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

greeneuropeanjournal.eu

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

#501

Post by Aurornis »

dijit wrote: post #223
Aurornis wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

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

Okay, but then why can’t we Americans just exclude the bad parts of America and only allow you to compare to the good parts?

Why must every America-Europe comparison be about the worst case American cities (usually taken from headlines) but only compared to a select subset of European locations?

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

#502

Post by Saline9515 »

darkwater wrote: post #465
Saline9515 wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a reason among others, but this bike-centric policy (pedestrians nor public transport are the priority) led to an exodus of families [0]. I am among them, as I realized pretty quickly that it's a real pain to move around, buy groceries, go to the doctor, and so on with very young children in Paris, especially if you don't own a car. And now you have to deal with the uncivil behavior of the cyclists, moreover. It…

I think you are totally off. Never lived in Paris but I lived in Barcelona for many years, during the transformation to be more car-hostile and bikes and pedestrians friendly. I spent there my 20s-30s and left when I had a family but due to (public) school scarcity in our neighborhood and rent prices. But mobility was not the issue at all. It was actually a pleasure bring my daughter to her kindergarten by bike and t…

Barcelona is in Spain, on the Mediterranean, where the weather is fair all year long. It's not the case in many parts of the world. Bicycles are a rather dangerous mode of transportation, and I wouldn't use it with kids, especially in a city.

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

#503

Post by okr »

oldsecondhand wrote: post #487
deltarholamda wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.…

The problems you mentioned are policing and welfare problems, both things that America sucks at.

Or it becomes too expensive like in germany. Then it will suck too.

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

#504

Post by sensanaty »

philipallstar wrote: post #490
sensanaty wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ne…

Well, in the Netherlands it's also very flat, which makes enabling cycling there a much smaller achievement than anywhere else, except possibly Vatican City. Now we have battery-powered bikes more things are accessible for more people, but the clock starts now for those places.

I mean sure, if you take a surface-level look at things that is true, but the Dutch government has spent a lot of time, money and effort into actually thinking about their urban design and how they tackle building their cities for the quality of life of its inhabitants, rather than the QoL of its inhabitant's cars. It helps, of course, that it's a flat country, but just being flat isn't enough, it takes deliberate planning and good choices being made at the governmental level.

What's the excuse with cities like Oulu in Finland, which isn't flat and is covered in snow more often than it is dry? Despite those 2 potentially huge issues, they still have incredible cycling infrastructure. Or Switzerland, where in my experience in at least Geneva and Bern the cycling infrastructure was also superb despite the mountainous terrain? No one's saying you need a cross-country bicycle highway, as long as the dense urban centers have good bike infrastructure it's more than enough.

Also I didn't even mention bikes in the comment you were replying to, I was talking about public transport like trains, trams and buses. Again, Switzerland despite being extremely mountainous has a world-class rail system that literally cuts through massive mountains.

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

#505

Post by zozbot234 »

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…

You can live in the small suburban village and reach the downtown by rail or bike. And people will always want to live and congregate in the city center, because that's the most productive part of the city. But unless your city center literally looks like Manhattan, it can still fit plenty more people.

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

#506

Post by rafram »

deltarholamda wrote: post #500
rcpt wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time OP is right. The demand is huge and supply is tiny. Even with those scary panhandlers people are jamming onto public transport (when it actually exists) and going far far out of their way to experience walkable areas. > zero other options if I want to live where crime is low and the schools aren't dysfunctional Crime in NYC is exceeding…

>Why don't you simply move to Chelsea or the Upper West Side? Because I'm not in the top 0.1%. "Why don't you just move into a $2-5 million dollar home?" is an astonishing take.

The UWS above 96th is quite affordable. Manhattan Valley is pretty, safe, and close to the park.

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

#507

Post by CPLX »

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.…

I took my kid to school in Downtown Brooklyn on the subway today. It was great.

New York is great and the subway is amazing. I remain mystified by what I see people say on cable news or podcasts.

Or maybe everyone secretly just really loves strip malls, who knows.

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

#508

Post by swiftcoder »

stronglikedan wrote: post #433
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…

> Most of our public spaces prioritize cars instead of people. Maybe most but there's plenty of public space that doesn't. People choose to live around the public spaces that do. Some even try to change that instead of moving somewhere that doesn't. The great thing about America is that there's plenty of everything for everyone, but it's not just going to come to you.

There really aren't all that many options for people-centric urban spaces in the US. A handful of small districts in various cities, but nothing approaching the scale of such things in the thriving Spanish cities.

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

#509

Post by GeoAtreides »

Saline9515 wrote: post #488
Gud wrote: post #367

Writing this on a tram in Zürich. At this hour(peak hours) they depart ever 2-3 minutes or so. Walking distance is 50 meters. It feels great. Now let me hear your objections to why public transport could never work at your location

Public transport usually requires a medium-to-high density to be sustainable. However, it can get saturated - in Paris, the subway and the trams are full for long periods during the day, even at midnight! It makes the experience really unpleasant when you have no alternative.

Man, you really public transportation, you've been all over this thread sniping every positive comment about public transportation

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

#510

Post by loudmax »

mykowebhn wrote: post #158

There are (at least) two Youtube channels, Ray Delahanty | CityNerd and Not Just Bikes, that really drive home the point in their videos that car-centric cities really stink. https://www.youtube.com/@CityNerd https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes

The Not Just Bikes channel really makes clear the benefits of living in an environment that isn't designed around cars, but also the challenge of designing such an environment. You can't just plop in some busses and bike lanes and expect immediate improvement, you really need to think about transportation holistically. This means considering how cars, trucks, busses, bikes, pedestrians and everything will interact.

The Netherlands is lauded as a model, but it took them decades to get where they are today. This isn't to say that we can't do it in the US or Asia or anywhere else, but that we should be clear-eyed about the magnitude of the challenge.

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