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

361–370 of 994 posts

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

#361

Post by pkulak »

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 would have to admit that even I, I public transit nerd, would prefer an empty subway car. I also don’t like driving when I’m stopped dead in traffic, or biking when it’s next to a highway with no lane, or the bus when I miss my transfer, or walking when it’s pouring rain.

I guess my point is that everything has a worst it can be. The idea, though, is that a city should offer all of them so that you can choose. And a subway at its worst, unlike driving at its worst, will still get you where you need to be on time.

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

#362

Post by wonderwonder »

I am going to be downvoted for this but I am not wrong.

The thing most mass transportation advocates need to understand when it comes to the US is that we don't want cars necessarily for convenience, we want them to be able to avoid other people. We don't want to have to endure the constant micro aggressions of other passengers. We certainly don't want to have to endure the assaults, murders and rapes that happen. We don't want to be forced to mix with the most violent of society while unarmed and packed liked sardines.

Every argument you make about cars being more dangerous are 100% valid, we just don't care. We would rather die 10 times due to an accident than a violent murder. Its just our nature. Until you can get crime to essentially zero or ensure either an armed officer in every train car or allow citizens to carry mass transportation will not be a thing in the US. Especially not in Red states. I'm talking complete removal of all inconveniences, including things as minor as someone playing their music loudly on a blue tooth speaker. This murder of the Ukrainian woman combined with the treatment of Penny essentially killed any hope of mass transit being popular in Red states for the next 100 years. I am not arguing for or against Penny's actions I am simply stating the effect that it had on most people that support what he did, the same people that would need to support mass transit for it to catch on.

Again I am not arguing numbers here, mass transportation is obviously statistically safer than car travel by a massive degree. I am arguing human nature. We will not subject ourselves to criminals and intentional violence when there is an alternative no matter how much more dangerous that alternative ends up being

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

#363

Post by sensanaty »

aunty_helen wrote: post #120
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 chai…

People always say stuff like this, but plenty of European cities like Utrecht have shown that it's very much possible to turn the tide. A few years ago Utrecht replaced an entire highway and turned it (back) into a canal and the area is indescribably nicer in every way, it's called the Catharijnesingel.

This canal was, in fact, always there, they just turned it into a highway at some point in the 70s. So the reverse is more than possible, it's a question of will to do so and convincing the, frankly, selfish car drivers. Having lived in the US myself for a stint, there's plenty of cities that could easily have work done similar to what happened in Utrecht, it's just that there's a lack of a will to do so to make things much better.

Sure, you won't have a direct train from NYC to Dallas (although, seeing China's high speed rail I don't see why that couldn't be on the table), but we're talking about individual cities making these changes a bit at a time.

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

#364

Post by simianwords »

haspok wrote: post #281
sandworm101 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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 cor…

Switzerland seems to have kind of the perfect blend of a solution (apart from the lack of space in general): it is _very_ car centric, almost everyone has a car, like in the US. On the other hand, to commute to work from their little sleeping villages they use the excellent train network which makes it possible to do the daily commute faster than by car. And many people use their ebikes, if for nothing else, just to…

Good points but maybe cities offer something more than just proximity. I think cities is about the culture, meeting people and vibes.

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

#365

Post by whatever1 »

eigenspace wrote: post #100
whatever1 wrote: post #68

That’s cute. But if you don’t have the public transportation infrastructure & enough housing it’s totally infeasible. People who drive the cars are not the city residents. They are the ones who cannot afford living in the city and have to commute from far away.

This is a very backwards way of looking at the issue. The public transportation infrastructure and denser housing used to exist throughout north American cities, but was bulldozed to make room for comically wide roads, oversized single family houses (increasinly occupied by empty-nesters not utilizing all the now empty space), parking lots, malls, and big box stores. Car centric design caused these problems, and movi…

Did they also bulldoze the skyscrapers that we are missing to house all of the suburbs population in the cities ?

It’s nice to believe in fairytales, but what you are proposing is effectively cutting access of poor people to opportunities so that the rich can bike to their cafe safely.

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

#366

Post by deltaburnt »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #282
vid wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes if you walk to a previous stop or come in from a different line you can find a seat more easily. If it makes sense you could even go a couple stops "backwards" if the train reverses at that point. Shifting your schedule might be another option. At one phase I took standing as a challenge and drastically improved my balance over a couple of years, though it's not fun when the car is really crowded.

Sure, but at this point we are just hacking the system. Which is fine, I guess, no harm is done, but it feels wrong :)

Honestly this is one of the undersold advantages of public transit. It can be fun to optimize your path and switch things up both on a macro and micro timescale. In a car since I'm constantly aware of what I'm doing, taking a less efficient path feels like I'm wasting a part of my life. Taking a less efficient path on public transit feels like I'm taking more time to stop and appreciate my surroundings. Especially because sometimes that alternate path gives me a better view.

A coworker once told me his view of his commute drastically changed when he realized he could take the ferry to work. He got fresh air, it was less cramped, and it only took an extra 5-10 minutes.

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

#368

Post by efavdb »

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…

Same in Midwest

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

#369

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

mystifyingpoi wrote: post #323
tmtvl wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as those cars are at home in the garage instead of on the road that's fine. The point is having fewer cars on the road, not fewer cars in general. Riding around on a bicycle and having a car for exceptional circumstances and a once a year road trip is healthier and safer than driving that car around every single day.

That also depends on weather around the year in a given country. Here in Poland travelling on a bike ranges from uncomfortable to impossible for 1/3 of the year.

It must be much worse than the weather in Norway and Finland, then. Or perhaps just an infrastructure problem? I imagine if they didn't clear the roads then driving could get pretty challenging too.

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

#370

Post by nehal3m »

aunty_helen wrote: post #120
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 chai…

I beg to differ. A few Dutch cities did exactly that. Here's a video with a great example of the city I live near:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9kql9bBNII

Utrecht did something similar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPGOSrqXrjs

People centric infrastructure didn't fall out of the sky, we recognised bad ideas and reworked cities over decades to make them liveable. And it worked!

Post reply on HN