Pontevedra, Spain declares its entire urban area a "reduced traffic zone"
495 comments
·September 10, 2025powvans
deltarholamda
>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. It was great. You'd get the occasional guy that jumps on, makes a speech about how he's raising money for something or other, and walks around trying to sell chocolate bars. And there was the occasional dangerous person, insisting on getting up in your face.
So long as this sort of behavior remains at a very low level, something like maybe once every couple of weeks, that's probably okay. But public transit loses all appeal if it happens often. If it rises to the level of violence, everybody starts thinking about the suburbs.
Public transit requires a certain level of unspoken agreement. "We will all behave in this manner." If this unspoken agreement is broken often enough, then it must be enforced. If it is not, and other options present themselves, people will choose the other options.
This happened en masse many decades ago in America. Those that could decamped for other places where their social expectations were met.
I'm a big supporter of urbanism. I loathe the time I spend in my car, and I don't even have that far of a commute, but I have zero other options if I want to live where crime is low and the schools aren't dysfunctional. Until this is addressed, there is no argument about commuter density or efficiency of movement or anything else the proponents of public transit like to talk about that will make a lick of difference.
The worst argument anybody can make is "but that's just life in the big city!" If so, then I'm not going to live and raise my family in the big city. Airy-fairy principles of efficiency or an arguable notion of convenience will not take precedence over safety and quality.
rcpt
> Everybody loves public transit until they get panhandled for the jillionth time
OP is right. The demand is huge and supply is tiny. Even with those scary panhandlers people are jamming onto public transport (when it actually exists) and going far far out of their way to experience walkable areas.
> zero other options if I want to live where crime is low and the schools aren't dysfunctional
Crime in NYC is exceedingly low and the schools are great. Why don't you simply move to Chelsea or the Upper West Side?
oldjim798
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 social behavior applies to drivers too.
okdood64
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.
oldjim798
How is driving not emotionally taxing the exact same way? Driving with my kids is fucking terrifying. I have 2 under 6, and I have to lock them into these giant car seats to keep them safe (to be clear I like modern car seats, their designs just remind me how vulnerable kids are). Every time I go through a intersection I worry what happens if someone runs the red and smashes into our side.
I no longer speed when I drive because I want the kids to be safe and the insane rage other drivers send our way because I'm going 40 km/hr on a 40 km/hr road. I've had driver try to force us off the road, tail gate us hard, pass us across double yellow lines, scream at us.
Driving is exhausting.
alistairSH
I can make most of the same arguments about driving.
People run red lights, they speed, they swerve, they get in fender-benders and flee, they honk, they smoke weed and drink vodka while they drive. All illegal, all common occurrences. And I live in a wealthy, safe suburb.
oldsecondhand
The problems you mentioned are policing and welfare problems, both things that America sucks at.
dbingham
This all comes down to "We can't have nice things in America because of our toxic mix of individualism and capitalism."
Because we insist on trying to privatize everything, refuse to provide a safe floor for people, and make poverty and mental health challenges moral issues (meaning we degrade people who experience them and leave them to fend for themselves) we create an environment where true community is impossible.
Unless, of course, we apply authoritarian and abusive policing controls against those we've left behind, rounding them up and sending them somewhere else. Which of course achieves a temporary "peace" at the cost of a deep insecurity and fear, because we all know the moment we slip or step out of line, we're gone.
It really is toxic and has led directly to society breaking down to the point where we're now falling into full scale fascism.
drstewart
Wow! Can you explain why Canada hasn't declared all of its streets car-free, and does that mean it's a fascist state too?
I take it there's either no toxic mix of individuality and capitalism, so can you confirm whether it's a collectivist state (no individual expression allowed) or non-capitalist, and which economic system it is instead?
dropofwill
Pontevedra is at least 100 times smaller then NYC, it's more comparable to the suburbs that you're moving your family to.
c22
Are you kidding? I see antisocial, dangerous, and violent behaviors from other people driving cars every single day...
hiddencost
I can tell if you've never been to the city or you're dishonest? No one I've ever met is afraid of public transit.
NoboruWataya
I also know Pontevedra from walking the Camino and I suspect its reliance on Camino tourism is probably a big driver for this move. You will know as well as I do that the only parts of the Camino that suck are when you are walking for miles alongside a busy highway. A bit grim but thankfully not very common.
stronglikedan
> Most of our public spaces prioritize cars instead of people.
Maybe most but there's plenty of public space that doesn't. People choose to live around the public spaces that do. Some even try to change that instead of moving somewhere that doesn't. The great thing about America is that there's plenty of everything for everyone, but it's not just going to come to you.
darkamaul
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 their minimal share of actual mobility. And I'm all in favor in further reducing car lanes, parking spots...
[0] in french - https://www.airparif.fr/actualite/2025/comment-la-qualite-de... [1] https://www.transportshaker-wavestone.com/urban-transports-s...
Saline9515
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's the same everywhere, as most European cities are dominated by 20-35yo people. They vote for green parties and then move out when they have children, as they realize that the policies they supported are not child- or family-friendly at all. The extreme example is Seoul, with its zones where kids are forbidden. It's a shame, as families require more public services and infrastructure (hospitals, schools, playgrounds, swimming pools, and so on), but they are being pushed away by childless youngsters who hate cars. Unfortunately, no middle ground seems acceptable for this crowd, so I'm unconvinced that it will change.
Another negative aspect is that cyclists do not use public transportation, so they lead municipalities to decrease investment in this sector, which is, however, the most inclusive, safe and efficient way to move people around. This is also seen in Paris, where the bus speed has never been so slow, the fleet is aging,, while the city hall spends like a teenager on a weekend trip with daddy's credit card on new bike lanes.
In the EU at least, the next nail in the coffin will be the low-emissions zones that will make it prohibitively expensive to enter/leave the center, forcing families to leave metropolises altogether.
