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

601–610 of 994 posts

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

#601

Post by rcpt »

deltarholamda wrote: post #532
rcpt wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. Are the pedestrian friendly cities battlegrounds with panhandlers with horrible schools, or are they wildly expensive luxury destinations that are in such high demand that only the 0.1% can live there?

I'd think "it can be both" would be obvious, but clearly not. Rich people have been enjoying a different standard of life even in the midst of abject poverty since forever, but I guess this is news to some.

So, OP is right. Despite the Nextdoor-tier rant about panhandlers the demand for walkable cities is huge. So huge that the super rich will pay handsomely and put up with panhandlers on top of it to live outside of car hell.

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

#602

Post by Tade0 »

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

The drivers in my country emigrated to Switzerland.

I jest, but it's true that my city of 650k souls is in a dire need of around 100 bus/tram drivers and that many emigrated to rich countries which provide an overall better standard of work/living.

Personally for minor errands I cycle because I can't rely on public transport and neither can anyone else, so there's traffic congestion everywhere. I'm not happy with this, but I don't really have other options.

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

#604

Post by crote »

Saline9515 wrote: post #535
swiftcoder wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dangerous why? Because of all the cars?

Dangerous because a city provides many ways for a cyclist to fall or hit something or someone. In France, data shows that 2/3 of cyclists' "serious accidents" don't involve another road user. https://www.cerema.fr/system/files/documents/2024/05/3._2024...

In other words, you want them to invest more money into building safer cyclist infrastructure?

An obstacle isn't going to magically pop into existence the moment you mount a bicycle. Car-centric road design can indeed be dangerous to cyclists, but that says more about the road design than it does about the concept of cycling. Build better roads and cycling isn't dangerous!

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

#605

Post by insane_dreamer »

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.…

This may be the US (or NYC) public transport experience but it is generally not the European one.

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

#606

Post by bee_rider »

abraxas wrote: post #49

North Americans visiting Europe often grapple with why they enjoy European cities more than North American ones. It's often perceived as an architecture issue ("Europe has historical buildings that we don't have") but very few notice that the main difference is the urban scale and the resulting walkability. The Netherlands has plenty of modernist and even brutalist architecture yet every city there is a pretty nice p…

Maybe it is a Northeast US thing or something, but it this mystery could also be resolved by visiting a college town, observing that it is quite nice and walkable without too many historical buildings…

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

#607

Post by dongkyun »

Saline9515 wrote: post #415
darkamaul wrote: post #232

While the current Paris administration has its detractors, its policies, removing surface parking, expanding bike lanes, and lowering speed limits, have done tremendous good for air quality (see the Airparif study for details in [0]). Paris may not yet be at Amsterdam’s scale, but only 5 % of daily trips in the city are made by car. It’s staggering that roughly 50 % of public space is allocated to cars [1], despite t…

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…

You do realize that (i) "zones" are just restaurants / cafes / museums that have minimum age requirements and not some demarcated city blocks where children are banned and young adults party all day and (ii) this occurs semi-frequently in the west as well.

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

#608

Post by vkou »

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.…

> Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time

Everyone loves driving until they have to:

* Pay through the nose for parking.

* Pay through the nose for tolls.

* Pay through the nose for gas, maintenance, insurance.

* Replace a car that they can't afford to keep running.

* Are stuck in endless traffic hell that them and all the other drivers on the road have created.

* Are seriously injured or killed by a reckless/drunk/idiot/inattentive/unlucky driver.

----

The first bullet point in particular drives people into a frothing rage. Drivers, as a group, are incredibly and irrationally entitled to free storage of their cars on public/private space.

The last bullet point is far more likely to happen to you in a car, than you are to be assaulted on a bus or train. Across my immediate family, I can count three serious crashes (Only one of which the family member in question was at fault for). None of us have ever been assaulted on public transit, and we've taken a lot of it.

If my direct connection bus came back - or at least bus frequency were increased - (Thanks, budget cuts, for adding a 10-25 minute transfer to my downtown to downtown commute), my car would once again be collecting dust in the garage.

People take transit when its relatively fast and gets them to where they need to go. That's the primary driver for ridership.

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

#609

Post by insane_dreamer »

okdood64 wrote: post #280
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.…

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.

I’m much more worried about my teenager driving than I am him taking public transport.

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

#610

Post by LastMuel »

SoftTalker wrote: post #421
LastMuel wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come nobody ever points out that roads are “unprofitable”?

Because they aren't. They enable almost all economic activity that involves moving things or people around.

Objectively they are not profitable. If you count gas taxes that are collected, we're only covering about a quarter of the cost to maintain them.

Roads are not generating direct revenue, which is how you determine profit. There's no model where roads are profitable.

Additionally, we've been moving goods and services by rail for approximately two centuries in the United States - long before a car was on a road. Roads are not a requirement to move goods around.

Post reply on HN