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Lithuanian capital to be turned into vast open-air cafe
- ashtonkem 7y agoHopefully some of it remains after. Car centered cities are awful for human beings, we should reclaim some of this space for us.
- fyfy18 7y agoThis move is mainly about taking existing pedestrian spaces, and making them available for bars and restaurants. The city has a lot of parks and plazas, that are often used to host outdoor events and festivals - which won't be happening this year. Since last year part of the main street (Gedimino Pr.) has been pedestrian only during weekends, so already restaurants have been able to use that for seating, and this extends that. We usually have warm summers and long days (it's still light at 11pm in the middle of June), so it's very popular to sit outside where available. My only complaint is that people are allowed to smoke in these areas (with no seperation). For a bar I understand, but eating at a restaurant when someone is smoking next to you is not very pleasant.
- darkstar_16 7y agoVilnius is one of the most beautiful capital cities I've had the pleasure of travelling to, and the one that can really pull this off. Low density of population, huge parks and open spaces. It's beautiful.
- KptMarchewa 7y agoLow density compared to NYC or London or another huge city. Not a low density compared to US sprawling cities.
- lampe3 7y agoHello from Vilnius, the City already has parking zones. As a normal person its very hard to park in the City center. Here is some information: https://www.govilnius.lt/plan-your-trip/getting-around/parking-in-vilnius https://www.govilnius.lt/plan-your-trip/getting-around/parki... Also, some streets are already car-free and only delivery vehicals can enter them.
- acd 7y agoAfter this Covid returns to normal and its safe I will go and visit Vilnius as a tourist! :)
- lampe3 7y agoYou should take this test first: https://vilniusgspot.com/ https://vilniusgspot.com/
- fit2rule 7y agoThat's it I'm going to Lithuania for vacation also. Pretty neat way to get tourists prepared...
- ivan_gammel 7y agoThis is the website of the day. People who created it are gods of marketing.
- williamdclt 7y agoI can count on my fingers the number of times I've seen a website that was this well made!
- toomuchtodo 7y agoMy day is measurably better having come across this site.
- dzhiurgis 7y agoTraffic in Vokieciu, Traku, etc streets is a shit show. I've been advocating for ages the old town needs to be shut completely. It has such an amazing potential if not for stupid cars there. That said, Vilnius needs to improve traffic hotspots a lot. Rush hours exist everywhere, but Vilnius is noticeably bad. Bus lanes needs better isolation too (some form of Rapid Bus implementation).
- anjc 7y ago> Car centered cities are awful for human beings Do you just mean that a car centred city is more noisy and dirty than an economically-equivalent city that has fewer cars? They've been amazing for human beings if you take a broader/longer perspective.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- kevin_thibedeau 7y agoThey're pedestrian hostile. That creates a vicious cycle of driving people out to suburbs, hollowing out businesses that would cater to full time residents, making it even less desirable to live there.
- bzb3 7y ago>Car centered cities are awful for human beings, we should reclaim some of this space for us. This might sound shocking, but cars are driven by human beings. When a human being is driving a car, the space taken by that car is actually being used by a human being.
- ianleeclark 7y agoA portion of that space is being occupied by a human, but it's not all being used by the human. We both know you know this.
- dkdk8283 7y agoCars are positive for humans. Dense living conditions like NYC are not sustainable. You burn out. Sometimes you want to get away from all people. Car is essential for this.
- Symbiote 7y agoPerhaps look at a different perspective. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilnius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilnius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilnius#Transport https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vilnius#Transport
- dkdk8283 7y agoI lived in NYC for 11 years and I felt trapped. I moved to a rural area and I’m done. Your opinions change as you age.