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/09/06/why-the-mi...
solarexplorer
It really depends on the city/quarter where you live. I live in the center of Barcelona and had no problems with two small kids at all. Supermarkets, real farmer's markets, hospitals, pharmacies, schools, etc are all within 10min walking distance. I work from home, but I could walk to the office it I wanted to. I don't have to leave the city at all.
Eventually I gave in and bought a car, not because it was necessary but rather to leave the city on weekends and get closer to nature.
Saline9515
Yeah, if you live in the most expensive part of the town, which is often the epicenter, it may be ok. However, not everyone can afford this, or justify the expense, especially since you are pitted against childless couples that don't have to support children financially. Also, the presence of bikes on the sidewalk makes it hostile for vulnerable pedestrians, and generally turn a pleasant experience (walking in a city) into a stressful one.
darkwater
I think you are totally off. Never lived in Paris but I lived in Barcelona for many years, during the transformation to be more car-hostile and bikes and pedestrians friendly. I spent there my 20s-30s and left when I had a family but due to (public) school scarcity in our neighborhood and rent prices. But mobility was not the issue at all. It was actually a pleasure bring my daughter to her kindergarten by bike and then go to the office.
And I think Paris and Barcelona share a lot in that respect (the mayors - Hidalgo and Colau - met a lot to discuss exactly those topics and share experiences).
ses1984
There are loads of factors at play, to lay the blame of this demographic trend solely on bike-centric policy is, if I’m being very very generous, lazy. Since it’s the telegraph, about a foreign city, I would assume it’s disingenuous.
The article doesn’t even call out bike centric policies:
> “It is the result of a quarter-century of policies that have made life harder for families and the middle class. Construction work, difficult access to nurseries, skyrocketing rents, and social housing shortages have pushed Parisians to the suburbs or provinces.”
The “worst” callout in the article is triple parking fees for SUVs.
Oh.
Anyway.
It looks like there are loads of factors at play and I wouldn’t trust assigning blame to just one, especially when your supporting article only kinda sorta touches on that factor.
abraxas
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 place to be. This is because they know how to scale cities to human centric proportions. The layout of buildings together with the connective tissue of tram lines, bike lanes and sidewalks is what makes their cities alive and safe, not elaborate building facades (although they have some of that as well).
Cthulhu_
Important to note is how most cities have two (or more) zones; the old inner city for leisure, tourism, shopping and going out, the suburban areas around it where most people live, and industrial / office building estates where most people work.
Amsterdam is a great example [0] and well-known for a lot of tourists, with the city center being the tourism hub, the zones around it for living, west/northwest for industry/shopping, south for highrise offices and football stadiums, etc. Most tourists won't go that far out though.
[0] https://www.amsterdamsights.com/about/neighborhoods.html
abraxas
I spent two weeks in Amsterdam South where I rented an apartment. Commuting to the centre on a tram or even cycling there was no problem. Even though the centre is where most tourists hang out, the surrounding neighbourhoods are just as walkable and bikeable as the inner city.
panick21_
Cities always have many areas. And of course the outer areas are not as good as the tourist focused inner city, but they are generally still pretty good urbanism.
Even European subburbs are generally better, smaller roads, more mixed use, more trees, more dynamics, more commercial and building times mixed in. The extreme separation between building types that became the standard in US zoning-codes simple never happened to the same extent in Europe.
pixxel
[dead]
uyzstvqs
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 applies to about 99% of the country's roadworks, and it works really well.
Adding onto that, sentences like "made for people, not cars" absolutely validate my point that this is nothing but populist activism. I'm hoping that we can all have a honest, intellectual discussion on how to make infrastructure better for everyone. Just make sure to always remember in every discussion about this topic: it is never either-or, not even in the densely populated Netherlands.
zozbot234
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.
tuesdaynight
I understand where it's coming from, but I have to disagree about the populist activism part. I don't think that pedestrians should worry about how to fit cars in their proposed solutions. That's something for the car proposers to do. It's not like the other way around is different. Just take a walk in any big city and you will see how pedestrians are a second thought in most of the roads.
alerighi
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 (or rent) go up to a point where most people can't even afford it, while the salary that you get in the city rests more or less the same. Having a lot of people concentrated living in a small place produces also other unwanted effects, that lower the quality of living.
Cars allow us to develop our society not in big cities, but in rather small towns, without ugly skyscrapers of 20 floors but with nice houses where everyone can afford, for example, to have its own property, with its own garden, its own peace, without having being forced to share its living space with people he didn't choose.
To me cars, and now also remote work, are a benefit because they allow us to live in a more sustainable way. Thanks to car we can think of reclaiming villages where all the population migrated to the cities in the past years.
Example in Italy, where I live, why should I go to live in Milan, where houses cost 10 times the rest of the country, while having a car and a job that allows me to remote work at least half the week I can live in a small village near Milan and reach it by car when needed?
To me a society without cars is a less free society, in fact the development of the USA to me is to take as an example, while where they didn't have cars is the Soviet Union, and look at it...
eigenspace
If you haven't discovered the problems with this model, then it's only because not enough of your neighbours have had the same idea.
Look around at places with very high car use (especially in North America) and you'll discover that this solution simply does not scale. Cars take up a gigantic amount of room on roads, and even gigantic highways like Onatrio's 401 [1] just have not been able to keep up with the level of sprawl that occurs when people move out of the city to surrounding suburbs and commute into the city by car.
Adding lanes to the highway does not help and just induces more traffic on it, and it also causes all the surrounding villages to sprawl outwards until they become indistinct blobs that merge into the nearby metropolitan city.
