16 ms·

Something special is happening in Barcelona

313 points by reallydontask 5y ago

throwaway984393 5y ago
I can't wait to scroll down and read the comments from angry drivers who just want these damn kids to get out of the road so they can get to wherever they won't be able to park even faster. Edit: I was not disappointed.
- pietrovismara 5y ago
  Seriously. I feel like my health and my wellbeing are hostage of a mass of angry egocentric drivers who can't possibly conceive taking a bike ride or using public transportation. Given their aggressive and uncompromising approach, I feel the only way to make this work is to literally force it on cities through critical masses, basically using the same coin they use. They don't care about my health? I don't care about them being late to work.
  - BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
    This attitude is partially why car drivers are so anti-anti-car people. You attribute such negative traits as egocentrism and anger to them and then insinuate they don’t care about your health. But the truth is that just about everyone outside of your friends and family doesn’t care about your health. It’s mere human nature.
    - pietrovismara 5y ago
      Why should I care about their work schedule then? Is it not my nature as well to disregard that in favor of my health?
    - pas 5y ago
      That's not the problem. The only real factor here is that a lot of people vote against anti-car politics. End of story. It doesn't matter that they personally are good/bad/green/egoist/selfish/selfless/saints. The problem is that they are short sighted, and don't even try to move the set-point of the traffic situation. When I drive I hate everything and everyone, it's miserable. Nowhere to park, no one can drive, everyone is slow, everyone is in a rush... But of course some people doesn't have such a strong emotional response to the situation, or they have a very strong response to mass transit...
moralestapia 5y ago
This has been going on in Guadalajara (México) for like 10 years or so (before the pandemic). It got so big that at one point the city decided to close some of the main roads every Sunday, making them exclusive to pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, or whatever-thing-that-is-not-a-car.
- wrnr 5y ago
  Sort of the same thing happens in SE Asia traffic but then they drive scooters, it looks messy but if you are part of the swarm it feels very natural.
- AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  But that is exactly what is happening here -- that they are closing the roads where these people are biking, on morning commute rush hour times. Otherwise the story is just "kids go to school on bike".
  - peterburkimsher 5y ago
    During rush hour, we're in a hurry to meet other people and serve them. So we're trying to optimise for time, and that's right, we should go to work! On the way home though, if we optimise for connectedness by being willing to stop and pick up litter on the way, the whole city will be clean! This idea didn't actually came from me. It was UncleBob - Expecting Professionalism that our wonderful manager Michael chose at work on 2021-08-09. I bike to and from work every day, so decided to apply the "clean as you go" philosophy to every area of life, to love my neighbours the trees, birds, eels, snails. And it's brought a lot of "thank you"s, which multiplied happiness :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSaAMQVq01E&t=2021s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSaAMQVq01E&t=2021s
- jolmg 5y ago
  I thought that was because of a lacking density of parks in the city.
  - peterburkimsher 5y ago
reducesuffering 5y ago
Reminds of the rideouts happening all over US cities. If only they would just clamp down on swerving cars. https://youtu.be/-1mmAdy3D8o?t=254 https://youtu.be/-1mmAdy3D8o?t=254
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Fargren 5y ago
Reminds me of Masa Crítica in Buenos Aires, a monthly event where lots (probably around a hundred, maybe two?) of bikers would pedal from the city center to the outskirts, to show support for the rights of people using bicycles.
- pjc50 5y ago
  Similarly "critical mass" protests in London, which were in endless trouble with the police. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/nov/26/critical-mass-london-police https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/nov/26/critical-mass-lon... Having children do it does decrease the chance of being broken up for obstructing cars.
  - Fargren 5y ago
    Oh, same name so these are almost certainly related. I didn't know about that.
    - timeon 5y ago
      "critical mass" is monthly event in many cities.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  Critical mass events are incredibly disruptive and are an offensively aggressive act to those who are just trying to go about their day and use the infrastructure for its funded intent - which is to say, cars and other motorized vehicles that move at higher speeds. It’s one thing to advocate for changes through proper political channels. It’s another thing entirely to hijack infrastructure, clog intersections by circling up, and violently harass drivers (what I’ve seen in SF). That’s not a protest, but a riot, and participants should be arrested and charged.
  - seattle_spring 5y ago
    The OP has nothing to do with "critical mass" events, so your comment seems like nothing more than a non sequitur.
Aachen 5y ago
"Something special" oooh, how mysteriously... enticing... clickbait... Does someone who clicked want to suggest a better title for OP?
- smegcicle 5y ago
  I was hoping something to do with the catalonian secession movement, but it's just.. kids riding bikes?
curiousgal 5y ago
That's a great way to engrain cycling in them. Hopefully they grow up to be good cyclists though, as a pedestrian currently living in Paris, urban cyclists suck.
yokaze 5y ago
If you read this, or other things about reducing car traffic in Barcelona, one should keep the following in mind: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/lafabricadelsol/en/noticia/did-you-know-that-barcelona-is-the-city-with-the-highest-vehicle-density-in-europe_405934 https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/lafabricadelsol/en/noticia/... 6000cars/km² in Barcelona. San Francisco/Oakland metropolitan area has 4000/sq mi... 1540/km² Guttenberg, NJ has the highest in the US with 20,600/sq mi (8000/km²) Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.planetizen.com/node/45622%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.planetizen.com/node/45622%3...
- mastax 5y ago
  Barcelona has a population density of 16,000/km², while the city of San Francisco has a density of 2,419/km².
  - duskwuff 5y ago
