‘For me, this is paradise’: life in the Spanish city that banned cars
Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores has been mayor of the Galician city since 1999. His philosophy is simple: owning a car doesn’t give you the right to occupy the public space.
“How can it be that the elderly or children aren’t able to use the street because of cars?” asks César Mosquera, the city’s head of infrastructures. “How can it be that private property – the car – occupies the public space?”
Lores became mayor after 12 years in opposition, and within a month had pedestrianised all 300,000 sq m of the medieval centre, paving the streets with granite flagstones.
Boldfaced emphasis added by me.
Entitlement is how that happens. Entitlement followed by self-blindness.
Bikes are mentioned in passing, but not companies like Lime or Jump.
I often wonder how stores in such a place are restocked without allowing motorized traffic. And emergency services such as police, fire, ambulances.
I’ve never advocated the banning of cars. I simply wonder if rental eScooters would be welcomed there. And electric skateboards and electric unicycles.
After the break, some videos showing Pontevedra and a video about car-free cities that answers some of my questions.
The Plazas of Pontevedra, Spain
Carfree Cities: The Gritty Details
Previously here:
UCal Understands The Alt-Wheels Central Issue
More Evidence Of Political Hypocrisy Re: Alt-Wheels
Documentary: Backpedal. We Need A National Alt-Wheels Movement.
Bikes Vs. Cars, Plus Why eScooters Matter
The Future For NYC: Portable Electric Scooters
Chronological List Of Electric Scooter Posts
eScooters category
eSkateboards category
Mike Cane's Atomic Supermen 
Ok..the article is unreal. Let me explain.I being living in galicia for the last 10 years in fact I’m writing every coment in your blog from here . And I need to explain how this is the city for you to understand what happen. The center of this cites are very small and very old. The old part of the cities are super small and pedestrian only.Never in the history of the city cars were allow except for residents, not only in pontevedra in all spain in general for preservation .But,If you look el camino de santiago(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camino_de_Santiago).You will see that many people are allow to arrive to the catedral by bike after ride hundreds of kilometers.You are allow to ride a bike in this pedestrian parts of the cities..no problem.At least where I live.
I wonder how they would regard rental eScooters?
We can rent bikes,an deliver them in other part of the cities like most of the big cities..I see few people here with eScooters, but remember this part of the Europe is far from a great cities.And we have small streets. The other thing is that you can buy for 2000 euros a 125 cc moto scooter(vespa) and here many many people own one,like myself ,because is easy to move and park.
Huh. They allow motorized scooters? Odd. I am jealous of your surroundings!
This is a galician News paper and the answer about the article of the guardian…Like I told you before..is in spanish. Local people beg to differ. https://www.lavozdegalicia.es/noticia/sociedad/2018/09/20/camino-uso-bici/0003_201809G20P28996.htm
It’s particularly difficult in this case because Google Translate is worse than usual. However …
> “For people who come from outside it is difficult to find where to park . I’m from Poio. What I do is come walking. It takes me fifteen minutes, “says a young woman who will be in her twenties and who recognizes that in Galicia people are badly used because they want to park the car right in front of the place where it goes.
Sounds to me like a market ripe for rental eScooters!