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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"

#331

Post by xyzelement »

I love walking - both in places as a tourist, in NYC where I lived most of my life, and in my small north shore Long Island town today.

But similar to any other "product" the evaluation depends on the user's needs. As a single guy I loved that NYC was dense and walkable - because that meant (among other things) literally millions of date-able women within a 30 minute walk radius of my house. Great! Now as a dad of 3 I don't care about that at all - and the lower density suburb let's me have a backyard for my kids and makes shopping easy, or taking the kids to activities (yes you can do all those things without a car but people chose not to when they have choice)

There should be some sort of mom-friendliness factor in these conversations. If my whole town is old people, terminally single younger people and migrants (as seems to be the case for the city in question) then high density walk ability is perfect. What's the density and transportation situation in places people actually have kids?

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

#332

Post by Ajedi32 »

potato3732842 wrote: post #182
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.

>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.

True, infrastructure is tricky because you can't have a truly free market due to the impracticality of building, for example, multiple competing road networks. It's a natural monopoly. So instead you end up having to make some decisions about what to supply in a non-market based way, and that's fraught with all sorts of inefficiencies and politics.

I think there's certainly room for our approach to be a lot more market-like than it currently is though. On the demand side at least it's pretty straightforward to charge people for what they use based on marginal costs incurred, and use those funds to build out more/better infrastructure.

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

#333

Post by bombcar »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #196
qwertygnu wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my personal car bubble as much or more than most people (though maybe not as much as you), but at some point we have to get over ourselves. We're all so spoiled. Why the hell do we deserve to all have our own giant speed machines careening through cities where people (including us drivers!) are trying to live? It doesn't make any sense and it's a shame that we've let it go so far, especially in the US. It shou…

Do you have kids? I don't think so (correct me if I'm wrong). Car is absolutely essential for driving around small kids no matter the urban density. I'm more dependent on my car(s) when I got the first newborn than I ever was.

A single newborn can be handled without a car (if you spend used car prices on a stroller system!) - but if you have three kids under three, or five under 7, a car greatly simplifies things - or you need to hire additional wranglers.

It's not about the good times (on a good day, moving five kids by walking/stroller is easy) - it's about the bad times, the crying, the screaming, the attempted suicides, etc.

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

#334

Post by alistairSH »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #196
qwertygnu wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my personal car bubble as much or more than most people (though maybe not as much as you), but at some point we have to get over ourselves. We're all so spoiled. Why the hell do we deserve to all have our own giant speed machines careening through cities where people (including us drivers!) are trying to live? It doesn't make any sense and it's a shame that we've let it go so far, especially in the US. It shou…

Do you have kids? I don't think so (correct me if I'm wrong). Car is absolutely essential for driving around small kids no matter the urban density. I'm more dependent on my car(s) when I got the first newborn than I ever was.

False. Cargo bikes exist and are capable of hauling kids and groceries. You can get them e-assist, so you don't have to be a dedicated cyclist.

If you need to travel more than ~2-3 miles or so to get groceries or get to school (in a populous area) that's a failure of urban planning.

Yes, there will be some people with mobility limitations who still needs cars, but that's a tiny minority of the overall population.

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

#335

Post by freetime2 »

These threads always turn into fights between car vs. non-car people. But the answer should just be more of everything. More bike lanes, car lanes, buses, trains, parking, etc. Close a street or two off to car traffic, maybe just on weekends initially, to create a nice walkable downtown area.

People always seem to talk about these things like it's one size fits all, when needs vary massively from one city to another. And even from one neighborhood to another.

Bike lanes and public transport will reduce traffic congestion as long as they are well-designed and people actually use them. And being able to get into a car and drive somewhere is incredibly convenient when traffic is light and parking is plentiful.

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

#336

Post by robbingtherob »

NickPollard wrote: post #268
mystifyingpoi wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have kids? I don't think so (correct me if I'm wrong). Car is absolutely essential for driving around small kids no matter the urban density. I'm more dependent on my car(s) when I got the first newborn than I ever was.

I have a 4 year old and an 18 month old, and I don't own a car (nor does my partner). We rent a car ~10-20 times a year, but that's usually for vacations or trips out of the city to visit family. Regular weekly family life we use buses, the underground (metro), trains, or sometimes taxis. We are considering eventually getting a car, but we've managed for 4 years with children to not need one and it's not been an issu…

[dead]

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

#337

Post by fsflover »

dinkblam wrote: post #311

> Made for People, Not Cars cars are just people that move from A to B. if there is no sensible way to move where you need to go it is not a city made for humans but just hostile to people and their requirements. i need exactly 63 downvotes please, don't be cheap.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45196547

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

#338

Post by Fricken »

deltarholamda wrote: post #225
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.…

My daily bicycle commute takes me right through the heart of my city's homeless district, and like with many cities things have gotten a lot worse since COVID.

Cars are far and away the biggest threat to my safety, and the source of all the harrassment I receive while out in public. I mean, every now and then some guttersnipe blurts out incoherencies at me, but that's not something to be afraid of.

I regard driving, in cities, to be an inherently anti-social activity. If you want a healthy community with safe and lively streets you got to be out in it, not sealed off in a protective cage.

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

#339

Post by alistairSH »

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 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.

Totally get that, some people don't like cities and crowds. But, they should also accept that more space (in this case, access to a car, roads, parking, etc) comes with costs and they should be willing to bear those costs personally.

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

#340

Post by irusensei »

pjmlp wrote: post #139

First sort out how people can manage to visit cities without having to own a car on first place. Most European villages and town are unreachable without cars. Some can already consider themselves lucky if there is a daily connection into one direction. Everyone likes to think we are all living in Paris, Berlin within city boundaries.

A lot of people in the US seems to have a candy colored version of the EU in their heads that mainly consists of an idealized version of these cities and free shit.
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