    > the city of San Francisco has a density of 2,419/km² Where are you getting that number? Wikipedia has 7,194/km².
  - yokaze 5y ago
    Paris has a population density of 20000/km², and Manhattan of 28,872/km². Population density is correlated with car density up to a certain point.
    - adrianN 5y ago
      Usually up to the point where giving 50-100sqm of road to 1.1 people traveling in a car prevents more people from living in the area (because all there is is roads and parking), and more scalable infrastructure is built.
- kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
  De-AMPed link: https://www.planetizen.com/node/45622 https://www.planetizen.com/node/45622
GekkePrutser 5y ago
I live there too, and traffic here is pretty busy. Personally I don't really understand why so many people drive. Because public transport here is extremely efficient and cheap. I don't even own a car here and I'm really happy to no longer need one. But if I had kids I wouldn't really let them participate. Even with the police escort, they might lose the group and be on their own in this busy city. I'm from near Amsterdam myself and there cyclists are the kinds of the road. Here it's very different. The mayor is very green and she's trying to pedestrianise a lot, but it's limited to a few lane closures and a handful of "superilla" test blocks. I think there is a lot of resistance to it. I really support her efforts but sadly she doesn't seem to be that popular. She also tried to clean up an area near the seafront with seedy nightclubs and casinos but got a lot of flak for that. I often see graffiti blaming her for stuff :(
- permalac 5y ago
  Being in power thanks to Manuel Valls, who was running for a reactionary far right party, did not help on her reputation. Also, she is leading the highest amount of council driven evictions, which does not help either. (for context she reached office on her first time thanks to the anti eviction associations.) She is green, yes. But she is over promising and under delivering.
  - GekkePrutser 5y ago
    I think she's having a hard time because she doesn't have a big majority. There's only so much political capital you can spend. But at least she's trying! I'm still a big fan of her :)
  - Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
    She didn't make any concessions to Valls at all, as Valls supported her purely out of spite for the alternative. I don't see what the problem with that is. Also you make it sound like Valls was a fringe far-right nutjob, when C's has two major parties to its right in the political spectrum, and Valls himself left because the party was steering rightwards too much to his liking. I'm a left-wing voter but honestly these ultra-partisan, polarizing views are a scourge that poisons politics.
throw63738 5y ago
Some pictures show there is perfectly working cycling path next to road. As someone who walks and uses bus, I have little sympathy for such stunts. Just another privileged group stealing public roads. Next time it will be politician and his convoy.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  We had roads before we had cars. Cars stole roads from people.
- _Wintermute 5y ago
  "Stealing public roads", you do realise the roads are for people, not just motor vehicles? Especially in densely populated cities.
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
    If there is a sidewalk and cycling path, then in most countries, the road is very specifically for motor vehicles.
    - namesbc 5y ago
      100% wrong. Roads are for everyone. Just because you are in a vehicle you can use as a weapon shouldn't allow you to threaten other road users out of their road. Just wait patiently and drive at the speed of traffic.
      - tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
        If there is a cycle path (meeting certain conditions), then using it is generally mandatory in at least Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy. In Spain, Netherlands and France, some are mandatory and some are not, depends on the form of signage.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
LeoPanthera 5y ago
This is a surprisingly clever idea. (Or maybe I am not clever enough to come up with stuff like this.) As explained the followup tweets: By extending the route to cover multiple schools, with fixed arrival times at each destination, people can join and leave the "bike bus" as it passes through. Even regular business commuters are joining the bike bus. I love it.
- karpour 5y ago
  Hey, I don't know a better way to contact you than replying to a recent comment. I found you via a submission from last year regarding Computer Chronicles archiving. There are currently efforts going on for completing missing metadata and re-digitizing all tapes, and I wondered if you'd like to be involved!
  - LeoPanthera 5y ago
    Sure? I don't know if I have much to offer though. You can email me at david [at] gloveraoki [dot] net
throwawaysea 5y ago
This would be incredibly frustrating to me as a car driver. I don’t think having shared roads for a vocal minority of bikers makes sense. It basically slows down everyone to bike speed, which I realize is the unspoken strategy of bike activists, and it is also why I am against supporting bike-friendly policies in their current form. It makes more sense to have cities build raised biking/walking lanes outside of the traffic (on pillars). Why aren’t cities exploring such strategies to accommodate those who like the fast point to point benefits of cars alongside those who are OK taking it slow or going out for a bike ride?
- yodsanklai 5y ago
  Car pollute, are extremely dangerous to other road users, and take a lot of space on the road. Cars in city should be the exception, not the rule.
  - throwawaysea 5y ago
    > pollute I consider the level of pollution to be minimal. It’s not even noticeable in many US cities. Plus this is also always improving, particularly with increasing popularity of hybrids and electric cars. > extremely dangerous to other road user First off, “extremely dangerous” is hyperbole. The number of fatalities on roads is very low, and it will keep getting lower as safety features like blind spot monitoring become standards. Roads are already incredibly safe - in the US the fatality rate is something like 1 per 100 million vehicle miles. But safety is also why roads should be reserved for motorized vehicles. Your assertion also seems very one sided. Safety is a two way thing - a substantial portion of bikers put themselves in danger by riding where they really shouldn’t. > take a lot of space on the road They also provide a lot of utility, which is why taxpayers funded roads and parking spaces to begin with. I, and I suspect most people, don’t mind using space for things that are high value, like cars.
    - jon_n 5y ago