Trains are a much better solution to this problem because they have way better throughput, don't destroy cities with massive highways and parking garages, and encourage denser development that lets nearby villages retain their character and size.
probotect0r
As the other user said, it doesn't scale. I'll give you my personal experience. I have been living in the greater Toronto area for 23 years, having moved here when I was 9. I live in one of the "cities" surrounding Toronto. This city was initially just a suburb of Toronto, that people moved to because houses were bigger and cheaper. Now it is a "city" of more than 700,000 people, in part because everyone moved here from Toronto, and in part due to high immigration in recent years. I put city in quotes because it's not really built like a city, it's still developed like a suburb with a large dependence on cars and poor public transport. All the good jobs are still in Toronto, so people still commute to Toronto for work. Before COVID and wfh, it used to take me 1.5 hours to commute to Toronto (one way), and I still had to drive to the train station. Forget driving to Toronto, it would take you just as long, if not longer, and parking costs are ridiculous. As this city grew, everyone wanted to move here for the same reason as you, bigger and cheaper houses. Now the houses are still bigger, but definitely not cheaper, and it takes forever to get anywhere. There are also less things to do because everything depends on cars.
I am writing this comment from a Italo Treno train, having been in Paris, Switzerland, Milan and Venice over the past week and half, so I have now seen the other side of this conversation.
The only freedom that cars bring is when travelling out of the city to remote places. Switzerland's inter-city rail service is so good I would never want to drive between cities if I lived there.
1718627440
When this is the only reason, trains are far superior. Show me the country where I can drive 120km/h / 75mph through the city center.
sebstefan
There's simply not enough space in a city to accommodate everyone's car. Houston is 70% roads+parking lots and they're still congested
Live remotely in low density villages in italy if you want, you can accommodate everybody's car just fine there - but when you need to visit Milan, don't complain that it won't let you bring a car in with you and they kindly ask you to leave it outside & take public transit to reach the center.
gman83
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.
unglaublich
That's fine. If you don't care about life and culture in a city, and are satisfied with your townhouse in some arbitrary quiet town, then that's fine? Just don't expect that you can just go into the city with a car whenever you feel like it.
chamomeal
In America this concept is taken to the absolute extreme. Everywhere I go there are entire forests being razed to build developments of huge single-family homes and nothing else.
There is nowhere to go without driving. Kids who grow up in the suburbs are pretty much trapped on an island. There’s nowhere to explore because the surrounding 5 mile radius might be nothing but more developments
thawawaycold
Not the best counterpoint to the argument IMHO, especially considering there are tens/hundred of thousand of people that do the same as you, and that has only driven rent cost up in the extended Milan metropolitan area, even 30-40 km further away from the city, and with roads that are not nearly capable enough to carry commuters' traffic, it just transforms the underlying issues into massive, daily traffic jams anywhere in the immediate area
xyzelement
I love walking - both in places as a tourist, in NYC where I lived most of my life, and in my small north shore Long Island town today.
But similar to any other "product" the evaluation depends on the user's needs. As a single guy I loved that NYC was dense and walkable - because that meant (among other things) literally millions of date-able women within a 30 minute walk radius of my house. Great! Now as a dad of 3 I don't care about that at all - and the lower density suburb let's me have a backyard for my kids and makes shopping easy, or taking the kids to activities (yes you can do all those things without a car but people chose not to when they have choice)
There should be some sort of mom-friendliness factor in these conversations. If my whole town is old people, terminally single younger people and migrants (as seems to be the case for the city in question) then high density walk ability is perfect. What's the density and transportation situation in places people actually have kids?
zppln
I share this sentiment as well, but while living in a relatively small city with only around 150k people in northern Europe. I moved out to the "suburbs" after having my first kid and find enormous quality of life in being able to have a car and a house. The city center is getting increasingly more "hostile" to car traffic but there's nothing to be had there anyway. A side from restaurants and coffee shops you can get anything you need from the shopping areas on the city outskirts. In a sense I feel this is the best of both worlds: cities for city people, suburbs for suburbians.
bluGill
As a fellow parent I find dense cities are worse. My kids are not welcome in most of the restaurants, bars, or shops - which is just as well because I couldn't afford to pay for regular family meals at any of them anyway. Even the parks are more art orientation - great for adults but no playground that my kids would enjoy. Not that it matters as 3 bedroom apartments are rare, and more than that impossible to find. They are often food deserts - it is easier for a farmer to get to a grocery store (they expect to drive but the uncontested roads are fast), you often need to drive to a grocery store as there is no option, of if there is one it is the expensive high end store not the discount supermarkets.
Note that most dense cities have within the same city limits less dense areas that look like suburbs. These are often called "inner city" they are generally affordable but because the schools are bad are not places I'd want to live. For this discussion I'm going to count them as suburbs...
It doesn't have to be like the above. I've seen dense cities around the world that are very family friendly. However not in the US.
stetrain
There is also a gradient of density and walk/bike-ability between NYC, one of the densest cities in the country, and super spread-out car-dependent cul-de-sac suburbs, but the US often skips those middle steps.
Small towns where your kids can get to their friend's house by walking or biking a couple of blocks over can be great for raising a family, as opposed to all of their friends' houses being in a different gated communities up and down a 4-lane 45mph highway and where the line of cars picking up kids from school each day backs out onto the road and blocks traffic.
ascagnel_
They exist, but in New Jersey -- most of the "cities" (with the exception of downtown Jersey City and downtown Newark) would be called streetcar suburbs in an earlier time. I live in one of them, and it's great: I have a small, private backyard, but I'm also <15 minutes on foot from multiple public parks, restaurants, shops, etc.
Sadly, it's illegal to build streetcar suburbs in most of the US today, because outfitting every house with a private driveway, setbacks, etc., would move everything far apart enough to significantly hurt walkability.
mykowebhn
There are (at least) two Youtube channels, Ray Delahanty | CityNerd and Not Just Bikes, that really drive home the point in their videos that car-centric cities really stink.
