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

381–390 of 994 posts

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

#381

Post by deltarholamda »

oldjim798 wrote: post #300
okdood64 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this. This is precisely my issue with public transport in the US (granted my experience has only been in SF, Oakland, NYC and Chicago). It’s emotionally taxing when you need to keep your guard up all the time. I can’t even imagine how much worse it would be on someone if they had kids to tow around as well.

How is driving not emotionally taxing the exact same way? Driving with my kids is fucking terrifying. I have 2 under 6, and I have to lock them into these giant car seats to keep them safe (to be clear I like modern car seats, their designs just remind me how vulnerable kids are). Every time I go through a intersection I worry what happens if someone runs the red and smashes into our side. I no longer speed when I dr…

[flagged]

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

#382

Post by zppln »

xyzelement wrote: post #331

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 share this sentiment as well, but while living in a relatively small city with only around 150k people in northern Europe. I moved out to the "suburbs" after having my first kid and find enormous quality of life in being able to have a car and a house. The city center is getting increasingly more "hostile" to car traffic but there's nothing to be had there anyway. A side from restaurants and coffee shops you can get anything you need from the shopping areas on the city outskirts. In a sense I feel this is the best of both worlds: cities for city people, suburbs for suburbians.

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

#383

Post by foobarian »

qwertygnu wrote: post #149
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…

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…

> it's a shame that we've let it go so far,

It's hopeless to expect that things don't end up in this state. A decentralized system will naturally tend to a state of equilibrium balancing between desirability and pain, e.g. people will keep moving to a "nice" area until commutes or prices become unbearable.

I think the only way to end up with an utopia-like metropolis is to run it with a benevolent dictator government SimCity-like, which would probably involve restricted entry leading to very expensive real estate; therefore a lottery or similar admission system into low-cost housing would be needed to balance the needed support population. In other words probably unconstitutional in a dozen different ways and never going to happen.

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

#384

Post by Scarblac »

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…

Note that public transport in the Netherlands isn't particularly good, cycling is.

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

#385

Post by sensanaty »

philipallstar wrote: post #195
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)

Subways are great for high-bandwidth routes. Cars are great for everything. It's like wifi vs cat6.

That's only true because of car-centric design, not a rule of the universe. We can easily make public transport the better transport option if we wanted to.

Yes, going to bumfuck nowhere will be more efficient by paving 800 miles of concrete, but by definition most people are in urban centers, and there's no reason you can't have cities that are human-friendly while still having cars as options for the people that need it. In the Netherlands, ~65% of people still have cars and take their cars for long journeys, it's just that we have alternative options to get around so the people who can't or don't want to have a car can choose to do so without being crippled in their mobility.

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

#386

Post by dijit »

bluGill wrote: post #345
dijit wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. You've hit on the central, infuriating paradox of car-centric cities. We're told that building more roads will bust congestion, but the exact opposite happens. It's a self-destructive cycle and a betrayal of drivers. We're sold a promise of freedom and speed, but what we get is a constant, grinding battle. We spend our lives in traffic and our wallets on fuel/tax, and the very infrastructure meant…

> You've hit on the central, infuriating paradox of car-centric cities. We're told that building more roads will bust congestion, but the exact opposite happens That is a bad reading. If there is more congestion it is because you made some trips that were impossible before possible and so people are better using your city. The point of a city is all the things you can do - otherwise people would live in a rural area…

I mean, you’re right you need systems and people need to get places.

But I used Malmö and Orlando as specific examples of extreme behaviour because in Malmö I can get around very easily. I can go anywhere in the city at any time with complete freedom even though there is good public transport it only enhances the situation. - I don’t depend on it in the same way you imply.

Where as in Orlando I was completely dependent on a car and any public transport that could exist would be wholly insufficient due to the distance you would have to travel: because of all the enormous car parking lots and expansive highways.

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

#387

Post by Othan »

bluGill wrote: post #345
dijit wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. You've hit on the central, infuriating paradox of car-centric cities. We're told that building more roads will bust congestion, but the exact opposite happens. It's a self-destructive cycle and a betrayal of drivers. We're sold a promise of freedom and speed, but what we get is a constant, grinding battle. We spend our lives in traffic and our wallets on fuel/tax, and the very infrastructure meant…

> You've hit on the central, infuriating paradox of car-centric cities. We're told that building more roads will bust congestion, but the exact opposite happens That is a bad reading. If there is more congestion it is because you made some trips that were impossible before possible and so people are better using your city. The point of a city is all the things you can do - otherwise people would live in a rural area…

> If there is more congestion it is because you made some trips that were impossible before possible and so people are better using your city.

No, this means that the trip was made easier by car, not that a trip was impossible and is now possible.

> limiting the things people can do means you are a bad city.

Not building massive freeways everywhere != limiting the things people can do in a city. Building public transit and better cycling infra is a much more effective way to allow people to do more things.

> if you don't believe me explain why there is no congestion west of Jamestown ND - an area where few people live that has a 4 lane freeway which by your logic should have congestion anyway

Yes, in certain circumstances, you can build big enough roads where the capacity is greater than the demand. This does not work in populated areas with high demand. (This is incredibly well studied)

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

#388

Post by epolanski »

Prioritizing people is by any means the way to go, but it's not hassle-free.

It has an impact on businesses and delivery operators that end up being obstructed.

Ideally I think one should move towards layered cities, pedestrians on the ground while beneath them roads, parkings and especially train and train carts thrive.

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

#389

Post by bluGill »

djrobstep wrote: post #64
markus_zhang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public transit needs a lot of money and time so I'm not sure it's even doable for many NA cities. One middle point I think might be more reachable is to build good transit for the busiest part of the city (downtown) and build large parking lots around the terminals, so people can still drive to the terminal and then switch to bus. I live in a suburb on the Montreal island and this is the model the city is trying to b…

> Public transit needs a lot of money and time Public transport is far, far more cost effective than car infrastructure. And that's just direct costs - not even including the cost of sprawl (which makes all other infrastructure more expensive), road deaths and injuries, noise, pollution, storage costs for vehicles, the health costs of inactivity and social isolation, etc etc. > build good transit for the busiest part…

Parking lots near stations make sense only at the farthest out place. They are for farmers coming into town for that big once a month trip, and hobby farmers driving from their "acrage" to their day job. The vast majority of people should be taking transit from their door to where they are going.

Note that I said "place" not station - stations should be your highest demand places since they are so easy to get to. That real estate should be far too valuable to stores too waste on a parking lot. That parking lot should have a shuttle to the station, not be a station itself.

Remember once somebody has got into a car they have paid most of the costs of having a car. They will always be asking why not drive all the way instead of stopping part way. Your goal should be every family sells a car because they don't need two (they still keep a "truck" for towing the boat or whatever they think they need it for, they just don't use it for most trips and don't need a backup vehicle)

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

#390

Post by potato3732842 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #332
potato3732842 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 mark…

> for example, multiple competing road networks. It's a natural monopoly

Worked fine for the railroad and they started off with not just competing networks but competing form factors (gauges).

As long as users are fairly liquid and can direct themselves at whatever option they consider superior it will probably mostly all work out.

Post reply on HN