      > I consider the level of pollution to be minimal. It’s not even noticeable in many US cities. Transport is one of the highest contributors to greenhouse gases in the US with light vehicles being the largest contributor to that sector https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P10127TU.pdf https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P10127TU.pdf >The number of fatalities on roads is very low, Road traffic crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States for people aged 1–54 https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index... > and it will keep getting lower as safety features like blind spot monitoring become standards. The rate has been pretty stagnant for the last 10 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... > the US the fatality rate is something like 1 per 100 million vehicle miles. This is true, but this number needs context. Average US driver covers 13k a year * by a lifetime of driving your over 1/2 a million miles per person, so the number you should be presenting is 1 in 200 chance to die. And thats just fatalities, when you consdier serious injury as well, the number isn't great. > I suspect most people, don’t mind using space for things that are high value, like cars. Was with you until "like cars". Cars waste a lot of space. They take up space in city centres, parked, while you're working/shopping, when you're actually in them they're still using a lot of space for typically one person. I think we'll see a lot more of this in the coming decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal
Tomte 5y ago
Some towns in Germany have this concept for students walking to their schools. There are even improvised bus stop signs at the side of the road.
- dgellow 5y ago
  We called this Pédibus in my Swiss hometown when I was a kid in the 90s and 00s. We had signs where kids could wait for the “walking bus”, a group of kids going to school together, often lead by an adult. Edit: that’s still a thing! https://pedibus.ch/ https://pedibus.ch/
throwaway2016a 5y ago
This is great. I wish I lived in a more bike friendly area. Here that would result in people being honked at and cars impatiently passing them at high speeds.
alkonaut 5y ago
This is very clever. I could imagine this makes drivers pick other times to drive eventually so once this is common enough, then at certain times there would be very little traffic. If cities were effectively car-free for just 30 minutes in the morning that could make a huge difference in the number of people riding bikes.
yawaworht1978 5y ago
I used to live in Barcelona, the infrastructure is definitely anti car in every aspect, it's desired to be. For such a large city, the car traffic is minimal, there are not enough parking opportunities, especially at the beach. There would be space, but the government knows better, if you have ever been in a tourist destination in Spain during peak season you will know that there is no way to accommodate all the cars. The only traffic jams you'll encounter is if an accident happened or if you go from Barcelona outwards toward the airport, when commuters go home on Friday afternoons or evening when headed to the nicer , less crowded beaches in the south. But absolutely nothing compared to London, I have lived there as well and driven a car. It's the city with the worst traffic jams you can imagine, it starts at 7am and never really ends, after 8pm it's quite calm and deserted one weekdays. But weekends, if you wanna go from the south east to the north, God help you. It's very bicycle friendly, own parts of the roads, unobstructed by cars. Taxis have a separate lane, and buses as well. The public transportation is also very good, affordable, you have buses, underground trains, and well, overground trains. And it's a nice city to walk, the old part of town, the huge parks, really nice. A role model implementation as far reducing car traffic issues go. Many people use these electro kind skateboards(forgot name) and scooters. And many people just walk. Of course , it needs to be mentioned that Barcelona is not built like American suburb areas, it's all apartment blocks of 3-7 stories, all blocks glued together. It's tight, they even have a convention on how to dry your clothes on balconies and how not to do it. Barcelona has many other issues, the typical ones for large cities, but transport and car traffic, I haven't seen better in Europe.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  how did people react to reduction of cars ? in many places every step toward reduction of car use is met with a lot of rants if not anger.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    The problem is a bunch of place introduce traffic limitations or some congestion tax... But then do nothing else! You have to find an alternative for people to not take their car (closer grocery shop for instance). Meanwhile the money goes to some pension fund for underperforming, unionized municipal workers...
rektide 5y ago
once again just really really wish there were p2p ways to connect & send data about. i imagine the phones on the bike bus advertising who they are, what their schedule is, who can join, how to join, and letting folks about know what the route is, what disruption to expect, how to plan around this happening. hoping on the bandwagon is enough to make this happen in some places but i think the core kernel idea could use some shareability & amplifiability in other places. a more reductionist expression is simply that the real world lacks virality potential. projects like Google's Eddystone[1]/Project Lighthouse (2015) are few & far between, underfunded & in Eddystone's case seemingly abandoned, but embuing reality with more of the neat connective capabilities of the computerized info-verse remains- i think- a key enabler. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddystone_(Google) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddystone_(Google)
frereubu 5y ago
I had an idea similar to this, based on my experience of Critical Mass cycle rides in London: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass_(cycling) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass_(cycling) It was called "Cycle Pods", which would be mini-critical mass rides for commuters. You'd probably need between five and ten riders who cycle the same route each day at a roughly similar pace, so you could register with a route and see whose rides were similar to yours. The other idea was even more loose, where you'd wear something like a tabard with an identifiable "cycle pods" logo where anyone who was wearing one was effectively advertising that they were open to riding with other people. I preferred this version because it's simpler and decentralised. Anyone could make something with the logo on it, so no purchase or registration needed. I love the idea of doing it with kids, but honestly some of the reactions we got from car and van drivers with the Critical Mass rides, even when we were going at a decent pace, were incredibly dangerous, and I'd worry about that with kids unless the police were involved, as they were in this Bicibús. We had to have outriders looking out for car drivers who'd try to drive into the middle of the mass. There's something about cyclists taking over the road that really provokes some drivers.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  damn I thinking about this for a while and found nothing, you're the first with links toward prior history. Super interesting.
