Mikael have you looked into Pontevedra, Galicia? I think that's the closest and best role model town for Braga, my town. Our mayor has already been to Pontevedra for some events on mobility on this euro-region but seems very hard to implement the most simple things. Can you believe we have approved plans in the city hall for dozens of kilometers of new bike lanes since 2017 and nothing has been implemented until now?! The current work is a renewal of some existing bike lanes that will be extended for some hundreds of meters to reach the university campus and they've started in a "great" way by chopping some trees when the plan states to transplant them. You should entertain yourself on looking on some other intersections such as Nó de Infias. Great video and hope you do others to follow up!
Transplanting trees is horribly expensive and risky. We're talking over 100k euros per tree. Investing those resources in new plantings means you end up with more tree in a decade. The question here is why do the trees need to go? Why can't they plan around them? I doubt such change of plans costs more than 100k per tree. This situation is the result of a lack of legal framework protecting city trees. Plain and simple. And make no mistake, the trees were chopped down to make space for a bike lane just as much as they were chopped down to continue allowing cars. Bicycles and trees complement each other because they regulate the climate for the riders. Cars however are harmful to trees due to the ground compaction and air pollution they bring.
@@ElectricityTaster I know transplanting is expensive. But why does the plan state that the trees are being transplanted and then the workers simply chop them down?! And probably the Municipality will pay the same for the works as if the trees were transplanted. And even why did they chop the trees down on a Saturday when the City Hall's environment responsible just scheduled for the following Wednesday a meeting with environmentalists to discuss about the trees on the bike lanes plan?!
The rest of Portugal gets even worse.. they were trying to implement some changes to the downtown of Lisbon, similar to your ideas and people weren't being nice about because they still think that cars is the way to go
I think there is a growing support for those changes and that will be visible in the next local elections... if not then is better to close down the country an assume the failure in building a modern and progressive society
"and they are absolutely EVERYWHERE!" where? Braga? There are 2, which are the ones he shows on the video and the ones he could find to fit his narrative. lmao
@@mateuspereira8623 there are no more than 2 of the type of underpasses he shown in the video. Yes they are old, avoidable and useless, but there are no more than those 2.
As someone who lives in Braga I can give you a bit of context. The city is encircled by a highway, which makes it very practical to get from a point in the city to another point in about 10 minutes (in normal traffic), which is not that bad. From my house, which is in one side of the city, to the opposite side it takes me 7 minutes. The downside is when there's an accident, the entire thing just stops. Another thing is that that highway was created more than 20 years ago, since then the city naturally grew and we also had a huge influx of imigrants. First from eastern countries, like Ukraine (which left since then), and more recently from Brasil. That putted a lot of preassure in road infrastructures. If you think that now is bad in the 80s was a lot worse. Now a bit of defending the devil: 2:03 - That roundabout is actually not that complicated, if you are going from from left to right or vice versa you can simply go above and avoid it. If you're going from north to south, or vice versa, you can simply go under it. You just need to take the roundabout if you need to change directions. 2:19 - What's a better solution, to put a crosswalk in the middle of a highway? 3:54 - Without the underpassages that cross would be stopped 90% of the time. Remember the highway I mentioned? Guess what would happen to it. Do you consider safer crossing a road in an under passage or in a crosswalk, where a car can still hit a pedestrian? Also, the crosswalks you drew on the vertical axis are already there, they're those parallel lines you can see where you drew the crosswalks. 4:14 - Those oldschool 1950 curved corners are there for a reason, if you drive a bus or a truck you'll understand why. Doing the 90º turns you propose is not so easy. If you actually used that sidewalk like I did thousands of times you would understand that you wouldn't gain anything from it. 5:00 - There's a lot of businesses on that street, the "parking spots" are actually spots for loading and unloading stuff. Without that you would have trucks stopping the traffic when unloading, that way they can do it out of the way. As someone who walked on those sidewalks, the space is more than enough for pedestrians. 6:05 - That's a parking space for an hotel (the huge building north of it), that's private property as far as I know. 7:39 - By putting a "bus lane" there you're actually eliminating the only lane that goes up on that street (you can see the arrow pointing up). A few seconds after that you propose a lane in each direction in the middle of the road, which made me smile. The reason I say this is because the lane that you replaced earlier to put a "bus lane" doesn't get used that much and actually works mostly as a bus lane. Another issue is that some buses need to turn right in the intersection bellow, others need to go in front and others to the left, so they still need to position in the respective lane to turn, that kind of defeats the purpose of having like 500 meters of dedicated lane. Another thing is that in this street there's a lot more traffic going down, and I mean a lot more. The way you changed it you're giving traffic going up and down 50% of priority to each when in reality the ratio is closer to 90%/10%. And nevermind having one lane in each direction, is just not enough, you would be funneling the traffic going down into a single lane. That street is basically where the traffic of four streets with a lot of traffic meet. Another thing you can't see in the video, north of that place there's a crossing. By changing everything you would have nightmare crossing #2 to deal with. Currently it's relatively simple. To add insult to injury, in a radius of about 1,5KM there are four major schools in the city: André Soares, Dona Maria, Carlos Amarante and Alberto Sampaio. Reducing traffic lanes would be a nightmare in rush hours. I'm not saying that everything is perfect right now, because it isn't, but the way you proposed things raises a lot more problems than it solves, the major one being the funneling of three major roads in a single lane of traffic. Edit Timestamps fixed.