Gud
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
Saline9515
Public transport usually requires a medium-to-high density to be sustainable. However, it can get saturated - in Paris, the subway and the trams are full for long periods during the day, even at midnight! It makes the experience really unpleasant when you have no alternative.
stephen_g
I think the thing that really struck a chord with me about car-centric development, as someone who lives in a city with fairly poor public transport (by certain standards, it would actually be quite good if it were in the US) and where driving is the norm for getting around -
Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers. We spend many tens of billions of dollars a year on roads in my state and traffic in the cities (and the highways between the biggest population centres in the south east corner where most of the people live) just keeps getting worse. When you give people real alternatives (convenient, frequent public transport, more cycling infrastructure, better planned cities so you can walk and cycle to things you need nearby) that actually gets people off the road and that is the one thing that can reduce traffic (apart from somewhere having a dwindling population).
Focusing all out infrastructure spend and making cars the primary mode continues to make car driving worse, but people get angry when too much money is spent on public and active transport, because “not enough” is being spent on road infrastructure. So politicians spruik their “congestion busting” road spending, and it keeps getting worse. It’s wild.
As someone for whom driving was just the default, I came around full circle.
silvestrov
Car oriented people seriously underestimate how many people that can be transported in a subway train and how much highway space it would take to transport the same number of people in cars.
One subway line can transport more people than even the widest existing highway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Passenger_Capacity_of_dif...
(edit: spelling)
gspencley
From an efficiency point of view public transportation makes a lot of sense.
From a quality of life point of view, I have never been comfortable being crammed into a sardine can with that many other people. I've done it. I've never enjoyed it. I do look forward to travelling to the Netherlands one day and I will enthusiastically use public transit there just as a personal experiment to see if my experience differs enough from the subway transit in Montreal or Toronto that gave me nightmares and has me thinking every time I travel there: "Even if it takes me 4x as long to get to my destination, driving is still better than this."
The parent poster made an interesting point that resonates a lot with me. Better public transportation will get people off the roads which will make quality of life better for drivers. I don't see myself ever not being a driver. I need that little bubble that separates me from other people. I don't even like walking on sidewalks in busy metropolitan areas because of the amount of other people and the "over stimulation". And yeah, that's a me problem. Do what you like, just don't take away my means of being able to achieve a little bit of solitude.
It's not pro- public transit and better urban planning that bothers me. It's the anti-car "lobby".
Then again, big city living isn't for me anyway (obviously). I will always choose smaller to mid sized cities, and possibly even rural at some point in the future, for the personal reasons outlined above.
christina97
I don’t enjoy the 15 minutes I spend packed in the NY subway when I have to take it during rush hour, but I do enjoy hopping on the subway off-peak when the cars are half empty and I get a seat and open my subway book.
Similarly I hated being stuck in 30 minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic during my old commute in a past life. But I do really enjoy driving on new routes when the road is half empty.
My two observations are that bumper-to-bumper traffic feels much more stressful to me (a lot more honking, people trying to cut into faster lanes, etc) than the subway (crammed and sometimes there’s a homeless person with bad BO), and that I spend much less time on the rush hour subway than in traffic jams in the past (even during rush hour, the subways are not that packed until you get into Manhattan).
qwertygnu
I love my personal car bubble as much or more than most people (though maybe not as much as you), but at some point we have to get over ourselves. We're all so spoiled. Why the hell do we deserve to all have our own giant speed machines careening through cities where people (including us drivers!) are trying to live? It doesn't make any sense and it's a shame that we've let it go so far, especially in the US.
It should be discouraged (financially, logistically, socially) to drive in dense urban places. Obviously, in order to achieve that, these urban places need to have alternative means of transportation.
ericmay
The thing that is so great about better transit for folks in cities in America is that it benefits you specifically in the lifestyle choices you want to live. Introducing better transit options gets folks out of their cars and onto the tram or sidewalk and that leaves you with your desire for solitude with more open highways.
> It's not pro- public transit and better urban planning that bothers me. It's the anti-car "lobby".
Fair but you have to remember that this anti-car lobby is rather tiny in comparison to the pro-car lobby which is every state department of transportation, automaker, insurance company, oil executive, auto dealer, etc. they aren’t as loud and annoying because they don’t have to be, but take away some of their power and you unleash lunatics.
jcranmer
> It's not pro- public transit and better urban planning that bothers me. It's the anti-car "lobby".
The absolute worst are the "war on cars" people. Not the people who are "anti-car", because while there are some, there's really not that much, so you don't hear those people. No, the people who argue that spending a dime on anything that's not for cars is a "war on cars" and will vociferously reject any investment in public transit. And those tend to be the people who run transportation departments!
SubjectToChange
>I don't see myself ever not being a driver.
Cars aren't getting cheaper, car maintenance has become absurdly expensive (compared to what it was), auto insurance is set to get far more expensive, and making your entire lifestyle dependent on the existence of cheap gasoline is not a great strategy. A lot of people will simply be priced out of driving.
>It's not pro- public transit and better urban planning that bothers me. It's the anti-car "lobby".
Personal car commuting gets in the way of vital freight trucking. The highway system wasn't built to facilitate people going to work or traveling to see their grandma, it was build to move goods.
>I will always choose smaller to mid sized cities, and possibly even rural at some point in the future,...
The more remote your living is, the more everyone else is subsidizing your existence. For instance, rural roads, rural hospitals, rural electrification, rural broadband, rural airports, etc. It's one thing for the people who already live there or genuinely need to live out there, it's another thing for people to choose to live out there for "personal reasons".
vid
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.
bluejekyll
> I need that little bubble that separates me from other people.
I get the same independent feeling from others you describe while riding my bike (not a bubble, but that’s a false sense of security in a car giving the 40kish car occupants who die every year in the US). In fact, I generally enjoy that bike experience more than I ever do driving because I never get stuck in car traffic, never get stuck behind a line of cars at a traffic signal. Never need to work about parking, other than finding a secure place to lock up (which some destinations lack). I used to love driving, but I started commuting by bike for work and realized over time that I enjoy biking so much more that I go weeks at this point without ever driving.
