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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"

#221

Post by pirates »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #66
daveliepmann wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> I feel like I stepped into a meeting of an anti-car cult...

Every single thread or post about anything adjacent to cars or public transportation devolves into this. There is hardly any nuance, little effort is made to respond in good faith, and there are insults and insinuations thrown around all the time. Anyone perceived as being on the “wrong side” is instantly given a label and mocked. You don’t even have to be overzealous about it. Even the most benign comment will have someone piling on usually. “Just one more bus bro”

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

#222

Post by cholantesh »

mettamage wrote: post #30
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. 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...

Hah, I had a feeling that was a NJB video. It is generally surreal to me that even smaller settlements in Europe have more, shall we say, evolvability than North American ones, and (at least in some cases owing to their antiquity) prioritize the needs of pedestrians.

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

#223

Post by dijit »

Aurornis wrote: post #185
dijit wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I was quite careful to say "Northern Europe" because there are some very touristy places that attract criminals who specifically prey on tourists.

I could imagine Paris and London in that list, despite both being very safe for locals (and.. both being Northern Europe)- but perhaps less safe for tourists.

I would imagine Prague being a middle-European tourist destination that is plagued much worse by this (but, also, very safe for locals- I lived there briefly).

Where were you in Europe?

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

#224

Post by stephencanon »

IFC_LLC wrote: post #8

It's all fine and dandy until you realize that economy pays a big buck for faster and more comfortable ways of transporting a body. (And it's been this way since time memorial). You either transport your body fast, or you are missing out. And the greatest thing to miss out is an opportunity. While programmers can live in one room for years and just use Zoom for everything, others can't. Sorry to say, but most of my E…

> Where you are not under any circumstances can be robbed by a random person on a street.

I will be very surprised if there's anywhere in the world where the expected loss from being robbed on the street while walking exceeds the expected loss from being in a car accident while driving.

Getting in a car is by far the most dangerous thing most people do routinely.

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

#225

Post by deltarholamda »

powvans wrote: post #10

This is really amazing to see trending on HN. I spent a couple days in Pontevedra this summer while walking the Camino de Santiago. It was absolutely delightful and what I experienced aligns with the article. The old town was filled with wide streets almost exclusively for walking, cafes and restaurants that sprawled into plazas, and people young and old enjoying the car free public space. It was one of the first sto…

>Where it exists you can see that there is tremendous demand for it.

Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time, or they witness (or experience) violence, or some other anti-social behavior sours the whole thing.

I spent some time in NYC during the Giuliani years, after the city did a lot of work cleaning it all up: stopping turnstile jumpers, removing graffiti, more police, etc. It was great. You'd get the occasional guy that jumps on, makes a speech about how he's raising money for something or other, and walks around trying to sell chocolate bars. And there was the occasional dangerous person, insisting on getting up in your face.

So long as this sort of behavior remains at a very low level, something like maybe once every couple of weeks, that's probably okay. But public transit loses all appeal if it happens often. If it rises to the level of violence, everybody starts thinking about the suburbs.

Public transit requires a certain level of unspoken agreement. "We will all behave in this manner." If this unspoken agreement is broken often enough, then it must be enforced. If it is not, and other options present themselves, people will choose the other options.

This happened en masse many decades ago in America. Those that could decamped for other places where their social expectations were met.

I'm a big supporter of urbanism. I loathe the time I spend in my car, and I don't even have that far of a commute, but I have zero other options if I want to live where crime is low and the schools aren't dysfunctional. Until this is addressed, there is no argument about commuter density or efficiency of movement or anything else the proponents of public transit like to talk about that will make a lick of difference.

The worst argument anybody can make is "but that's just life in the big city!" If so, then I'm not going to live and raise my family in the big city. Airy-fairy principles of efficiency or an arguable notion of convenience will not take precedence over safety and quality.

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

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Post by jhickok »

baby wrote: post #161

I'm always wondering how Americans feel traveling to Europe and being able to walk in cities. It must be so surreal that they either have to move, or they can't fathom that these cities are practical to live in.

Believe it or not, we do have cities in the US with walkable areas :)

I am in Madison, Wisconsin and we have a number of areas like State Street where walking is the norm: https://visitdowntownmadison.com/

By and large this is not the case but it isn't as if it's unimaginable what it would be like.

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

#227

Post by pjmlp »

evolve2k wrote: post #190
Ajedi32 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As someone that lived in Switzerland, that is great as long as one doesn't live in small towns outside train lines, with buses that only go up to 9PM during the week, or hardly run during weekends.

Then again, one gets to enjoy the countryside and nature.

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

#228

Post by oftenwrong »

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.

EVs still produce air pollution from tyre, brake, and road surface abrasion. There is also new research that indicates resuspension of particles is a major source of roadway-related pollution.

This review is a good jumping-off point for research on the subject if you are interested: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096669232...

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

#229

Post by anthk »

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…

Funny enough the USSR and tons of the developed western Europe (Barcelona) had and still have "superblocks" which are far better than car polutting everywhere. Yours, sustainable? Keep dreaming.

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

#230

Post by flanked-evergl »

octo888 wrote: post #121
flanked-evergl wrote: post #7

In Norway the public transportation in Oslo has become so bad that it's essentially no longer reliable. If I want to get somewhere in time, I have to use a car or a bicycle. Also, the violence and sexual assaults on public transport is getting worse, the times that it does work it's completely overloaded, and the prices are insanely high and quite frankly becoming unaffordable with the insanely high inflation and int…

Not to be a doomer but I think public transport has peaked in many places in Europe except the big famous standouts like Netherlands, Switzerland, Luxembourg etc The UK government for example is reducing subsidies for the railway and raising prices sometimes even 12-14% per year. This would be unimaginable 10 years ago. We have many railway workers who feel underpaid and some that feel they deserve the same pay as sp…

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