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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"

#671

Post by komali2 »

ux266478 wrote: post #352
komali2 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From a quality of life point of view, I have never been comfortable being crammed into a sardine can with that many other people. Then, you've experienced poor public transit systems. A good one doesn't make you so packed in because there's enough trains for people to have comfortable amounts of space. Anyway, it's moot - if your city has lots of people, the only feasible way to move them around is public transit.…

I wouldn't qualify Tokyo's public transit system as poor. In fact, the only one that might rival it in Europe would be the one in Moscow.

Tokyo has better public transit than the United States, certainly. However it's public transit options and general design aren't that great by modern standards.

First, they have basically no bicycle infrastructure, and bikes are supposed to go on the sidewalk, so pedestrian cyclist collisions are common.

Second, their many lines are semi privatized and split between many companies. That means inefficient design, upkeep, and construction. What should be a place where two lines interconnect is instead an in-station transfer at best - often instead it's a out-station transfer, where you have to return to street level to get to the station serving that company's line. There's also a annoyance around payment and payment systems for this reason.

Third , they don't run enough trains. Rush hour is insane.

Fourth, they still don't have gates at their platforms, despite their absurdly high suicide rate.

I've just traveled through Brussels, London, and Amsterdam. In my opinion Brussels may have had better per capita transit since their tram system was so ridiculously fast and frequent, and cars had only a narrow area to go, with plenty of room for bicycles, however I didn't see much of the city.

London trains were too expensive and too unreliable. I agree with you in this case, Tokyo is better.

Amsterdam I've only been able to explore a bit but so far I'm very impressed. However for unfathomable reasons they let cars and scooter drive in these tiny roads next to the canals, and even more unfathomably, they give cars tons of the most valuable canal side real estate to park in!! So Tokyo does that better, but Amsterdam so far feels much more liveable.

I haven't seen much else of Europe so can't speak to that!

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

#672

Post by mothballed »

piva00 wrote: post #660
mothballed wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It applies to public transit specifically because people have freedom of speech to be assholes on public transit. If I have an uber or a private taxi or even a private collectivo which is a private system that works like public transit in much the 3rd world, if I get sick of someone panhandling for the Nth time I can kick them the fuck out. If you look at places with nice public transit like Germany or Japan, they ha…

I don't think it has anything to do with free speech laws, it's simply civics and the lack of it in American society due to a multitude of factors. American society doesn't understand collectivism in any level, your country has been built upon individualism without much care for collective living, you just reap what you've sown.

Have you considered that America is a wealthy country, where anyone with a job even flipping burgers can buy a 150cc motorcycle and then take his girl on a date without a process that involves getting accosted by a paranoid schizophrenic?

You can basically buy a small motorcycle or scooter or fast e-bike on credit for the cost of maintaining a bus pass. It's only a rational choice for elderly or people with such mental or physical disabilities they can't maintain or operate similarly cheap alternatives. The end result is public transit gets dominated by hood rats, mentally ill, homeless, and a few elderly and people with disabilities, and due to the first amendment you can't stop the first couple classes from harassing the rest so as soon as a normal person gets their 50cc scooter or whatever similarly cheap other option fixed they go right back on that.

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

#673

Post by SilverElfin »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #603

I have never once in my life seen someone with groceries on the metro. I have no car and kids.

I did. The person had bags all around them, things rolling out of them, and at one point dropped a box of coke cans on me that thankfully didn’t explode. The situation looked terrible and completely impractical. But people helped him gather his things.

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

#674

Post by OkayPhysicist »

everdrive wrote: post #537
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 worst argument anybody can make is "but that's just life in the big city!" A cousin was visiting us in our nice suburb. We had a slow, not-busy road we walked on when we lived there, and we'd wave to anyone; neighbors, vehicles, etc. Our cousin was sort of uncomfortable, and asked "do you know all these people?" I explained that we knew some of them but were just being polite and friendly. She explained that tha…

You've fallen for right wing propaganda. Crime has continuously fallen since the 70's. Individual areas of cities might get worse (there's a cyclical nature to newly built up, desirable areas aging and becoming low-income as other areas get rebuilt), but it is an indisputable fact that you are less likely to be violently attacked today than just about any other point in living history.

And the difference in crime rates in urban and rural areas is grossly overblown. Looking at California numbers, a city-slicker has about a .9% chance of becoming a victim of violent crime, and hick has about a .6% chance. That's a small reduction to a small probability. For context, if your risk tolerance hasn't forced you to cut out meat and alcohol from your diet to avoid cancer, you're miscalculating risk if you think you should flee the cities to avoid violence.