FWIW I live in a smaller American city of about 120k people, but is part of a greater metro area.
pjerem
> From a quality of life point of view, I have never been comfortable being crammed into a sardine can with that many other people. I've done it. I've never enjoyed it.
I understand what you mean. I don’t especially love it either. But I honestly 100% prefer that to being stuck in traffic, being attentive to everything everywhere just not to kill anyone.
And I say that while owning a comfortable car.
I truly enjoy and cherish not having to use my car to go to work because I did it in the past and I hated it.
Being stuck in my car alone is far worse for me than being stuck in a train station because my train is late or cancelled.
But it may be my personality. I came from the countryside, so I was using my parent’s car everyday.
When I moved to the nearby city (in Europe) I truly felt not having to care about a car to be absolutely freeing.
Now I’m back in the countryside but near a train station that I use everyday to commute and the idea that I may, somehow , if I change job, need to use my car everyday (which I like, btw) is really frightening to me.
Exiting a train and walking two minutes to catch a tramway or a metro then a bus without real waiting times and without thinking about it then taking another route on the way back because a friend invited you for an afterwork really feels like society is just working.
forinti
I've seen many times how some people react to a single bus lane or even a tiny bicycle lane as though cars are getting the raw end of the deal when 90%+ of infrastructure is for cars.
osigurdson
Some cities build dedicated bike paths. This is much nicer as you aren't fighting with cars that way.
trial3
unfortunately i think the crab bucket mentality kicks in when sitting in stop and go traffic and seeing someone breeze by in a bike lane makes people so enraged they’re against cycling infrastructure for the rest of their lives
Aurornis
People don’t pick their mode of transportation based on space efficiency.
They pick their mode of transportation based on their needs and priorities. Taking the subway works when there’s a stop near your home, a stop near your destination, and you have all of the time necessary to wait for it. If these conditions aren’t met then you need additional transport to and from one or both ends of the subway journey.
There’s also the matter of weather, which is less obvious to people who don’t live in locations that see extreme weather or deep snow. Safety and cleanliness is another issue depending on the location. There are cities where I’m just not going to take my kids on the subway if I can avoid it.
People who hold up numeric metrics like number of people transported per unit area don’t understand why people prefer to hop in their car and go to their destination rather than spend potentially far more time navigating a crowded subway system.
pornel
High-throughput transit isn't there to be better in 1:1 comparison with one person's car trip, but to make better cities possible.
If you only imagine this as a static scenario where everything is the same except you swap car for a train, of course car looks better.
The problem is you're not in a single-player game full of NPCs. When everyone else also chooses the car, you physically run out of space for everyone's cars, and end up with a city full of asphalt and large roads that are dangerous/inconvenient to cross and unpleasant to be around.
Car infrastructure takes a lot of space. When it can be reduced, it allows building amenities closer together, so you can have multiple useful destinations within walking distances not much worse than crossing a Walmart parking lot, and you get an environment that's nicer than a parking lot.
Being crammed in a train that moves 3 million people a day is the price to pay for not having a sea of asphalt for ~3 million cars.
happosai
People very much prefer sedentary lifestyle too, yet is very bad for your health. Likewise, cars are nice as long as you continue to ignore all the negative externalities it has - pollution, climate change and above all the massive waste of space in parking lots and highways that could be used better.
bluGill
> rather than spend potentially far more time navigating a crowded subway system.
That isn't how it should be. A good subway system is faster than your car for the trips you normally make, and it comes so often you don't think about waiting. There are very few good subways in the world, (much less the US), and so people think it needs to be bad because that is all they see - but it need not be that way.
devnullbrain
You choose where you live and work
TimorousBestie
> They pick their mode of transportation based on their needs and priorities.
Transit isn’t a free market. The federal, state and local governments in the US heavily, heavily subsidize car transit to the exclusion of every other alternative. If consumers paid the fully-burdened cost, cars would be much less popular.
> If these conditions aren’t met then you need additional transport to and from one or both ends of the subway journey.
They’re called buses, street cars, ride-shares, bicycles, etc. This has been a solved problem for about a century.
> There are cities where I’m just not going to take my kids on the subway if I can avoid it.
Interested to see any statistics showing which subway system is less safe than a car in the same area per passenger per mile traveled.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-public-transit...
nonethewiser
What do you mean by "car oriented people."
People who primarily drive cars? People who primarily drive cars when competitive options exist? People who argue for cars in areas where its not very feasible? People who prefer car oriented cities?
I think most people who primarily drive arent estimating subways at all.
sleepyguy
You have never ridden the TTC in Toronto.....
throwaway894345
I don’t think it’s the number of people transported that is hard to get one’s head around—it’s imagining using a subway to get to all of their destinations which are spread all over and separated by at least a quarter mile of parking lots and 8 lane highways. In their mind, this would require an absurd amount of subway or bus lines and tons of transitions and it would take an eternity to get to their destination and they might interact with lower class people and so on. The thing they don’t understand is that without cars you can build all of those destinations much closer together in a single walkable place that you just need transit to get to/from. When you take away the cars, you don’t need gargantuan parking lots or 8 lane highways.