- pietrovismara 5y ago
  I like the second idea, but you need reliability in order to choose the bike as a transportation to, say, work. You can't afford to wait to randomly meet someone to share a ride with if you need to be somewhere at a specific time. This also doesn't provide the safety a critical mass would provide.
  - frereubu 5y ago
    True, but if you see the number of people cycling to and from work in London at the same time, I think pods could form relatively naturally along the way, with people joining and leaving where necessary. The more people found out about it the easier it would be, but it's difficult to know where the threshold is that means it would start to click, and what it would take to get to that point. Hence why it's still an idea in my head!
Anthony-G 5y ago
We’ve also had similar “cycle buses” for school children in Irish cities for the past few years: https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0901/1162590-school-cycle-bus-limerick/ https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0901/1162590-school-cycle-bus-l...
nbzso 5y ago
[flagged]
- c0llision 5y ago
  Lmao, so people wanting children to be able to cycle safely to school is communism? >The risk of biking injuries is always present Lol. Because nobody was ever injured in a car before. What do you think are the major source of cycling injuries? It's collisions with motor vehicles. You fall off your bike and you'll probably scrape a knee. You get hit by a truck and it's near certain death. Cycling is NOT a dangerous activity, it is a benign activity done in a dangerous environment. Obvious example of Netherlands, where biking is number 1 method of transport, and nobody wears a helmet, yet they have one of the lowest rates of injury, thanks to the fact they have great cycling infrastructure which separates vulnerable road users from vehicles. >Cars are not the enemy Maybe some people think they are, but of course that is not the case. But that does not mean that cars must be used for every trip that we do. We can recognize that certain means of transport are better suited to certain journeys. If you are traveling very long distances then it makes sense to fly or take a boat. Likewise if you are traveling short distances it makes sense to walk or cycle. What people want is the freedom to choose their own means of transport. They want to be able to choose if they want to walk, cycle, take public transport or drive and they want to use whatever method is most convenient for them for whatever journey they are doing. They do not want the government to invest all transport funds solely into roads for cars and design cities around cars making their use essentially mandatory. I'm sure the car lobby is happy that many countries decided to do this in the 70's and that the decision to do that had nothing to do with influence from them, but now people are starting to see that the government has essentially made cars mandatory and their freedom has been taken from them. Of course cars are not the enemy and they are never going to go away, there will always be journeys where cars makes the most sense from a cost, convenience and time perspective, and there will always be people who just like driving. >Porsche's synthetic fuel will reduce CO2 from cars dramatically People often focus on the cO2 emissions from cars when driving, but that is actually not the worst part. In fact, it is actually much better to keep driving your old petrol car for as long as possible instead of switching to a brand new electric/low emissions car, because there are significant cO2 emissions released from building a new car. Then there is the cO2 emissions from building roads. Building just 2 meters of road has the same emissions as building a brand new car. >Claus Schwab Not surprised to hear you mention this name, or Santa Claus as I like to call him. The new favorite go-to for conspiracy nuts nowadays.
gwbas1c 5y ago
When I traveled to the Netherlands, after school, I'd see gangs of kids going home on bike. I vaguely remember seeing groups of about 10-15 kids on bikes. Not exactly the same thing, but quite similar.
senectus1 5y ago
roads are expensive infrastructure, I don't know about Barcelona but in Australia the roads are paid for by the drivers (at least atm the fossil fuel drivers), how will the maintain and pay for new roads if they take them over with cyclists? for the record, I cycle, drive a hybrid and am looking to buy an electric car. I'm not singling out cyclists as a hate target. I'm genuinely curious how this is going to work.
- milderworkacc 5y ago
  Roads here aren’t really paid for by motorists at all, it all comes out of general revenue (local rates, state revenue and commonwealth grants where appropriate). Fuel tax is just another tax, same as the Medicare levy doesn’t actually fund Medicare. The move to electric vehicles and bicycles does create a revenue shortfall, but that’s all it is - not any kind of structural issue that needs clever new thinking. Implement a per/km tax on cars or just whack up GST, it doesn’t matter.
  - senectus1 5y ago
    It may end up being a very significant shortfall, as the vast majority of drivers that CAN go bicycle, or electric are inner city. High population density means the largest slice of the tax burden. I dont think there is a way we can do this, or allow offgrid without a socialist leaning tax hike to everybody.
pvaldes 5y ago
What is happening is that after the last years nonsense, plus covid19 thing, is not so appealing to tourism than it was before, specially to inner tourism. So they need to clean their image with more positive news, pretend that it never happened, that all is happy-happy, and move on. Positive news that are heartwarming and nice but will be irrelevant for the grand scheme of things. Call me cynical if you want, but this is not a real change, is just another PR stunt stuff.
xg15 5y ago
Reminds me of the Critical Mass movement: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass_(cycling) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass_(cycling)

