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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"

#751

Post by Gigachad »

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.…

How is this such a common occurrence? I take the train to work almost every day in Australia and I’ve probably been asked for money twice in the last 3 years, and never seen a violent situation.

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

#752

Post by andrewshadura »

Saline9515 wrote: post #699
crote wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Do you live in a world where money is infinite? I'd rather have very good public transport, which is accessible to everyone, safe and can give physical workers so rest and a quiet time after work, than bike lanes everywhere. And the problem with removing cars from the city center is that many users still need cars, either because they have families, or because they work and need a motorized vehicle (e.g a plumber).

Why do you think a plumber requires a car and not, say, an electric cargo bicycle?

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

#753

Post by LexiMax »

oldjim798 wrote: post #284
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.…

All this applies to cars as well. Drivers are wild and driving is absurdly dangerous. I hate driving because other drives act like they are the car in the world - particularly post covid. Here in Toronto turn signals feel like they have been uninstalled. We have a ton of street racers tearing up the roads. I see motorcyclists pop wheelies and rip down major streets weekly. All of your complaints about lack of pro soc…

I've had panhandlers walk up to me at stop lights in suburban sprawl cities. I find it very hard to believe that the GP hasn't experienced the same.

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

#754

Post by Saline9515 »

andrewshadura wrote: post #752
Saline9515 wrote: post #699

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live in a world where money is infinite? I'd rather have very good public transport, which is accessible to everyone, safe and can give physical workers so rest and a quiet time after work, than bike lanes everywhere. And the problem with removing cars from the city center is that many users still need cars, either because they have families, or because they work and need a motorized vehicle (e.g a plumber).

Why do you think a plumber requires a car and not, say, an electric cargo bicycle?

Because a plumber needs to carry heavy things, such as a water heater tank, and possibly more as he will intervene on multiple places during his day? And that he may need to get back to the shop/depot in the suburb during the day to get additional parts, if needed? Do you live in a magical word where things teleport by themselves?

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

#755

Post by vkou »

felineflock wrote: post #747
vkou wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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_affiliatio…

Cities only prosecute misdemeanors, and have no control over felony investigations or prosecutions. Police departments in all cities politically lean hard-right.

The state and the PD has far more influence over access to firearms and serious crime than a city's politics do. A city's authority is largely limited to handing out parking tickets and graffiti citations.

And republican supermajority states have never had any issue overriding any municipal legislature or policies that they don't like. It's as easy as drafting a piece of legislature for them. Municipalities don't enjoy even the illusion of sovereignty, or, really, any codified rights in the US.

----

And if you think it's the cities; fault, why is the homicide rate outside of cities in deep-Republican states so high? Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, the Carolinas... All have a horrible state-wide violent crime problem. How many more decades of Republican supermajorities will they need to bury the myth that Republican policies reduce crime?

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

#756

Post by wonderwonder »

Zigurd wrote: post #731
wonderwonder wrote: post #362

I am going to be downvoted for this but I am not wrong. The thing most mass transportation advocates need to understand when it comes to the US is that we don't want cars necessarily for convenience, we want them to be able to avoid other people. We don't want to have to endure the constant micro aggressions of other passengers. We certainly don't want to have to endure the assaults, murders and rapes that happen. We…

[flagged]

Why would I move to Texas when Florida is perfect

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

#757

Post by ericmay »

piva00 wrote: post #748
ericmay wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Yes you're right comrade. If an American is ever nice just remember they're actually untrustworthy and it's all theater.

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

#758

Post by Saline9515 »

Earw0rm wrote: post #724
Saline9515 wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A city is a much more dangerous environment. You have bollards, stupid pedestrians who keep on trying to circulate on YOUR sidewalk, potholes, dogs, and so on.

It's really not, because speeds are so much lower - and injury is, by and large, related to kinetic energy which is the _square_ of speed. OK, cycling at 50km/h in a city is dangerous and stupid (if you're even physically capable of doing so, which few are?). 30km/h in suburbs / 20km/h in the centre is mostly fine, and 10 for busy complicated spaces. 30km/h is slow enough to prevent the vast majority of crashes being…

Kinetic power is lower, that said you can still hurt yourself pretty bad depending on how you fall. A wrist doesn't need a lot of force to break, nor a skull needs to fall from high to cause trauma. A cyclist on a sidewalk going at 20km/h can cripple a child for life (not that the cyclist cares, but just for the example).

I broke my wrist by falling from my bike when I was younger, almost while stopped (my wheel got blocked in a tram rail).

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

#759

Post by vid »

gspencley wrote: post #289
vid wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you get used to it, you get more solitude in public transit. Plan your route so you get access to a seat, settle in with a book or music. The other people melt away. Whereas driving a car involves constant interaction with other drivers which in many places (including rural areas, not to single out pickup drivers but there is a pattern) can be quite fraught.

> Once you get used to it, you get more solitude in public transit. That is physically impossible. Again, it's a "me problem", I'm not trying to say that the world needs to accommodate my unique personality, but if other people are within speaking distance of me with no partition, they cannot "melt away." When I was younger, discovering my mysophonia and autism, my mother would used to say things to me like "just tun…

I have some of that, especially when I haven't been out for a while. Moving to a place where English isn't the main language helped me quite a bit to get into the right headspace. Also realizing no one really cares about me. This is fun: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/sheeple.png

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

#760

Post by nehal3m »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #745
nehal3m wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The current cost of owning and operating an automobile is around 12K USD assuming 15K miles driven yearly according to BTS [0]. This would push it up to a little over 14K USD.

Then there's oil and gas subsidies that should be taken into account, since around 24% of oil consumption is from cars and light trucks. [1]

Then there's some other factors that are hard to quantify but have a huge impact on taxes, like how low density suburbs are subsidised by high density cities [2] as an effect of car-first infrastructure. It's not as simple as just the cost of roads.

[0] https://www.bts.gov/content/average-cost-owning-and-operatin...

[1] https://carsbibles.com/what-percentage-of-oil-is-used-for-ca...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI

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