MangoToupe
None of that matters when you consider the potential horror of interacting with another human.
dominojab
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prmoustache
I am with you. It is not only about lanes but also parking. My in laws live in a very car centric city and it is crazy the way all distances are multiplied when everything need a dedicated parking space. There is almost nothing left at walking distance and every time I visit I have the feeling I spend all my day in a car instead of ... doing stuff.
goosedragons
This was one of the things I realized living in a very car friendly city without a car. SO SO MUCH of my walking was just walking past/through GIANT parking lots.
noosphr
It's pretty amazing how much time you can save by being able to park in front of whatever you want to get into. Starting at the same point I've beaten cars that should have gotten there 20 minutes faster according to google maps.
bluGill
I save a lot of time by taking a parking spot far from the door and just walking. People who drive spend a lot more time than they think looking for a parking spot close to the door. Plus nobody cares if I take up 3 parking spots way out there (so long as I'm not in a lane of course) so I can stop whereever without checking for the lines saving even more time not trying to get perfectly in the parking spot.
frereubu
The Power Broker by Robert Caro, a biography of Robert Moses that's particularly focused on his long career in the government of New York, is, quite aside from a fascinating psychological portrait and a parable about how bad it is when someone has untrammeled power in a bureaucracy, an absolutely fantastic case study in how building more roads makes traffic worse. And it was published in 1974! For anyone that cares to find out we've know this for decades and have absolutely failed to do anything about it - pretty depressing.
ascagnel_
Caro has a way with words; one of my favorite turns was when Moses declared traffic a problem "solved for a generation", only for Caro to begin the next paragraph with a description of the traffic jams that began to develop a few weeks after that particular road (I believe the Bronx River Parkway) opened.
arethuza
Seconded - I'm currently listening to the audiobook of this book and I find it utterly fascinating.
frereubu
Yeah, the reader of the audiobook is pretty good, although I slightly prefer Grover Gardner, who recorded the audiobooks for his series on LBJ, as a narrator. If you like The Power Broker, I'd highly recommend those.
Workaccount2
Nobody likes to hear this, including me,
But a car with no traffic is the overall best form of transportation.
Anything that reduces traffic, just makes driving a car more palatable.
So we are stuck forever at an equilibrium of tolerable traffic. More people taking the bus, train, bikes, and walking? Great! I'll zip down the highway and get a parking spot right in front.
cryptopian
Urban planning has a term for this - the Downs Thomson paradox. Over time, traffic tends to increase up to a point at which equivalent journeys on transit/bike/foot are quicker.
What this means of course is that an effective way of reducing traffic is by speeding up the alternatives.
arethuza
"But a car with no traffic is the overall best form of transportation."
Not if you are like me and likely to take a short nap after a long day at work...
Edit: I own a car, I use it all the time. But I also use the train a lot - all depends where I want to go and what I will be doing when I get there.
Edit2: I sometimes even drive to the train station, get out of my car and into a train!
hammock
There is a reason everyone zips around in them on Wall-e. Wait until we have full self driving and drone delivery. Then even when you are in traffic you can get your burger, soda and TV in without wasting any time!
bluGill
> But a car with no traffic is the overall best form of transportation.
I hate driving even when I'm alone on the road. I'm forced to stare at the road when I want to be doing something else. I can't even take a break, since a simple 5 minute nap has high odds of killing me even if I'm the only car on the road.
Plus cars are slower than trains or airplanes. Even on the autobahn with unlimited speed allowed, most people are not going nearly as fast as a high speed train, much less an airplane.
Workaccount2
Don't get me wrong, I ride my bike to work, but it's abundantly clear that (at least americans) really fucking love cars.
To make matters worse, in the near future it looks like most cases of self driving will be solved, so now people will have their personal pod that moves them around.
aunty_helen
This is level one understanding of public transport systems. “We should build metros and then everything will be better”
There’s cities that are not setup for efficient public transportation or walkable living. Redesign it from ground up and put a metro smack bang through the middle. Until then, it’s just not going to work.
People, and especially people who like the idea of walkable cities that reside in council chairs, often miss this fundamental step.
“Build it and they will come” won’t get you housing density, small local retailers, geographic compression of services, suitable climate, a different way of living. All key ingredients for walkable cities with well served public transport.
stephen_g
I think you are being unnecessarily defeatist. Cities can’t be redesigned from the ground up, but at the same time we’ve seen that investment into roads can’t fix traffic in cities once they reach a certain population and density.
The first thing we should do is target development. For example, planning laws should require new development (suburbs etc.) to be built around some kind of transit (ideally rail). Zoning should always be mixed - for example it should always be permissible to have at least small apartment blocks, groups of townhouses (like row houses), and small shops and cafes in suburbs. The idea of mandating areas be dedicated to only detached single family dwellings should be consigned to the dustbin of history.
There’s just so much like that that can be started right now. But we don’t - we just keep making the same mistakes and things get worse.
graemep
You can adapt cities.
Most British cities predate cars. They have had tramlines put in, taken out, and put in again. They have had roads widened, then bus and cycle lanes added. Train underground lines have been built.
> “Build it and they will come” won’t get you housing density, small local retailers, geographic compression of services, suitable climate, a different way of living.
You can build and change housing. We have lots of what used to be big houses that are now blocks of flats. You can encourage small retailers in many ways. Services can be reorganised or public transport routes designed to ensure access to them
Not sure what you mean about climate - there are cities you can manage without cars from the tropics to very cold places.
You can pedestrianise roads in existing existing towns and cities.
nehal3m
I beg to differ. A few Dutch cities did exactly that. Here's a video with a great example of the city I live near:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9kql9bBNII
Utrecht did something similar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPGOSrqXrjs
People centric infrastructure didn't fall out of the sky, we recognised bad ideas and reworked cities over decades to make them liveable. And it worked!
sensanaty
People always say stuff like this, but plenty of European cities like Utrecht have shown that it's very much possible to turn the tide. A few years ago Utrecht replaced an entire highway and turned it (back) into a canal and the area is indescribably nicer in every way, it's called the Catharijnesingel.
This canal was, in fact, always there, they just turned it into a highway at some point in the 70s. So the reverse is more than possible, it's a question of will to do so and convincing the, frankly, selfish car drivers. Having lived in the US myself for a stint, there's plenty of cities that could easily have work done similar to what happened in Utrecht, it's just that there's a lack of a will to do so to make things much better.