- cameronh90 7y agoNYC isn't an example of a human-oriented city. The roads are huge, full of loud traffic, and the cars have priority. Constant sirens and horns in Manhattan, and not much better elsewhere. I'm not sure there is an example of a big, dense human-oriented city, but the closest examples (places like Venice, Ghent, Copenhagen) are wonderful places that have a completely different feel to a city like London or NYC. I don't know how much of that is due to the size difference, but in London on the days where the city gets shut to traffic, it feels a much more welcoming, relaxing and pleasant place. The lack of constant car sounds and being able to walk where you want makes a huge difference in livability. It feels closer to when I used to live more rural.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jd115 7y agoI found this even more brilliant: "Vilnius authorities have also given the city’s public health workers €400,000-worth (£350,000) of restaurant vouchers intended both as gesture of thanks for their work and a much-needed stimulus to the city’s cafes." London should do more of this. Every city should do more of this.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- smcl 7y agoDo those lunch/meal vouchers exist at all in the UK? Many workers here in Czech Republic get them as a work benefit, and I suspect this is what they're referring to. It varies per employer but we get roughly one ticket per working day, worth 110kč ($4.40, or €4) and they're valid in pretty much every restaurant in the city so basically everyone goes out for lunch. When I was in the UK they didn't have anything like this.
- baud147258 7y agoWe have them in France too, but half is payed by the employee (taken from the salary). But we can also use them when buying groceries (not all supermarkets accept them, but a lot of them do)
- smcl 7y agoYep same deal as us, a mix of employer/employee contributions pay for them, they can be used for some items in supermarket (not for things like alcohol) and I think the employer contribution is tax exempt too
- neltnerb 7y agoI have never heard of this before. It is fascinating to me that health care gets decoupled from employment but eating is considered an employment benefit. I don't really object or anything, it just seems out of character. Wouldn't it be better if the government did this directly by the same logic you'd apply to health care? Making employee meals tax deductible instead of just giving everyone a government funded food benefit sounds much more like what I'd expect in the US.
- v3nom 7y agoAdding more bike paths to reach city center from suburbs and locking down city center for cars should follow next. There are plenty of research which shows that slow traffic brings more business to shops
- lampe3 7y agoThis is what is happening right now :) Just 2 streets near by my home got the bike path treatment. It was a 2 way car road now it is a bike path and 1 way car road :D Also you can turn in your old car for a e scooter or a bike https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1168325/lithuania-offers-bike-moped-subsidies-in-return-for-old-cars https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1168325/lithuania-o...
- mantas 7y agoOldtown is mostly for tourists/partying nowadays (as in before the whole Corona mess). Offices and everyday shops/services are moving out for the past 2 decades. Living downtown is getting less and less desirable too because students are priced out while older folks don't want 24/7 party all around. No bike paths will change that. On the bright side, no sane person drives into oldtown for a looong time. Especially after recent raise of parking fees. Quite a few streets are already car-free. Transit traffic is going to be banned any time now (said for the past 5 or 10 years, but eventually it will happen). As for bike paths, few neighbourhoods were well connected for decade+. More and more connections are being built. Terrain and city density is not exactly friendly though. Downtown is, well, down in a valley. While banks ain't truly steep, living in a flat country it is quite a mental stop. On top of that, lots of people live in soviet-era blocks 5km+ from downtown. Add that bike paths ain't bee-line straight and it ends up a 30min+ ride one way for a beer.
- acd 7y agoWay to go Lithuania and great idea!
- totetsu 7y agoMy skim reading eyes say this as "Lithuanian capital to be turned into vast open-aircraft carrier" for a second. Next thing Vilnius will be making port calls to Taipei, and throwing forklifts overboard in international waters.
- vgaldikas 7y agoWe should definitely suggest this to our mayor :D
- vanderZwan 7y agoTangent: it is somehow so pleasing to me in this context that I can recognize your username as a Lithuanian surname. Gives the internet anonymity some flavor, I guess :) (for everyone else: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_name https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_name )
- rimliu 7y agoIf that were Zuokas, definitely.
- ConsiderCrying 7y agoI'm still not sure how I'm feeling about ending the lockdown this early, but the initiative is great and I'm glad to see the government helping its people and businesses. Not to mention that last paragraph. How feasible is it for other countries and cities to do it?