313 points by reallydontask 5y ago

I can't wait to scroll down and read the comments from angry drivers who just want these damn kids to get out of the road so they can get to wherever they won't be able to park even faster. Edit: I was not disappointed.

pietrovismara 5y ago
Seriously. I feel like my health and my wellbeing are hostage of a mass of angry egocentric drivers who can't possibly conceive taking a bike ride or using public transportation. Given their aggressive and uncompromising approach, I feel the only way to make this work is to literally force it on cities through critical masses, basically using the same coin they use. They don't care about my health? I don't care about them being late to work.
- BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
  This attitude is partially why car drivers are so anti-anti-car people. You attribute such negative traits as egocentrism and anger to them and then insinuate they don’t care about your health. But the truth is that just about everyone outside of your friends and family doesn’t care about your health. It’s mere human nature.
  - pietrovismara 5y ago
    Why should I care about their work schedule then? Is it not my nature as well to disregard that in favor of my health?
  - pas 5y ago
    That's not the problem. The only real factor here is that a lot of people vote against anti-car politics. End of story. It doesn't matter that they personally are good/bad/green/egoist/selfish/selfless/saints. The problem is that they are short sighted, and don't even try to move the set-point of the traffic situation. When I drive I hate everything and everyone, it's miserable. Nowhere to park, no one can drive, everyone is slow, everyone is in a rush... But of course some people doesn't have such a strong emotional response to the situation, or they have a very strong response to mass transit...

moralestapia 5y ago

This has been going on in Guadalajara (México) for like 10 years or so (before the pandemic). It got so big that at one point the city decided to close some of the main roads every Sunday, making them exclusive to pedestrians, bicycles, scooters, or whatever-thing-that-is-not-a-car.

wrnr 5y ago
Sort of the same thing happens in SE Asia traffic but then they drive scooters, it looks messy but if you are part of the swarm it feels very natural.
AshamedCaptain 5y ago
But that is exactly what is happening here -- that they are closing the roads where these people are biking, on morning commute rush hour times. Otherwise the story is just "kids go to school on bike".
- peterburkimsher 5y ago
  During rush hour, we're in a hurry to meet other people and serve them. So we're trying to optimise for time, and that's right, we should go to work! On the way home though, if we optimise for connectedness by being willing to stop and pick up litter on the way, the whole city will be clean! This idea didn't actually came from me. It was UncleBob - Expecting Professionalism that our wonderful manager Michael chose at work on 2021-08-09. I bike to and from work every day, so decided to apply the "clean as you go" philosophy to every area of life, to love my neighbours the trees, birds, eels, snails. And it's brought a lot of "thank you"s, which multiplied happiness :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSaAMQVq01E&t=2021s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSaAMQVq01E&t=2021s
jolmg 5y ago
I thought that was because of a lacking density of parks in the city.
- peterburkimsher 5y ago

reducesuffering 5y ago

Reminds of the rideouts happening all over US cities. If only they would just clamp down on swerving cars. https://youtu.be/-1mmAdy3D8o?t=254 https://youtu.be/-1mmAdy3D8o?t=254

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Fargren 5y ago

Reminds me of Masa Crítica in Buenos Aires, a monthly event where lots (probably around a hundred, maybe two?) of bikers would pedal from the city center to the outskirts, to show support for the rights of people using bicycles.

pjc50 5y ago
Similarly "critical mass" protests in London, which were in endless trouble with the police. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/nov/26/critical-mass-london-police https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/nov/26/critical-mass-lon... Having children do it does decrease the chance of being broken up for obstructing cars.
- Fargren 5y ago
  Oh, same name so these are almost certainly related. I didn't know about that.
  - timeon 5y ago
    "critical mass" is monthly event in many cities.
throwawaysea 5y ago
Critical mass events are incredibly disruptive and are an offensively aggressive act to those who are just trying to go about their day and use the infrastructure for its funded intent - which is to say, cars and other motorized vehicles that move at higher speeds. It’s one thing to advocate for changes through proper political channels. It’s another thing entirely to hijack infrastructure, clog intersections by circling up, and violently harass drivers (what I’ve seen in SF). That’s not a protest, but a riot, and participants should be arrested and charged.
- seattle_spring 5y ago
  The OP has nothing to do with "critical mass" events, so your comment seems like nothing more than a non sequitur.

Aachen 5y ago

"Something special" oooh, how mysteriously... enticing... clickbait... Does someone who clicked want to suggest a better title for OP?

smegcicle 5y ago
I was hoping something to do with the catalonian secession movement, but it's just.. kids riding bikes?

curiousgal 5y ago

That's a great way to engrain cycling in them. Hopefully they grow up to be good cyclists though, as a pedestrian currently living in Paris, urban cyclists suck.

yokaze 5y ago

If you read this, or other things about reducing car traffic in Barcelona, one should keep the following in mind: https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/lafabricadelsol/en/noticia/did-you-know-that-barcelona-is-the-city-with-the-highest-vehicle-density-in-europe_405934 https://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/lafabricadelsol/en/noticia/... 6000cars/km² in Barcelona. San Francisco/Oakland metropolitan area has 4000/sq mi... 1540/km² Guttenberg, NJ has the highest in the US with 20,600/sq mi (8000/km²) Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.planetizen.com/node/45622%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.planetizen.com/node/45622%3...