Sure, you won't have a direct train from NYC to Dallas (although, seeing China's high speed rail I don't see why that couldn't be on the table), but we're talking about individual cities making these changes a bit at a time.
bluGill
> “Build it and they will come” won’t get you housing density, small local retailers, geographic compression of services, suitable climate, a different way of living. All key ingredients for walkable cities with well served public transport.
Yes it does. It will take 20 years, but if you don't start now you will never get there. Are you willing to invest in a better future or just accept the status quo?
basilikum
Car infrastructure takes so much space that you can repurpose parts of it in place. Just turn one of the lanes into a tram line, make dedicated bus lanes. On huge parking lots you can just split parts of and build housing or more smaller stores there.
Of course there are limits to this, but cities are often grown historically over centuries and city planning usually takes place in such constraints rather than planning cities from scratch. Don't let the perfect be the enemie of the good.
scott_w
> Prioritising cars actually makes things worse for drivers.
I 100% agree. I live in Newcastle, a city that is fairly car centric, but we have a Metro line and have had pushes to increase bus and bicycle transport (though Labour are generally bad for active travel).
My brother moved to Leeds, one of the largest cities in Europe without a Metro or tram. Driving anywhere in the city is fucking awful. The planners clearly kept trying to add one more lane and the result is congestion everywhere, even at quiet times.
I've also driven round Liverpool and Manchester and found, though they're better as they have Metro lines, the car-centric roads are still really awful to drive on.
graemep
I grew up in London where it is almost always preferable to take public transport anywhere central (cars work fine in suburbs).
I prefer to walk and take public transport, but where I live now (small town) busses are infrequent, and fairly short journeys can require changing. It can take two hours on the bus to get somewhere that is less than half an hour by car.
I think people here would be delighted with more public transport. The main complaint I hear about roads is not repairing potholes which is not hugely expensive. The problem is that the political push is to use a stick (make cars more expensive and inconvenient) rather than a carrot (provide better public transport).
ambicapter
This is just a factor of car driving being wildly more inefficient at "people-carrying" than public transport. That is why "improving things" for cars just makes things worse-you're spending your sparse resources (money, land, manpower) more and more inefficiently.
nerdjon
I really wish the US could get more of this. I know here in Boston this has been a hot issue with the summer shutdown of Newberry on Sunday.
Drivers will come out of nowhere and complain, will start suddenly caring about people with disabilities (of course in no car areas we will figure out how emergency vehicles, deliveries, and people with disabilities will get around).
Sure our public transit system needs a lot of work, but that is not an argument for keeping the current car centric system we have in place now.
Cars obviously have their use cases and I can also understand why most of the US will never do this. But the car culture within cities is insane.
AlexandrB
One factor here is the perception of safety. To choose public transit over a car, you have to feel safe walking to/from the station and you have to feel safe riding the train. This is especially true if you are at a physical disadvantage because of gender, disability, age, whatever. Because it's a perception thing, this is not just about statistics. A dirty, chaotic subway station just feels threatening to passengers.
I've ridden public transit in a bunch of cities, and this makes a huge difference to how welcoming the experience is. Hong Kong is #1 for me. The trains and stations are clean enough to eat off of - probably cleaner than my car. On/off boarding is fast and orderly even during peak travelling hours. This is not a universal, and there are definitely cities where I would hesitate to take public transit if I had some other choice - which is the root of the problem when you're trying to convince a population to fund and use such a system instead of bringing their cars.
sebstefan
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plandis
I’ve never been in a car crash and I’m certainly not dead. I have had a mentally unstable person attempt to hit my toddler, me, and several other passengers on public transit though.
I lived car free for almost a decade in Seattle taking public transit daily. There were always two big issues and neither has been fixed:
1. It’s not reliable. The amount of times my bus simply didn’t show up happened several times a month which when you’re trying to get to work on time is not useful. After the light rail opened it’s been nice but it’s also not super reliable. I still get updates from Sound Transit and there are issues daily. They can’t even get the escalators to reliably work, let alone moving trains.
2. I don’t think I ever felt like I could relax on public transit because it was frequently the case that some drugged up/mentally unstable people were always around. Most of the time they don’t do anything, but the unpredictability of someone who is mentally unstable never made it feel comfortable. Dealing with feeling uncomfortable was manageable when it was just me, but I’ve learned my lesson with taking a child on public transit.
cpburns2009
A Ukrainian refugee being savagely murdered on US public transport isn't a good look.
nonethewiser
And consider how often you are on edge from people's behavior around you and nothing happens. That's a normal, "safe" (in outcome) trip and yet it still didnt feel safe.
AlexandrB
No amount of "transit is more efficient" statistics is going to convince someone to ride it if they feel unsafe. Pretending that these are not real concerns just makes sure that we'll keep building monster highways.
sebstefan
There's no amount of convincing that is going to make them feel safe, you need to get them to use it, and change their opinion that way.
They're not gonna use it unless you build it, and they're not gonna use it unless it becomes more convenient than the car.
Right now you've got 3 unreliable bus lines, each bus 30 minutes apart, service stops at 8pm and the schedule is useless because they get stuck in traffic. Consequence is, nobody uses it and there's always a crackhead in the back (they're part of the population that actually uses it to get around even when it's inconvenient)
My point is, you can clean busses regularly (and you should but -), you can put a cop on every bus, you can do a lot of things to improve "the feeling of safety", but it's not going to offset inconvenience, and you won't need to do all that if you just make public transport the most convenient way to get around in your city. Except cleaning them. You'll still need to clean the bus.
acomjean
You have to take people’s concerns seriously, but “cities are so dangerous” has returned as a political thing and is hard to change as long as one group is making these claims for political reasons.
I’ll point out that we had a postdoc in the lab I worked in from India, then Germany. When he told people he was going to Boston people told him he was crazy to come to crime ridden america where everyone has guns. He laughed about it hind-site but that image is real and gave him pause. It does real damage.