Thank you André, exactly as I've stated in my comment. Literally replacing 6 one-way lanes for a single one-way lane for each direction would jam that street. And simply cutting the streets would not make the cars disappear, they would have to go somewhere else so they would also jam many other places in the city just to flow the traffic
Estes vídeos são demasiado avançados para vocês os dois. Têm de começar por aprender que, numa cidade, há outras formas de mobilidade para além do automóvel. Só depois de aprenderem, perceberem e aceitarem esses novos conceitos de mobilidade, poderão evoluir para esta abordagem às intersecções. Por exemplo: é perigoso os peões atravessarem a via rápida? Tira-se a fonte de perigo! Não se tira os peões!
@@ricferr2 Não sei se és de Braga ou não. Caso não sejas fica aí a info. A maior parte da população que vive ou trabalha em Braga vive nos arredores e em terras como Amares(15KM) e Vila Verde (12KM). ir de bicicleta para o trabalho está completamente fora de questão, principalmente no inverno. Se vais sugerir transportes públicos, coisa que já usei nos tempos de universidade, boa sorte a conseguir lugar em horas de ponta. Usava muitas vezes o autocarro do Bom Jesus para chegar à Universidade do Minho e muitas vezes o autocarro nem parava na paragem devido a sobrelotação. Importas-te de explicar o que queres dizer com tirar a ponte de perigo? O video mostra uma zona com duas pontes, nenhuma me parece particularmente perigosa, em alternativa podes ir às duas rotundas quem tem nas extremidades dessa recta, lá tem passadeiras.
André Silva , o meu comentário inicial mantém-se. Não conseguirás entender este vídeo porque para as longas distâncias, para o mau tempo, para a falta de transportes públicos, a única solução que vês chama-se carro. Faz-me lembrar a enfermeira da minha escola que, quando lá aparecias com dor de barriga, ou com uma ferida no joelho, ela dava-te sempre uma aspirina. Já agora, não sei se precisas de óculos, mas talvez seja parte do teu problema, porque onde eu escrevi fonte, tu leste ponte.
@@ricferr2 Obrigado por me dizeres como penso e o que consigo perceber ou não. Eu sempre que vou ao centro vou a pé mas isso é porque vivo a 10 minutos do centro. Talvez devesses fazer uma pequena pesquisa a que distância ficam terras como Prado, Adaúfe, Rendufe e afins, talvez até ver uns trajectos no google street view em vez de assumires que o discurso da mobilidade que está tanto na moda se aplica a tudo. Braga não tem metro/barco/comboio como Lisboa ou Porto, é praticamente tudo à base de autocarro e camioneta. Bastava 10% da população dos arredores andar de transporte público e não havia lugar para toda a gente. Bicicleta e trotinete é impraticável para essas pessoas. O que falhas em compreender é que muitas das sugestões feitas no video são para pôr tudo como estava antigamente, o que era bem pior.
