5 ms·

>many streets are designed as loops, making it impossible to use them to drive from one end of the city to the other. This solved a major problem—before the red

>many streets are designed as loops, making it impossible to use them to drive from one end of the city to the other. This solved a major problem—before the redesign, some streets were choked with nearly 30,000 cars a day, most of them simply passing through. Now, Lores told Citiscope, “If you enter by the south, you leave by the south.” They got away with transient traffic and are now generating their traffic in adjacent communities. Smart.

ihaveajob 7y ago
What's the point of driving to X if you know you can't get to X by car? The 'adjacent community' traffic surplus idea is bogus. At most you'll generate some short term need for added parking space in adjacent regions.
- lqet 7y ago
  At least in Europe, many cities have large parking spaces at the city borders where a parking ticket is automatically a public transportation ticket to the car-free city center.
- dashscript 7y ago
  I think you misunderstood it. Take a look at the map and you'll see pontevedra is tiny, a circle barely 2km wide. Car owners obviously don't work there but commute somewhere else (most probably Vigo in the south). Story goes, their roads where clogged with passing traffic, commuters passing by pontevedra going somewhere else. Then pontevedra got rid of all roads and made a big ring road around the city. So they turned their city into a proverbial cul de sac to escape from other people's traffic. If every other community in the way did the same around them guess what.
  - Merrill 7y ago
    The old city center is a warren of narrow streets and must have been hell to navigate. Seems that it was a dying city center slum and this was a key step in gentrifying it.
  - lazyjones 7y ago
    IOW, they fixed their congestion by building more roads (the AP-9 highway).
  - eloycoto 7y ago
    I would say that 50% of the people that live in Pontevedra city work in the city itself (mainly gov administration).

ihaveajob 7y ago

What's the point of driving to X if you know you can't get to X by car? The 'adjacent community' traffic surplus idea is bogus. At most you'll generate some short term need for added parking space in adjacent regions.

lqet 7y ago
At least in Europe, many cities have large parking spaces at the city borders where a parking ticket is automatically a public transportation ticket to the car-free city center.
dashscript 7y ago
I think you misunderstood it. Take a look at the map and you'll see pontevedra is tiny, a circle barely 2km wide. Car owners obviously don't work there but commute somewhere else (most probably Vigo in the south). Story goes, their roads where clogged with passing traffic, commuters passing by pontevedra going somewhere else. Then pontevedra got rid of all roads and made a big ring road around the city. So they turned their city into a proverbial cul de sac to escape from other people's traffic. If every other community in the way did the same around them guess what.
- Merrill 7y ago
  The old city center is a warren of narrow streets and must have been hell to navigate. Seems that it was a dying city center slum and this was a key step in gentrifying it.
- lazyjones 7y ago
  IOW, they fixed their congestion by building more roads (the AP-9 highway).
- eloycoto 7y ago
  I would say that 50% of the people that live in Pontevedra city work in the city itself (mainly gov administration).