Cities aren’t perfect, but traffic needs to get bad enough or too costly and people will take transit (as my cousin pointed out about living in NYC). I just ended up riding my bike 50 minutes to work.
nonethewiser
There is a certain class of danger from public transport, and a certain class of danger from driving. They are rather different. Have you ever taken public transportation with any regularity in the US? Drove?
CalRobert
My favourite thing about living in the Netherlands is that kids have freedom. They can bike to school, their friends’ houses, sports, town etc and parents aren’t their taxi.
Growing up in suburban California I was basically in an outdoor prison until I could drive.
mettamage
> Growing up in suburban California I was basically in an outdoor prison until I could drive.
Having grown up in the Netherlands and having a decision to make where we want our kids to grow up (US spouse), this feels painful to read. I suppose the SWE salaries aren't worth it.
Also this is one of the best towns to cycle in the Netherlands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-TuGAHR78w&ab_channel=NotJu...
silvestrov
Another problem is that they very seldom make walking pathways between cul de sacs.
These 2 houses are 100 meters from each other but you have to walk 1700 meters and most of the distance is without any sidewalk, only "Odell Cir" has it. The small amount of sidewalk is so narrow and close to the cars that it is hardly a sidewalk.
https://www.google.com/maps/dir/28.8760292,-81.9827997/28.87...
Edit: compare to this: longer distance for cars but there is a direct walking path: https://www.google.dk/maps/dir/55.6714604,12.3530984/55.6716...
rollcat
Shout out to @NotJustBikes in general. Infrastructure should be built for humans first. This benefits cars as well: more accessible for walking / cycling / public transport = less congested for when you do need a car.
smusamashah
This reminds of an SUV killing a 7 year old and parents were jailed for 'manslaughter' instead of the driver (North Carolina, US).
https://abcnews.go.com/US/parents-charged-manslaughter-boy-s...
eigenspace
Money is great for a lot of things, but money alone would definitely not be enough to get me to live in the USA, especially now that I'm preparing to have kids.
vanviegen
It seems like those comfy US coastal salaries usually buy you either:
- A largish house in the subs, and a nice car that you'll be seeing a lot of, unfortunately.
- A tiny house closer to work.
While European SWE salaries are significantly lower, they can generally buy you a decent house close to work.
CalRobert
For a period in my 20’s when I wasn’t well paid I lived in some nice places car free (San Luis Obispo, Santa Monica, Berkeley) but this was when rent was cheap and I didn’t have a family.
Even in Europe it’s hard to find a decent affordable home where you can raise a couple kids in places you can live without a car.
drstewart
Really interesting, can you share the salaries, cost, and size of three high-paying jobs in: NYC, London, and Paris? Curious about the big houses you're getting for cheap in London and Paris!
rrrobert
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cholantesh
Hah, I had a feeling that was a NJB video. It is generally surreal to me that even smaller settlements in Europe have more, shall we say, evolvability than North American ones, and (at least in some cases owing to their antiquity) prioritize the needs of pedestrians.
CalRobert
Interestingly the town in the video is actually quite new- built in the eighties.
panick21_
American cities, almost all were also built before the car. At least the city centers. Both US and European cities grew after WW2.
The US just radically and systematically destroyed its own cities, Europe did its fair share of that, but simply not as bad. I think what saved Europe is that they were behind the US in investment, and when they finally wanted to adopt those US polices, people had already figured out how shit it was, and in many cities the worst urban highways were prevented.
In the US, very few cities survived and very few highways were stopped.
European cities are do not have more evolvability, in fact, large US roads actually means you have more op. Its more a matter of the US refusing to evolve. Its political far more then an aspect of the build environment.
CalRobert
Agreed, last summer we contemplated moving back to CA for work but wouldn’t want that for our kids.
And hello from Houten :-). If you’re here and want to talk bikes maybe we could have a coffee some time!
jonasdegendt
Hacker News bike meet when? We'll have to get jerseys! :^)
freetime2
> Growing up in suburban California I was basically in an outdoor prison until I could drive.
Just as a counter point, I grew up in suburban Massachusetts and this wasn't the case for me. My friends and I rode all over town on our bikes. Bike lanes weren't a thing back then at all, and this was in the 90s when violent crime was at its peak in the US. We just tried to stick to streets with less traffic, rode on sidewalks where available, and took alternate routes through the woods, the cemetery, private property, etc. to avoid busy areas. This is anecdotal, of course, but no kid from my town ever got hit by a car when I was growing up (one kid did die chasing a ball into the street, though).
I'm all for building bike lanes and public transport. And also not all suburban areas are equal - I've definitely seen areas of the US where I would not feel safe riding a bike even as an adult. But I think whatever is keeping kids confined to their homes is just as much a cultural change as it is a lack of infrastructure.
ahoy
New england's suburbs & small towns are the outlier in the US. I grew up in the south and my experience exactly mirrors that of the CA resident you're responding to.
No amount of cultural change is going to make suburban charlotte a good place for 8 year olds to bike alone.
CalRobert
I think New England towns are better, especially back when we sold cars and not giant SUVs and trucks.
efavdb
Same in Midwest
pixxel
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Zigurd
I was fortunate to raise my kids in an exurb that's popular for scenic and uncongested roads. We get a lot of road bikers on the weekends. That means it's relatively safe for kids to ride their bikes all over town. This gave my kids a lot of independence at a younger age than most.
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 stops on our trip through Spain and as an American it was stunning.
In America the contrast is stark. Most of our public spaces prioritize cars instead of people. I’m lucky to live near the beltline in Atlanta. It’s incredible to see how people flock to the beltline for a car free experience. It’s such a rare thing in America. Where it exists you can see that there is tremendous demand for it. Supply on the other hand is unfortunately very difficult to deliver.