- C19is20 7y agoI agree. Several elements of lockdown are being lifted in italy on monday. Watching the people in my street thinking it's all over now...well, it soon may be. No proper distancing, kids from different families playing together - in the streets, but also in communal hallways so you have to ask them to move before you can pass. People thinking that being on one side of a fence protects you. Trying to tell people the threat is still there, it's just that the hospitals are slightly better prepared, doesn't mean we're anywhere near the end.
- EGreg 7y agoI think you meant to write “capitol”
- taejo 7y agoThe article refers to capital, 3. (countable) A city designated as a legislative seat by the government or some other authority, often the city in which the government is located; otherwise the most important city within a country or a subdivision of it. not capitol, 2. (US) Any building or complex of buildings in which a legislature meets. [Definitions from English Wiktionary] Being a UK newspaper, the Guardian would probably use "Lithuanian parliament buildings" or similar if that's what they meant.
- topbanana 7y agoIf you haven't been, it's a beautiful city.
- OJFord 7y agoHow does one dine at an open-air café or retaurant while wearing a mask?
- icebraining 7y agoOne doesn't, which is why the tables will be spaced.
- PeterStuer 7y agoFrom the opposite side of the spectrum, meet Antwerp Belgium. First thing they did under the guise of "Corona measures' was lift the low emission zone so the most heavily polluting vehicles could once again roam free in the city, and make all on street parking free. Their pretends that this was 'to give maximal access to care workers' fell flat immediately as all caseworkers that needed city access already had complying vehicles, and they now have trouble finding spaces to park as all streets are just permanently filled with long-term parked cars. Yet, they still persist with the idiocy.
- acqq 7y ago> they still persist with the idiocy Also, according to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries is Belgium at this moment, except for San Marino of only 30,000 inhabitants, the country with the highest death rate in the world from coronavirus epidemics, per million of population: San Marino: 1,208 Belgium: 655 Spain: 519 Italy: 458 UK: 384 France: 369 Netherlands: 275 Sweden: 244 USA: 186 Germany: 77 Greece: 13 I believe, if the rest of the world is not much aware of that fact, that also says something about Belgian politics. I'd love to read more about the perspective of Belgians here. Edit: see also https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps which I explain in the later post -- that independent, different statistics is, approximately, not disproving the ratios for the European countries, except for the UK, where it seems there was some kind of underreporting of Covid-19 related deaths.
- toasted_flakes 7y agoBelgium counts all deaths from care homes as COVID-19 deaths. Hardly a fair comparison, even if I have my gripes with the politics.
- acqq 7y agohttps://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-52466471/page/3 https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-52466471/page/3 "29 Apr: The death toll from the virus in the UK rises to more than 26,000 after care home deaths are included for first time" Apart from that, luckily, we have also "all deaths" (for any reason whatsoever) statistics for participating EU countries (and, still, UK), so we can compare these too: https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps Even there Belgium has had quite high z-score ("computed on the de-trended and de-seasonalized series"), although there are two obviously worse at the peak: UK (much worse and without any indication of improving at the moment, according to the available statistics) and Spain, which already improved. At the moment it seems to me that it was mostly the UK that just didn't report correctly, not that the others overreported.
- dotpot 7y agothis is awesome!
- dangerbird2 7y agoKills two birds with one stone: gives restaurants an ability to conduct business safely, and takes advantage of the current drop in vehicle traffic to make Vilnius more pedestrian-friendly. I'd love to see cities in the U.S. do this.
- jamespullar 7y agoPortland, OR is planning on closing 100 miles of streets to help provide space for social distancing. I hope that from all this we get more initiatives around the world like this. https://beta.portland.gov/eudaly/news/2020/4/28/transportation-commissioner-chloe-eudaly-announces-new-slow-streetssafe https://beta.portland.gov/eudaly/news/2020/4/28/transportati...