Life in the Spanish city that banned cars

Re:Life in the Spanish city that banned cars by alkonaut on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @09:08AM (#18014928)

Is that urban planning or suburban planning? Are we talking about better planned (more walkable) inner cities, or are we talkingt about a long term shift in what people wants, such as people not wanting a private back yard?

Because outside of cities, as long as people have detatched homes on reasonably sized lots, getting around requires a car. There will simply not be the density needed for efficient public transportation.

While I might agree that the idea of large suburbs with detatched homes is probably not very sustainable, I don't see how they aren't here to stay (together with the cars required to live in them)

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Re:Life in the Spanish city that banned cars by maaaats on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @09:35AM (#18015136)

I don't see why it requires a car. A suburb neighborhood could have a bus stop somewhere, taking the people to and from a more connected (as in public transport) place/hub. Walking a few hundred meters must be doable?

Or maybe the hub (outside the city) could have parking, so you drive there but take public transport from there on?

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Re:Life in the Spanish city that banned cars by alkonaut on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @09:56AM (#18015309)

> I don't see why it requires a car. A suburb neighborhood could have a bus stop somewhere, taking the people to and from a more connected (as in public transport) place/hub.

That's how it works. I walk 600m to my bus stop in my suburb neighborhood. So commuting from where I live is no problem. I don't need a car for that. But all the other transportation (driving kids to various sports practices, going to the forest, the lake, going to the school that isn't along a bus route with kids that can't walk very far etc) is harder. There will always be a gap between the transport I want/need and the transport that can be solved by public transport. So some kind of semi-private transport (e.g. shared autonomous cars) is probably required if the suburban lifestyle is going to be possible without cars.

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Re:Life in the Spanish city that banned cars by gaius on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @10:14AM (#18015475)

So some kind of semi-private transport (e.g. shared autonomous cars) is probably required

You can have the on-demand voice-activated self-driving car experience right now: it’s called a taxi. Is that viable for all your use cases?

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Re:Life in the Spanish city that banned cars by alkonaut on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @10:27AM (#18015601)

Taxi prices would have to be substantially lower for taxi to be a viable alternative.

Perhaps for some of the use cases there could be better utilization (meaning cheaper) taxi, e.g. a taxi picking up my kids for school could also pick up a few more.

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Re:Life in the Spanish city that banned cars by gpm on Tuesday September 18, 2018 @08:50PM (#18020736)

To everyone above wondering why people think self driving cars will help. This is why.

Eliminate the driver and taxis become way cheaper (probably cheaper than owning a car). That means people like alkonaut here will be far more interested in just not owning their own car that sits idle except when they are personally driving it. Which reduces the amount of space we are spending on car storage.

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Re:Life in the Spanish city that banned cars by gaius on Wednesday September 19, 2018 @02:41AM (#18022225)

why people think self driving cars will help

Why do you think they will be cheaper? Get ready for surge pricing being the norm. If you don’t have a vehicle of your own, you’ll have no choice but to pay. That’s why investors are willing to pour untold billions into this, they expect a massive payoff.

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Re:Life in the Spanish city that banned cars by gpm on Wednesday September 19, 2018 @09:26AM (#18023990)

Because people are frickin expensive.

I'm sure that investors will extract a nice sum of money, but it's their ability to outcompete taxis on price that will allow them to do that. Or to put it another way they don't need to extract $30,000/car/year^1 and competition means they won't be able to.

^1 what ddg tells me the average US taxi driver salary is.

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