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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"

#271

Post by pixxel »

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…

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

#272

Post by asimovDev »

Sharlin wrote: post #210

In my city (Tampere, Finland, pop. ~260,000) the annual number of traffic accidents leading to injury has halved since 2010. A big driver has been the decision in 2015 to lower the speed limits on all local streets from 40km/h (25 mi/h) to 30 km/h (~20 mi/h), with appropriate traffic calming measures implemented where necessary. (Industrial zones are exempt.) A map link showing the current state: https://kartat.tampe…

I hope the traffic calming measure is the speed display that shows a sad face when you are speeding.

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

#273

Post by bluGill »

newyankee wrote: post #82
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)

How about if cities were built in such a way that you would just have buildings and podium being pedestrian and bike friendly with all transportation network being 1 level underground (or 2 levels) all as self driving EV pods. This may increase the no of possible 'roads' and does not sound as far fetched in terms of overall costs. Emergency vehicles can be given an exemption to operate on the podium

Underground is expensive. Cars are heavy and need a lot of ventalation. Lets leave the cars at ground level and move humans to underground or skyway systems - thus getting them out of the weather (I live where is snows so this is a very useful feature. People who live where it doesn't snow generally report hot summers and so again want to be inside anyway)

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

#274

Post by the_gastropod »

cvwright wrote: post #238
MangoToupe wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ca…

Safety is the much bigger challenge for public transit in the US right now. Since the pandemic, most cities have really eased off of any enforcement of rules or laws in public spaces. Driving in rush hour traffic sucks, but it beats getting randomly stabbed in the neck by some psycho who didn’t even pay his fare.

No. Gullible people who believe such nonsense are the bigger challenge ;)

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

#275

Post by SubjectToChange »

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 don't see myself ever not being a driver.

Cars aren't getting cheaper, car maintenance has become absurdly expensive (compared to what it was), auto insurance is set to get far more expensive, and making your entire lifestyle dependent on the existence of cheap gasoline is not a great strategy. A lot of people will simply be priced out of driving.

>It's not pro- public transit and better urban planning that bothers me. It's the anti-car "lobby".

Personal car commuting gets in the way of vital freight trucking. The highway system wasn't built to facilitate people going to work or traveling to see their grandma, it was build to move goods.

>I will always choose smaller to mid sized cities, and possibly even rural at some point in the future,...

The more remote your living is, the more everyone else is subsidizing your existence. For instance, rural roads, rural hospitals, rural electrification, rural broadband, rural airports, etc. It's one thing for the people who already live there or genuinely need to live out there, it's another thing for people to choose to live out there for "personal reasons".

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

#276

Post by komali2 »

yourusername wrote: post #263
komali2 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Exactly. Cars are a better experience in almost all cases, I completely disagree. On a train or bus I can stand up and stretch my legs, I'm not cramped into a single valid sitting position. I don't get motion sickness on trains or busses like I do in cars, and don't feel claustrophobic. Also in cars I'm constantly stuck in traffic and can't do anything, whereas a bus or train no matter what's happening I can just r…

>I'm not cramped into a single valid sitting position. No during rush hour you're more likely to be cramped into a single valid standing position.

This isn't my experience, but I understand some countries have overloaded public transit systems. When I've been in those countries, it's been simple enough to just let an overloaded train pass and grab the next one.

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

#277

Post by aendruk »

lukan wrote: post #178
trial3 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unfortunately i think the crab bucket mentality kicks in when sitting in stop and go traffic and seeing someone breeze by in a bike lane makes people so enraged they’re against cycling infrastructure for the rest of their lives

Or some of them can make the mental transition towards "hey, I could also be the one enjoying a free ride instead of being stuck in my car here"

I keep wishing there was a better way to project invitation when in this situation. All I’ve come up with is to appear happy and relaxed—sit upright, look around and smile, eat something as I roll.

We’re so instinctively competitive though it feels hopeless.

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

#278

Post by always_imposter »

sandworm101 wrote: post #180
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…

>> 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…

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

#279

Post by graemep »

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…

I grew up in London where it is almost always preferable to take public transport anywhere central (cars work fine in suburbs).

I prefer to walk and take public transport, but where I live now (small town) busses are infrequent, and fairly short journeys can require changing. It can take two hours on the bus to get somewhere that is less than half an hour by car.

I think people here would be delighted with more public transport. The main complaint I hear about roads is not repairing potholes which is not hugely expensive. The problem is that the political push is to use a stick (make cars more expensive and inconvenient) rather than a carrot (provide better public transport).

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

#280

Post by okdood64 »

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.…

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.

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