Three years later, I'm here to report that they remodeled that intersection, got rid of the underpasses, made the cyclelanes, but kept the parking lane and did not do BUS lanes although it's the busiest street of the city for buses.
yep. it was a bit underwhelming but still a lot nicer than before. if they go through with the BRT it will really improve mobility. looking at the rest of Portugal's same size cities, it's a really nice infrastructure we have in Braga
As someone who lives in this city. I totally agree with your perspective. Traffic here is a mess, there's way too much traffic for such a small city but that's partly down to the not so great public transportation. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that, the 20 space parking lot is likely not public, it probably belongs to the hotel sitting right in front of it, so I don't know if city hall can do much about that. Also, regarding the crosswalks, you drew them on all four-sides of that intersection but in fact, 2 of those sides do have them, you actually drew your lines inside the lines for those cross-walks. :)
Thank you Mikael for rethinking my hometown. There is one or other flaw, but the main arguments have valid premises. Braga was made for cars, and old-fashionable bus. It is time to drop this sketch. In your opinion, how could we invite the knowledge from urban planners to the community?
Great insights! I currently live in Braga. My work takes me to most major cities throughout Europe, and I have lived for extended periods in Vancouver, Canada, and Tokyo, Japan. Braga is by far one of the most frustrating cities I have ever spent a significant amount of time in. An intelligent, contemporary, non-corrupt and motivated urban planning team is desperately needed here. Thanks for drawing attention to some of the ways in which the city could be improved!
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The biggest symbol of the car centric thinking of Portugal is the 25 de Abril bridge, with no pedestrian and bicycle access, compared to its sister bridge in San Francisco.
Do you think that in 50/60/70 years time there's a risk that planners will be rueing the changes we're now making to our cities, in the same way we look back at the 50s and 60s? Or do you think that planning is more thoughtful and empirically driven than before?
I checked it out on Google Maps and it's quite insightful to look at the 3D view and Streetview. It tells you way more than just looking at the satellite map. Your videos might be a bit better if you showed that too. One question that was answered by doing this is the underground parking area top right is a Mercure Hotel, and the area you grassed over is actually their private land and guest drop-off area, so I don't think you could do what you proposed. The rest of the plan looks good though :)
I propose you take a look at Laval a suburb of Montreal. It’s very much car-centric although Bike lanes are starting to pop up here and there and the bus system is very much used. The amount of space given to empty parkings is craaazzy.
You need to see how Avenida da Boavista in Porto is (dis)organized. It's a 6km avenue that can't decide how the hell it should do urban mobility. There's disconected sections with bike lanes (in the middle of the avenue no less! so unsafe). Buses have lanes only in some parts and get stuck in traffic in another parts. No shade in many places, and a very harsh take on a highway underpass. The only thinkg constant? The holy car always has plenty of spots to park! The worst thing is, it used to be much more "boulevardy" and even had a tram, which was only removed in the late 90s (why!?)
Thank you so much for this! I'd advise you not to look at the rest of the country, but afaik Braga is the worst traffic monstrosity I've seen in the whole of Portugal. It has lots of space for beautiful streets but as of right now it's absolutely hideous. But actually, that hideousness started in the late 1980s to early 1990s.
Oh man, I know that street! It was SO confusing doing something as simple as crossing the street in Braga. The crosswalks are hidden and many times you are in danger of being hit by a driver that will only see you after he turns around the corner. I had not realized that those underpaths were a thing. They're stinky, dirty and shady. The streets have no crosswalks, especially the big ones. The city is nice for visiting, but living there is bad, and the houses are falling apart and expensive. The streets make no sense.
Hi Michael, I'm not bad judging your opinion or comments, but I think this review doesn't make justice to our city traffic plan. It shore has lots of issues but first of all, this main street in the city center doesn't have 7 lanes but 5. Our city is old and for shore needs help off someone, maybe you, but the review you made doesn't make justice to reality. I invite you to come and visit our city, eat really good food 😜 and maybe you can have a better look of it or even better, help our mayor to plan a new project to our city. Me and for shore a lot of other people here in Braga would love to see the tram become a reality and maybe make some connections with our 20kms neighbors Guimarães. Anyway, it's good to see such a small and old city like mine being reviewed. Thanks.
"this main street in the city center" mas qual centro? O centro da cidade é a zona que vai do arco da porta nova até ao teatro circo (desenha uma circunferência num mapa, se quiseres, com ponto médio entre o teatro circo e o arco, de forma a que um dos limites da circunferência seja o teatro). É zona considerada "central", mas não é centro da cidade. Se isso for centro da cidade, qualquer um é do centro da cidade. roflol
@Gomes mano, é só uma expressão! 😎 No entanto, Braga é efetivamente uma cidade pequena, depende muito é do ponto de vista e com aquilo que estiveres a comparar...