mastax 5y ago
Barcelona has a population density of 16,000/km², while the city of San Francisco has a density of 2,419/km².
- duskwuff 5y ago
  > the city of San Francisco has a density of 2,419/km² Where are you getting that number? Wikipedia has 7,194/km².
- yokaze 5y ago
  Paris has a population density of 20000/km², and Manhattan of 28,872/km². Population density is correlated with car density up to a certain point.
  - adrianN 5y ago
    Usually up to the point where giving 50-100sqm of road to 1.1 people traveling in a car prevents more people from living in the area (because all there is is roads and parking), and more scalable infrastructure is built.
kaladin-jasnah 5y ago
De-AMPed link: https://www.planetizen.com/node/45622 https://www.planetizen.com/node/45622

GekkePrutser 5y ago

I live there too, and traffic here is pretty busy. Personally I don't really understand why so many people drive. Because public transport here is extremely efficient and cheap. I don't even own a car here and I'm really happy to no longer need one. But if I had kids I wouldn't really let them participate. Even with the police escort, they might lose the group and be on their own in this busy city. I'm from near Amsterdam myself and there cyclists are the kinds of the road. Here it's very different. The mayor is very green and she's trying to pedestrianise a lot, but it's limited to a few lane closures and a handful of "superilla" test blocks. I think there is a lot of resistance to it. I really support her efforts but sadly she doesn't seem to be that popular. She also tried to clean up an area near the seafront with seedy nightclubs and casinos but got a lot of flak for that. I often see graffiti blaming her for stuff :(

permalac 5y ago
Being in power thanks to Manuel Valls, who was running for a reactionary far right party, did not help on her reputation. Also, she is leading the highest amount of council driven evictions, which does not help either. (for context she reached office on her first time thanks to the anti eviction associations.) She is green, yes. But she is over promising and under delivering.
- GekkePrutser 5y ago
  I think she's having a hard time because she doesn't have a big majority. There's only so much political capital you can spend. But at least she's trying! I'm still a big fan of her :)
- Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
  She didn't make any concessions to Valls at all, as Valls supported her purely out of spite for the alternative. I don't see what the problem with that is. Also you make it sound like Valls was a fringe far-right nutjob, when C's has two major parties to its right in the political spectrum, and Valls himself left because the party was steering rightwards too much to his liking. I'm a left-wing voter but honestly these ultra-partisan, polarizing views are a scourge that poisons politics.

throw63738 5y ago

Some pictures show there is perfectly working cycling path next to road. As someone who walks and uses bus, I have little sympathy for such stunts. Just another privileged group stealing public roads. Next time it will be politician and his convoy.

chrisseaton 5y ago
We had roads before we had cars. Cars stole roads from people.
_Wintermute 5y ago
"Stealing public roads", you do realise the roads are for people, not just motor vehicles? Especially in densely populated cities.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
  If there is a sidewalk and cycling path, then in most countries, the road is very specifically for motor vehicles.
  - namesbc 5y ago
    100% wrong. Roads are for everyone. Just because you are in a vehicle you can use as a weapon shouldn't allow you to threaten other road users out of their road. Just wait patiently and drive at the speed of traffic.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 5y ago
      If there is a cycle path (meeting certain conditions), then using it is generally mandatory in at least Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy. In Spain, Netherlands and France, some are mandatory and some are not, depends on the form of signage.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

LeoPanthera 5y ago

This is a surprisingly clever idea. (Or maybe I am not clever enough to come up with stuff like this.) As explained the followup tweets: By extending the route to cover multiple schools, with fixed arrival times at each destination, people can join and leave the "bike bus" as it passes through. Even regular business commuters are joining the bike bus. I love it.

karpour 5y ago
Hey, I don't know a better way to contact you than replying to a recent comment. I found you via a submission from last year regarding Computer Chronicles archiving. There are currently efforts going on for completing missing metadata and re-digitizing all tapes, and I wondered if you'd like to be involved!
- LeoPanthera 5y ago
  Sure? I don't know if I have much to offer though. You can email me at david [at] gloveraoki [dot] net

throwawaysea 5y ago

This would be incredibly frustrating to me as a car driver. I don’t think having shared roads for a vocal minority of bikers makes sense. It basically slows down everyone to bike speed, which I realize is the unspoken strategy of bike activists, and it is also why I am against supporting bike-friendly policies in their current form. It makes more sense to have cities build raised biking/walking lanes outside of the traffic (on pillars). Why aren’t cities exploring such strategies to accommodate those who like the fast point to point benefits of cars alongside those who are OK taking it slow or going out for a bike ride?

