit though, a bus network is faster to set up and with mini-buses the size of a MB Sprinter van cheaper to operate even in challenged suburbian hellscapes.

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

#189

Post by mystifyingpoi »

vid wrote: post #136
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…

Once you get used to it, you get more solitude in public transit. Plan your route so you get access to a seat, settle in with a book or music. The other people melt away. Whereas driving a car involves constant interaction with other drivers which in many places (including rural areas, not to single out pickup drivers but there is a pattern) can be quite fraught.

> Plan your route so you get access to a seat

What do you mean specifically? Most of people working regular jobs don't really get to choose the time for their transit. They generally want to get to work as late as possible and get out of work as early as possible. Which means more people, because everyone wants this.

Fun fact, when I was at high school, some students going home by bus would go backwards the bus path and get inside a few stops away from the school, just so they can guarantee a seat and not have to stand up for 60 minutes.

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

#190

Post by evolve2k »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #175
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…

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.

Gen Z on the whole don’t agree with either of you. Younger people don’t want to have to drive or to take on the burden of vehicle maintenance or the considerable risk of being in an accident.

Cramped trains and buses and symptoms of under investment they do not need to be this way. Switzerland deeply values trains and as the saying goes once the business class actively uses trains the whole dynamic changes.

Taking a zoom call in a car sucks. Taking one in a train with face to face seating, wifi, Power plus and a table between you is a much better experience.

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