@@RuiPalmeira o sr que fez o artigo está a falar de artérias circulares para automóveis da nossa cidade, por isso, sim, a avenida central é efetivamente uma artéria do centro da cidade no que toca ao tráfego e circulação automóvel. Aquilo que apenas quis realçar foi que a visão dele era demasiado redutora, mas hajam ideias e de preferência melhores, porque idiotas há muitos, mas poucos são os que realmente fazem alguma coisa!
There are no trams in Braga. And good luck with the cycle lanes: Most people live in the suburbs which is far enough to invalidate using a bycicle for daily comute. It's easy to look at a satellite photo and point out stuff without having any context. Most of the stuff he proposes were already done in the past, they changed it because it wasn't working.
Please show me where you got that data from. Also, what percentage of those people can use a bycicle for daily comute. Just because you live in a flat space doesn't mean you work in cycling distance. I'm sure you're not suggesting flooding the city with 100000 bikes.
@@andresilvasophisma 100000 bicicletas ocupam muito menos espaço que 100000 carros, pelo menos. E até se podiam fazer parques verticais, portanto não seria por aí.
@@andresilvasophisma Are you actually this stupid or are you trying extra hard for us? Even if he was suggesting that somehow, magically these 100k people go to work by bike, how the fuck do you thing they go to work now? Car, exactly, which takes up MASSIVELY more space. He isn't suggesting that though, there are still some carlanes, busses and trams. Plenty of options for everyone, also the disabled.
That's not a good solution to that area. You should look better the city structure and the streets you are changing. Avenida da Liberdade is where all the trafic from the city center flow, allowing almost all the historic center to be pedestrian. And the other road is the only transversal road, cutting all the city area from east to West. Connecting with that inner highway circle road from the first roundbout.
Sometime when you get bored, look at North Howard Street in Baltimore, Maryland. It seems to have everything going for it, but it is lined with derelict buildings. A light rail line runs along it. The main train station for Baltimore is a few blocks off the northern end of the commercial segment of the street and is served by a branch of the light rail line. At the southern end of the commercial segment are the Baltimore stadiums. Lexington Market is along the street, and Baltimore's Inner Harbor is a few blocks away. Other parts of the city have become very trendy, Fells Point for example, but North Howard Street remains lined with boarded-up buildings. www.google.com/maps/@39.2933835,-76.6196607,3a,75y,2.26h,98t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRC1R_zr26pXeNJzAUuIvdQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
There is a significant flaw in this video: It is assumed the road is stupidly large for no reason. I personally don't know Braga, or even what that road serves and what it connects, but I seriously doubt the road would be a monstrousity needlessly. The final solution turns a one-way massive road with 6 lanes (seems to me the 7th is horizontal parking) reduced into a two-way road reduced to 1 lane for each direction for individual cars and trucks, another for bus and another for bikes. Obviously, this leads to massive traffic jam. This solution also means the traffic would also flow through other areas of the city. Effectively, it creates more traffic there and in many other places that had no such problems. And solely because of the flaw: it is assumed that people in Portugal travel, or want to travel, in a way similar to Copenhagen habitants. And that is simply not true. In Copenhagen, "only 25% of its population have a car. Interviewing the population, around 56% said they prefer to use a bike to reach their daily activities, 20% stated they prefer public transportation and only 14% use a car" (conexaoplaneta.com.br/blog/numero-de-bicicletas-ultrapassa-o-de-carros-em-copenhague/#fechar). These numbers are due to a number of factores, including cultural and economic factors. In Portugal, the numbers are far from those of Denmark. 15~20 years ago, only around 7% of the population used public transportation. In 2018, in Lisbon and Oporto, and in due part to the rising cost of living in those cities (it more than doubled in a decade while salaries didn't) forcing people to find ways to save money, we have "Individual transport - that is car and motorcycles - is still prefered in Porto (69%) as in Lisbon (59,8%). Public transportation as primary means of travel represents only 11,1% in Porto and 15,8% in Lisbon" (shifter.sapo.pt/2018/07/inquerito-mobilidade-em-portugal-estatisticas-ine/) These numbers cannot be changed simply by adding bike and bus lanes. In Portugal, because we lived in a dictatorship until 1975 that impoverished the country economically, socially and also in terms of education, we still see cars as something of a 'status'. After all, having one was a sign of being rich or at least well-off, so now everyone must have one. So simply adding bike lanes and expecting that to lead to a significant increase in bike traffic quickly is a mistake. Other measures would have to be taken, or at least expose the city to many many tourists (expanding the knowledge of the city's inhabbitants about other ways to live and travel around), otherwise it could take decades to achieve that effect. Because of this flaw, the video proposes removal of parking spaces, without knowing who or what they are serving. What if the buildings adjacent to those parking spaces that were turned into sidewalks and trees are residential? You just screwed its residents. Even if they are commercial or service buildings, and once more because of the 'car culture', the buildings would still need those parking spaces. Another error, and this one I simply didn't understand why it was made, was to look at a possible subterranean park and assume it can hold many vehicles including the 20 above. It is an assumption that should never be made. Other than that, the video does raise several good points. Planting more trees for a more cooling effect is essential - as the thermal island effect we experience in cities is a both a health problem as well as an infrastructure problem. Larger sidewalks are important to help pedestrian traffic, so removing curved corners and underground pedestrian crossings is good. Bike and bus lanes are also good, of course, but they can't be applied out of the blue just to "bring a city to modern urban-traffic ideas", without other measures that promote public transportation and bikes while attempting to erode the 'car as a status' culture. So no, simply applying all these changes would not fix that intersection, it would in fact turn in and other parts of the city into a traffic nightmare.