yodsanklai 5y ago
Car pollute, are extremely dangerous to other road users, and take a lot of space on the road. Cars in city should be the exception, not the rule.
- throwawaysea 5y ago
  > pollute I consider the level of pollution to be minimal. It’s not even noticeable in many US cities. Plus this is also always improving, particularly with increasing popularity of hybrids and electric cars. > extremely dangerous to other road user First off, “extremely dangerous” is hyperbole. The number of fatalities on roads is very low, and it will keep getting lower as safety features like blind spot monitoring become standards. Roads are already incredibly safe - in the US the fatality rate is something like 1 per 100 million vehicle miles. But safety is also why roads should be reserved for motorized vehicles. Your assertion also seems very one sided. Safety is a two way thing - a substantial portion of bikers put themselves in danger by riding where they really shouldn’t. > take a lot of space on the road They also provide a lot of utility, which is why taxpayers funded roads and parking spaces to begin with. I, and I suspect most people, don’t mind using space for things that are high value, like cars.
  - jon_n 5y ago
    > I consider the level of pollution to be minimal. It’s not even noticeable in many US cities. Transport is one of the highest contributors to greenhouse gases in the US with light vehicles being the largest contributor to that sector https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P10127TU.pdf https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P10127TU.pdf >The number of fatalities on roads is very low, Road traffic crashes are a leading cause of death in the United States for people aged 1–54 https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index... > and it will keep getting lower as safety features like blind spot monitoring become standards. The rate has been pretty stagnant for the last 10 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in_U.S._by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_in... > the US the fatality rate is something like 1 per 100 million vehicle miles. This is true, but this number needs context. Average US driver covers 13k a year * by a lifetime of driving your over 1/2 a million miles per person, so the number you should be presenting is 1 in 200 chance to die. And thats just fatalities, when you consdier serious injury as well, the number isn't great. > I suspect most people, don’t mind using space for things that are high value, like cars. Was with you until "like cars". Cars waste a lot of space. They take up space in city centres, parked, while you're working/shopping, when you're actually in them they're still using a lot of space for typically one person. I think we'll see a lot more of this in the coming decades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeway_removal

Tomte 5y ago

Some towns in Germany have this concept for students walking to their schools. There are even improvised bus stop signs at the side of the road.

dgellow 5y ago
We called this Pédibus in my Swiss hometown when I was a kid in the 90s and 00s. We had signs where kids could wait for the “walking bus”, a group of kids going to school together, often lead by an adult. Edit: that’s still a thing! https://pedibus.ch/ https://pedibus.ch/

throwaway2016a 5y ago

This is great. I wish I lived in a more bike friendly area. Here that would result in people being honked at and cars impatiently passing them at high speeds.

alkonaut 5y ago

This is very clever. I could imagine this makes drivers pick other times to drive eventually so once this is common enough, then at certain times there would be very little traffic. If cities were effectively car-free for just 30 minutes in the morning that could make a huge difference in the number of people riding bikes.

yawaworht1978 5y ago

I used to live in Barcelona, the infrastructure is definitely anti car in every aspect, it's desired to be. For such a large city, the car traffic is minimal, there are not enough parking opportunities, especially at the beach. There would be space, but the government knows better, if you have ever been in a tourist destination in Spain during peak season you will know that there is no way to accommodate all the cars. The only traffic jams you'll encounter is if an accident happened or if you go from Barcelona outwards toward the airport, when commuters go home on Friday afternoons or evening when headed to the nicer , less crowded beaches in the south. But absolutely nothing compared to London, I have lived there as well and driven a car. It's the city with the worst traffic jams you can imagine, it starts at 7am and never really ends, after 8pm it's quite calm and deserted one weekdays. But weekends, if you wanna go from the south east to the north, God help you. It's very bicycle friendly, own parts of the roads, unobstructed by cars. Taxis have a separate lane, and buses as well. The public transportation is also very good, affordable, you have buses, underground trains, and well, overground trains. And it's a nice city to walk, the old part of town, the huge parks, really nice. A role model implementation as far reducing car traffic issues go. Many people use these electro kind skateboards(forgot name) and scooters. And many people just walk. Of course , it needs to be mentioned that Barcelona is not built like American suburb areas, it's all apartment blocks of 3-7 stories, all blocks glued together. It's tight, they even have a convention on how to dry your clothes on balconies and how not to do it. Barcelona has many other issues, the typical ones for large cities, but transport and car traffic, I haven't seen better in Europe.

agumonkey 5y ago
how did people react to reduction of cars ? in many places every step toward reduction of car use is met with a lot of rants if not anger.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  The problem is a bunch of place introduce traffic limitations or some congestion tax... But then do nothing else! You have to find an alternative for people to not take their car (closer grocery shop for instance). Meanwhile the money goes to some pension fund for underperforming, unionized municipal workers...

rektide 5y ago

once again just really really wish there were p2p ways to connect & send data about. i imagine the phones on the bike bus advertising who they are, what their schedule is, who can join, how to join, and letting folks about know what the route is, what disruption to expect, how to plan around this happening. hoping on the bandwagon is enough to make this happen in some places but i think the core kernel idea could use some shareability & amplifiability in other places. a more reductionist expression is simply that the real world lacks virality potential. projects like Google's Eddystone[1]/Project Lighthouse (2015) are few & far between, underfunded & in Eddystone's case seemingly abandoned, but embuing reality with more of the neat connective capabilities of the computerized info-verse remains- i think- a key enabler. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddystone_(Google) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddystone_(Google)

frereubu 5y ago

I had an idea similar to this, based on my experience of Critical Mass cycle rides in London: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass_(cycling) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass_(cycling) It was called "Cycle Pods", which would be mini-critical mass rides for commuters. You'd probably need between five and ten riders who cycle the same route each day at a roughly similar pace, so you could register with a route and see whose rides were similar to yours. The other idea was even more loose, where you'd wear something like a tabard with an identifiable "cycle pods" logo where anyone who was wearing one was effectively advertising that they were open to riding with other people. I preferred this version because it's simpler and decentralised. Anyone could make something with the logo on it, so no purchase or registration needed. I love the idea of doing it with kids, but honestly some of the reactions we got from car and van drivers with the Critical Mass rides, even when we were going at a decent pace, were incredibly dangerous, and I'd worry about that with kids unless the police were involved, as they were in this Bicibús. We had to have outriders looking out for car drivers who'd try to drive into the middle of the mass. There's something about cyclists taking over the road that really provokes some drivers.