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

#675

Post by bee_rider »

CPLX wrote: post #641
dfee wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Me? I was just providing an alternate perspective that life beyond the boroughs is not just strip malls. I've spent a bunch of time in Manhattan. Cumulatively, many months of my life. It's a fun experience, but I'm not interested in raising my kids there.

> just providing an alternate perspective that life beyond the boroughs is not just strip malls. It kind of is. Where'd you buy your charcoal? Did it have a parking lot out front and two stores on either side of it sharing the same overall building? Of course there are exceptions, maybe you're one of them. But they are so small numerically as to be irrelevant. The vast majority of the country is living nearly all the…

Note that almost the entirety of their post is a quote, so probably they don’t have many additional details.

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

#676

Post by ncruces »

zozbot234 wrote: post #496
uyzstvqs wrote: post #439

Something I said a couple days ago: > It's not an either-or. You can have streets which are car-friendly, bike-friendly, and pedestrian-friendly at the same time. Just look at the Dutch, they've been doing it for years. That is until recently in some big cities, though, where some less knowledgeable politicians have also adopted this false populist either-car-or-bike concept. Though the traditional principle still ap…

You can have streets which are car-friendly (for exceptional or emergency purposes where you need the car) by getting rid of all frivolous car use. There's no feasible alternative, because congestion always destroys car-friendliness except in very sparsely populated areas. And you can only eliminate that congestion by promoting more scalable alternatives to the use of private motor vehicles.

I hadn't visited Madrid in over 20 years, and found the burial of the M30 (and, increasingly, the radial highways) extremely impressive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madrid_Río

There's also the subway (impressive sprawl, infrastructure itself not so much), and decent buses.

Plenty of areas have also been closed to car traffic.

I'm all for restricting traffic, but it doesn't need to be completely either-or, even in a larger city.

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

#677

Post by scott_w »

pkulak wrote: post #548
scott_w wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree but I'll caveat that subway at its worst can be far worse with trains going missing. "Metro apologises" is a running joke around the north east of England for how bad its service became in the past 15 years.

But 40,000+ Americans die in their cars (and run over by others' cars) every year. No subway caveat is ever going to beat that. And at least it's obvious that subways going missing is a _very_ solvable problem. We've completely given up on making driving safer. EDIT: Sorry, re-read the context, and I think you were countering my claim that a subway will always get you there on time? Yeah. You're right. Subways can ab…

No worries, it happens to us all. I was mostly venting at the shocking underinvestment of my local public transport infrastructure and seeing it degrade over the last 20 years!

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

#678

Post by Zigurd »

alistairSH wrote: post #633
SilverElfin wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time I go through an intersection I worry what happens if someone runs the red and smashes into our side. Something like this is a lot more rare than harassment on public transit. And not exactly avoidable. So it isn’t worth thinking about. But on public transit you have to maintain constant vigilance just to avoid the many bad situations that could come your way. You’re very exposed and vulnerable. The crime…

Two thoughts... Is it actually true that car accidents are far more rare than harassment on the subway? I don't take public transit enough to comment (there is none here). Car accidents have a much higher likelihood of maiming or killing me. Even if they're more rare, I would posit (but don't have numbers) that the total cost to society (including property damage) is MUCH higher.

Data point: I've been in two car wrecks. Once as a passenger where the driver spun it on the Mass Pike to 128 ramp, and once when I got T-boned on my way home from having my car serviced. That was my favorite car. Nobody's ever bothered me on public transport. Not on the MBTA, not on MBTA, Metro North, or LIRR commuter rail, not on Amtrak to New York, not on the New York public transit systems.

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

#679

Post by pjmlp »

randunel wrote: post #291
pjmlp wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Germany, and don't need any lessons in Park and Ride. What I need is a transport infrastructure that cares about people that live outside city central area. Maybe it will blow your mind that with P+R some of us take about 2h to come to work, versus 45m with a car. Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy? P+R isn't even a known concept.

Show me a city which banned personal cars and we'll check whether P+R transit to anywhere within is 2h. You can't, because there is no such city. It's personal cars that slow down transit, including preventing new rails being built to not dismay cherished drivers.

Pity that such miracle cities don't exist for people living in the suburbs, with their 4x connections on average, from door to door.

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

#680

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

rcpt wrote: post #601
deltarholamda wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At least one wealthy family in NYC I met doesn't use surface transport for much... they use helicopters or have things/people/shopping/restaurants brought to them.

Had an experience where a store sent tailors, stylists, a manager, and a ton of inventory so that they could clothes shop while still in their home. Apparently, this was "normal". My shock was a source of great amusement to them.

They did the same thing with restaurants, movies, concerts, even a play... the staff, etc. came to them.

I have no idea just how wealthy they were (Brazilian who owned many businesses in oil and gas production) but I had never seen (or even heard of) such service.

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