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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"

#741

Post by LexiMax »

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 happened en masse many decades ago in America.

There was a name for this trend - White flight.

I grew up in southern suburbia and in walkable southern towns - they do exist, in pockets.

I learned two things from my experiences. First is that anywhere there is foot traffic, you will get homelessness, panhandling, crime, and just generally people you don't recognize. It's not because big cities aren't being policed adequately or anything policymakers are doing, it's just something that naturally comes with the territory.

The second lesson I took away is that we as a society often can't tell the difference between "This place makes me feel uncomfortable" and "This place isn't safe." Despite all of those issues I outlined above, I felt very safe and comfortable living day to day in urbanist spaces.

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

#742

Post by rcpt »

Saline9515 wrote: post #626
rcpt wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just says people are mad about parking fees. And I don't know why you need an SUV in Paris. Seems like an unnecessary luxury that most people wouldn't care for.

https://www.paris.fr/pages/tarifs-suv-modalites-de-controle-... Because they target heavy vehicles, SUVs have no proper definition. But many decent family-friendly cars for 3 children with a large boot are in this category. In general, the city has greatly reduced surface parking, which creates a lot of problems for trade workers who need to intervene in the city and need a car.

In New York we had to suffer all these same arguments about low income trade workers with 9 kids that all need to be in different places at the same time etc etc etc. But congestion pricing passed any and it has been an incredible success. None of these arguments about parking hold up.

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

#743

Post by speleding »

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.…

You can have walkable neighborhoods and still allow some cars. They can only enter a neighborhood at low speed as a destination, to park there. To get from one neighborhood to another you have normal roads and highways. The Netherlands does this (although they have a lot of public transport as well. And bikes of course)

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

#744

Post by rcpt »

deltarholamda wrote: post #638
rcpt wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's an amazingly reductive take on a complex issue, and it infers something which was not implied. At no point did I suggest that walkable cities were not in demand, only that the current state is less than ideal for a large number of people, to which your solution was "be rich".

No my point is that if OP were wrong then these places would be cheap.

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

#745

Post by Ajedi32 »

nehal3m wrote: post #428
shinecantbeseen wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hard to do in practice, I think. To take the inverse example: in NYC tolls on cars are used to pay for capital projects for the public transportation system. If these "independent" components were truly as independent as you imply income taxes + fares would cover the MTA, but they don't. Each style of transportation is going to have different levels of cost associated with it, likely changing as one or the oth…

That's not an unreasonable take in my opinion, but then the point of the person I'm responding to is 'let's silo costs and let the market decide' and if we're going to do that, however unpractical, I'd bet a lot of money that driving a car would become unaffordable.

I'd take that bet, were I a betting man. There are 0.85 vehicles per capita in the US. Making roads an average of 1/0.85 = 17.6% more expensive for car owners is very unlikely to break the bank for any significant number of people.

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

#746

Post by freetime2 »

nonethewiser wrote: post #615
freetime2 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Greater Tokyo. 37 million people - and they have everything. Pedestrians, cyclists, cars, taxies, buses, surface roads, expressways, trains, subways, monorails, high speed rail, ferries, etc. All interconnected, and all being used to capacity at rush hour every day. It's absolutely insane, but every time I visit I'm in awe at how easy it is to get around (albeit unpleasant at times).

I think Tokyo proves my point. You see less bikes on the road and more on the sidewalks. Roads are relatively narrow and bike lanes are less common there than the West. Perhaps I could have been more clear, but that was my major point of contention. Bike lanes on the road are problematic. And of course its a given that the trains will have their own dedicated paths. a comment about bikes on the sidewalk in tokyo: htt…

The comment you’re quoting also says Tokyo “would be a lot better for cycling if they installed more dedicated infrastructure, but it works as-is” and overall refers to Tokyo as a success in terms of bicycle adoption.

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

#747

Post by felineflock »

vkou wrote: post #567
felineflock wrote: post #563

Urban is usually associated with panhandling, trash, public urination and crime. > "Galicia is mainly and historically ruled by the right-wing Popular Party"... (Galician Nationalist Bloc) So they likely have much stricter standards of what constitutes acceptable urban behavior... ... than, say, New York, where very recently a person with 30-year criminal history has allegedly killed a couple... ... or in Charlotte,…

Or Memphis, which is smack dab in the middle of a permanently Republican supermajority state, yet has three times the murder rate and twice the robbery rate of NYC. Is there a charitable explanation for why people cherrypick a single homicide in a metro of 8 million people and somehow act like it's proof for the downfall of liberal democracy? Especially when by most relevant metrics, illiberal democracy performs dram…

You seem to be living in a distant parallel world.

Here is how it looks like on the actual world: urban centers are dominated by Democrats in almost every state. The leniency regarding criminals comes from Democrats, specially regarding violent criminals.

Memphis' Paul Young is affiliated with the Democratic Party https://bestneighborhood.org/conservative-vs-liberal-map-mem...

https://ballotpedia.org/Party_affiliation_of_the_mayors_of_t...

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

#748

Post by piva00 »

ericmay wrote: post #668
piva00 wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure that's quite the case, because as a country we do tend to be rather compassionate when motivated to do so. You frequently hear from travelers "Americans are the nicest folks you'll meet" and I generally believe that's true. It's not about individualism vs collectivism, but lack of empathy enforced through transportation methods that by design create a lack of social cohesion. Scandinavian countries for e…

> You frequently hear from travelers "Americans are the nicest folks you'll meet"

It's fake niceness, it's the American way of being "polite", most times I interact with Americans it's pretty clear it's surface-level niceness, more like a theater than genuinely being it. To me it's quite grating and makes Americans feel untrustworthy.

> Scandinavian countries for example score much higher on the individualism scale, yet you don't see as much of this behavior as you might in the United States.

I live in Sweden and usually tell people that it's the most individualistic collectivisc place I've been to, people are individualistic in the sense of self-sufficiency but care about the collective if you are acting against it. In that sense we are much more collectivisc than the USA, whenever I've been in the US it's very clear that most aren't caring for the collective aspect at all.

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

#749

Post by whatevaa »

gman83 wrote: post #252
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…

Nobody is seriously advocating for a society with zero cars. The goal is simply to have a more balanced system. It's about creating towns and cities where you have the freedom to walk, bike, or take reliable public transport, so you're not forced to use a car for every single trip.

Plenty of lunatics advocating zero cars. They are actually damaging less holistic approaches.

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

#750

Post by piva00 »

mothballed wrote: post #672
piva00 wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ment…

Sweden is also a wealthy country, even more here in Stockholm, people can lease cars for cheap, can buy scooters, etc., and public transport is still great: clean, reliable, covers a huge area since it's very sprawlwd, with almost no disturbances (in more than 10 years I can count on my digits the amount of times I've seen someone being mildly disturbing to others passengers). I only cycle and ride public transport here since I never cared (nor had to care) about getting a Swedish driver's licence.

The issue is not free speech, it's how your society educates people to be citizens.

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