agumonkey 5y ago
damn I thinking about this for a while and found nothing, you're the first with links toward prior history. Super interesting.
pietrovismara 5y ago
I like the second idea, but you need reliability in order to choose the bike as a transportation to, say, work. You can't afford to wait to randomly meet someone to share a ride with if you need to be somewhere at a specific time. This also doesn't provide the safety a critical mass would provide.
- frereubu 5y ago
  True, but if you see the number of people cycling to and from work in London at the same time, I think pods could form relatively naturally along the way, with people joining and leaving where necessary. The more people found out about it the easier it would be, but it's difficult to know where the threshold is that means it would start to click, and what it would take to get to that point. Hence why it's still an idea in my head!

Anthony-G 5y ago

We’ve also had similar “cycle buses” for school children in Irish cities for the past few years: https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0901/1162590-school-cycle-bus-limerick/ https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0901/1162590-school-cycle-bus-l...

nbzso 5y ago

[flagged]

c0llision 5y ago
Lmao, so people wanting children to be able to cycle safely to school is communism? >The risk of biking injuries is always present Lol. Because nobody was ever injured in a car before. What do you think are the major source of cycling injuries? It's collisions with motor vehicles. You fall off your bike and you'll probably scrape a knee. You get hit by a truck and it's near certain death. Cycling is NOT a dangerous activity, it is a benign activity done in a dangerous environment. Obvious example of Netherlands, where biking is number 1 method of transport, and nobody wears a helmet, yet they have one of the lowest rates of injury, thanks to the fact they have great cycling infrastructure which separates vulnerable road users from vehicles. >Cars are not the enemy Maybe some people think they are, but of course that is not the case. But that does not mean that cars must be used for every trip that we do. We can recognize that certain means of transport are better suited to certain journeys. If you are traveling very long distances then it makes sense to fly or take a boat. Likewise if you are traveling short distances it makes sense to walk or cycle. What people want is the freedom to choose their own means of transport. They want to be able to choose if they want to walk, cycle, take public transport or drive and they want to use whatever method is most convenient for them for whatever journey they are doing. They do not want the government to invest all transport funds solely into roads for cars and design cities around cars making their use essentially mandatory. I'm sure the car lobby is happy that many countries decided to do this in the 70's and that the decision to do that had nothing to do with influence from them, but now people are starting to see that the government has essentially made cars mandatory and their freedom has been taken from them. Of course cars are not the enemy and they are never going to go away, there will always be journeys where cars makes the most sense from a cost, convenience and time perspective, and there will always be people who just like driving. >Porsche's synthetic fuel will reduce CO2 from cars dramatically People often focus on the cO2 emissions from cars when driving, but that is actually not the worst part. In fact, it is actually much better to keep driving your old petrol car for as long as possible instead of switching to a brand new electric/low emissions car, because there are significant cO2 emissions released from building a new car. Then there is the cO2 emissions from building roads. Building just 2 meters of road has the same emissions as building a brand new car. >Claus Schwab Not surprised to hear you mention this name, or Santa Claus as I like to call him. The new favorite go-to for conspiracy nuts nowadays.

gwbas1c 5y ago

When I traveled to the Netherlands, after school, I'd see gangs of kids going home on bike. I vaguely remember seeing groups of about 10-15 kids on bikes. Not exactly the same thing, but quite similar.

senectus1 5y ago

roads are expensive infrastructure, I don't know about Barcelona but in Australia the roads are paid for by the drivers (at least atm the fossil fuel drivers), how will the maintain and pay for new roads if they take them over with cyclists? for the record, I cycle, drive a hybrid and am looking to buy an electric car. I'm not singling out cyclists as a hate target. I'm genuinely curious how this is going to work.

milderworkacc 5y ago
Roads here aren’t really paid for by motorists at all, it all comes out of general revenue (local rates, state revenue and commonwealth grants where appropriate). Fuel tax is just another tax, same as the Medicare levy doesn’t actually fund Medicare. The move to electric vehicles and bicycles does create a revenue shortfall, but that’s all it is - not any kind of structural issue that needs clever new thinking. Implement a per/km tax on cars or just whack up GST, it doesn’t matter.
- senectus1 5y ago
  It may end up being a very significant shortfall, as the vast majority of drivers that CAN go bicycle, or electric are inner city. High population density means the largest slice of the tax burden. I dont think there is a way we can do this, or allow offgrid without a socialist leaning tax hike to everybody.

pvaldes 5y ago

What is happening is that after the last years nonsense, plus covid19 thing, is not so appealing to tourism than it was before, specially to inner tourism. So they need to clean their image with more positive news, pretend that it never happened, that all is happy-happy, and move on. Positive news that are heartwarming and nice but will be irrelevant for the grand scheme of things. Call me cynical if you want, but this is not a real change, is just another PR stunt stuff.

xg15 5y ago

Reminds me of the Critical Mass movement: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass_(cycling) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_Mass_(cycling)