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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"

#811

Post by potato3732842 »

deltarholamda wrote: post #690
oldjim798 wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you compare driving to almost every other form of transportation it is wildly dangerous. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics... "Passenger vehicles are by far the most dangerous motorized transportation option compared. Over the last 10 years, passenger vehicle death rate per 100,000,000 passenger miles was over 60 times higher than for buses, 20 times higher than for passenger trains, a…

Yes, vehicles driven by amateurs are more dangerous than high-capacity vehicles with professional drivers/pilots. People talk about the high number of fatalities as if you have to drive over the scattered dead every day like gruesome speed bumps. I just think that, considering the number of miles driven in the US and the poor quality of your average driver, the number of deaths is surprisingly low. This is probably a…

>Can you not speed, not read HN while eating a burger, not blow through traffic lights without looking? Of course you can.

Seems like a lot of people in here would do those things and then when it goes poorly blame the car. It's basically the "stick in spokes" meme.

>It would be like arguing against buses because a bus driver can wig out and drive through a cliffside guardrail and there's nothing you can do about it.

Now that you mention it I'm pretty sure a Peter Pan bus did exactly that around here a few years back (I'm gonna go google it, find out that it was in like 2003 and feel old). Driver got confused which overpass ramp he was on and full sent it thinking there was a merge at the top he needed to be up to speed for when instead there was a sharp curve. But yeah, that behavior is def not the norm.

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

#812

Post by underlipton »

MisterTea wrote: post #635
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…

I was in Spain last month and what stood out is that walkability requires mom and pop stores as well as more integrated neighborhoods with small commercial shops mixed into residential. Small shops seemed to be the majority in the city centers. The only large store I saw was a Lidl. They have largeish indoor markets that are more like a mini mall of individual shops like a butcher, produce, baker, cheese, even restau…

I don't know about that. There have been large grocery stores and retailers in Washington DC for years, and walkability is fine. It's most comfortable when it's just one or two in a neighborhood, of course, but a block's a block.

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

#813

Post by ryukafalz »

osigurdson wrote: post #720
lukan wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true, but the thing is, without bike lanes, people won't switch to bikes in certain traffic conditions. Cyclists pay taxes btw. too and a bicycle with its low weight is magnitudes cheaper for the roads, then the SUV tanks.

I guess it is reasonable to run some experiments, set up some bike lanes for a period of time. If they are used, keep them, if not maybe consider removing them. Good point regarding the costs. The other advantage of dedicated / purpose-built bike paths is they likely don't have to be built to the same spec as ones designed for vehicle use (I assume - not a civil engineer).

Careful, this often ends up with cities and towns building isolated pilot bike lanes that go nowhere and then ripping them out when nobody uses them.

The value of a bike lane isn't in the lane in isolation, in the same way that the value of a street isn't in that street alone. It's in the ability of that lane/street to get you where you need or want to go.

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

#814

Post by abdullahkhalids »

potac wrote: post #798

I'm from Pontevedra. It has been the major's long-term project (~ 20 years) to make the city for the pedestrians: and he's done it. This works mainly because of two things: 1) the city is small and it takes aprox 30 min to walk it entirely from end to end, and 2) it is mostly flat. Only a smooth hill from "orillamar" to "alameda/peregrina". Unfortunately, the major obsessed with getting rid of cars (which I am highly…

Thanks for the perspective. I think it's difficult for small cities like Pontevedra to create high quality jobs. There are not enough people to support rich doctors, lawyers, accountants and such. Factories can be established, but most people employed in a factory won't have a "high-quality" job. What other type of high-quality job could the city create?

[1] population ~ 80k, but working population ~ 50k.

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

#815

Post by LexiMax »

tengbretson wrote: post #761
LexiMax wrote: post #753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would you agree that being able to drive away from that situation is different from sharing space in a confined metal tube for 20+ minutes?

If you're sitting next to a homeless person for 20+ minutes you're not in danger, you're just uncomfortable sharing space with the less fortunate.

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

#816

Post by smw »

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.…

Or, you know, we could handle homelessness. I lived in Amsterdam for the last two years and despite walking everywhere and intentionally exploring, I never saw a person sleeping on the street, and the only time I was asked for money was an obvious tourist.

I don't think the NL government is remotely perfect, and they definitely are struggling to build enough housing, but their 'housing first' strategy towards homelessness seems to mostly work?

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

#817

Post by MengerSponge »

tjansen wrote: post #634
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…

I was in Paris this year, for the first time in 10 years, and frankly, I didn't notice less traffic. All streets are full. There are certainly more electric cars, and fewer old ones. However, the streets are now crowded with Uber and taxi cabs. I didn't notice fewer cars.

A lot of streets have been closed to traffic (school streets in particular), and many lanes have been converted into bike lanes. It was harder to get around the city as a pedestrian/cyclist a decade ago.

It also really depends on where you went in the city. Were you just hanging around ile de city and the marais?

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

#818

Post by int_19h »

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.

USA has many successful "collectivist" examples in its history. For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_home_front_durin...

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

#819

Post by int_19h »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #702
erentz wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet Seattle has very few pedestrianized spaces for the size of the city. It’s as car dominated and sprawling as any major North American city.

Difficult to call it sprawling given the geography, and I don't know what "pedestrianized" even means here since walking in many neighborhoods is both common and designed for. There is plenty of accommodation for vehicles in Seattle, that is true. Even people that walk everywhere often own one in order to take advantage of the prodigious outdoor activities for which the region is famous.

It definitely is sprawling compared to your typical European city.
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