<story><title>A Swiss town banned billboards. Zurich, Bern may soon follow</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-26/zurich-bern-consider-billboard-bans-after-vernier-outlaws-visual-pollution</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>systemtest</author><text>The majority of people in The Netherlands drive their car to get to work. They don&amp;#x27;t want to have to walk 10 minutes to an edge parking or city hub. If we want to lower cars in neighbourhoods, or want people to get rid of cars, our public transit system needs to be come a lot better first. If public transit was a good option to get to work for people, more people would use it.&lt;p&gt;For me going to work is either a 20 minute car ride, with parking right in front of my house and right in front of work. Or it is a 10 minute walk, 45 minute bus ride where I likely have to stand and then another 5 minute walk. And I can&amp;#x27;t work past 20:00 because that&amp;#x27;s my last bus. Make it so public transit is less than 20 minutes, goes 24&amp;#x2F;7 and picks me up within 5 minutes walking of my home and I will use it.&lt;p&gt;And no I don&amp;#x27;t even live in a village. Population of 140.000 people and I work in a city of 300.000.</text></item><item><author>Lutger</author><text>Grenoble also banned all ads in 2014 and put in a lot of trees. It is truly an audacious move, yet completely rational. My dream is to also ban parking of cars in neighborhoods and most car traffic, cars can be parked along the edges in solar covered parking spaces. Add car sharing, better public transportation, urban agriculture, community gardens and parks: soon you&amp;#x27;ll have an efficient paradise of a city.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately mayors of cities in the Netherlands do not have sufficient power to change rules like these, its the state which makes these rules. This is why we won&amp;#x27;t see such a thing in my country. There are progressive cities where it could fly, but overall the Netherlands has become extremely conservative.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gpm</author><text>&amp;gt; The majority of people in The Netherlands drive their car to get to work&lt;p&gt;I was curious about the statistics for this, and it looks like &lt;i&gt;barely&lt;/i&gt; not to me, according to this data: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbs.nl&amp;#x2F;en-gb&amp;#x2F;figures&amp;#x2F;detail&amp;#x2F;84710ENG&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbs.nl&amp;#x2F;en-gb&amp;#x2F;figures&amp;#x2F;detail&amp;#x2F;84710ENG&lt;/a&gt; (the CSV you can download is much more readable than the table in the webpage)&lt;p&gt;0.44 trips&amp;#x2F;person&amp;#x2F;day travelling to&amp;#x2F;from work total in 2023, 0.21 of those by car. 2023 is the first year where that is the case though.&lt;p&gt;Edit: If you go to the Dutch version of the data it includes another category for cars (commuting as a passenger in a car) that the English data omitted, with 0.01 of the trips. Moving it from &amp;quot;majority not-by-car in 2023&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;rounding errors mean the data doesn&amp;#x27;t say which is in the majority&amp;quot;: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbs.nl&amp;#x2F;nl-nl&amp;#x2F;cijfers&amp;#x2F;detail&amp;#x2F;84710NED&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cbs.nl&amp;#x2F;nl-nl&amp;#x2F;cijfers&amp;#x2F;detail&amp;#x2F;84710NED&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>A Swiss town banned billboards. Zurich, Bern may soon follow</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-07-26/zurich-bern-consider-billboard-bans-after-vernier-outlaws-visual-pollution</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>systemtest</author><text>The majority of people in The Netherlands drive their car to get to work. They don&amp;#x27;t want to have to walk 10 minutes to an edge parking or city hub. If we want to lower cars in neighbourhoods, or want people to get rid of cars, our public transit system needs to be come a lot better first. If public transit was a good option to get to work for people, more people would use it.&lt;p&gt;For me going to work is either a 20 minute car ride, with parking right in front of my house and right in front of work. Or it is a 10 minute walk, 45 minute bus ride where I likely have to stand and then another 5 minute walk. And I can&amp;#x27;t work past 20:00 because that&amp;#x27;s my last bus. Make it so public transit is less than 20 minutes, goes 24&amp;#x2F;7 and picks me up within 5 minutes walking of my home and I will use it.&lt;p&gt;And no I don&amp;#x27;t even live in a village. Population of 140.000 people and I work in a city of 300.000.</text></item><item><author>Lutger</author><text>Grenoble also banned all ads in 2014 and put in a lot of trees. It is truly an audacious move, yet completely rational. My dream is to also ban parking of cars in neighborhoods and most car traffic, cars can be parked along the edges in solar covered parking spaces. Add car sharing, better public transportation, urban agriculture, community gardens and parks: soon you&amp;#x27;ll have an efficient paradise of a city.&lt;p&gt;Unfortunately mayors of cities in the Netherlands do not have sufficient power to change rules like these, its the state which makes these rules. This is why we won&amp;#x27;t see such a thing in my country. There are progressive cities where it could fly, but overall the Netherlands has become extremely conservative.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tizzy</author><text>You guys are lucky in the NL that you have the _option_ to bike, drive, public transport. Maybe driving is still the fastest but the others are still treated as first class citizens.&lt;p&gt;In the US you couldn’t realistically bike anywhere nor does public transport go everywhere. Not to mention the 10 minute walk to the bus stop is probably much worse, especially outside of big cities.</text></comment>