In fact, the roads are large for stupid reasons. Namely, because infrastructure was done exclusively with automobile users in mind. I know that particular street of Braga and I can assure you it is needlessly large. I mean, it would be so almost anywhere, but I actually know the place. The traffic jams you mention also wouldn't exist, as academia has pointed out many times. As for parking, it's only a motivator for using the car, but even if you say that it's really needed, then you're not counting for the fact that massive underground parking lots have been built throughout the city. So capacity is not even a problem. As for automobile usage, it's indeed a social 'status' that has been sold by the automobile industry and bought up by governments for decades. Fortunately for Portugal, this is starting to change. Speaking for myself, I don't really want to live in my country (except for Lisbon) because of this car dependence. I don't want to live my life with a car because I don't like it. But what other choices do I have?
@@PedroCstify as I said, I don't know the city. If you say they are needlessly large, that they are not full of flowing traffic, I believe you. Still, we are talking a reduction of 6 one-way lanes to 1 way lane for each direction, it would have to cause traffic jam in high-traffic hours at least. And maybe that would be good to convince people to drop their cars, yes, but it could cause frustration and steps backwards. One question: "infrastructure was done exclusively with automobile users in mind". When was it done? Because 40 years ago, those were the only ones that concern infrastructure as, once more, it was expected that everyone would have and drive a car. The massive underground parking lots are a good thing, no doubt, but they can only truly serve residential buildings no more than a 100 to 200 hundred meters away (people simply don't want to park their cars too far from their homes, in fact we see so many almost wanting to take their cars to bed with them, parking in sidewalks and other not appropriate spaces just so they are closer to home or work). Commercial and service buildings do need some parking space because of the 'car status' culture and because many people still think "if I go shopping without my car, how am I to bring home all those bags? By myself all the way home? On a bus? And get robbed??". But like you said, it is fortunately changing, and that 'car culture' is starting to disappear but very slowly. Unfortunately, many cities still lack decent public transport, decent sidewalks, etc, so people are still forced to rely on the car. And it is not just a problem with infrastructure or public transportation offer, it is also a problem with working culture as well, where many people are coerced into working long hours - past the time they should leave work - or where people get in late, or where people have to quickly get to some other place in the city to do their jobs (example, showing houses to sell), etc, as those things also make people need a faster and more adapted means of transport (which the car is). Still, the video didn't present itself as 'ways it can gradually improve' but rather as 'what should be done at once to make this acceptable and functional' and this general idea is emphasised by the speech used ("should appologize, beg forgiveness" and so on). Such drastic change would in fact be bad because making drastic changes that might cause traffic jams actually causes people to become frustrated and frustration walks 'backwards' in terms of progress. People would demand the end of bus and bike lanes and opportunistic politicians would use that to gain support. By the time the rest of the country started to abbadon cars and choose public transport and bikes, the city would be fixed on having wide roads for cars simply because the people would remember the frustration of when those were applied without concern to existing traffic. PS: when you say 'roads are large for stupid reasons', you mean those in Braga? Because in Coimbra I can tell you that nearly 30% of its roads are actually too small/narrow, causing traffic jams because of parked cars and lack of sidewalks for passing pedestrians :/
@João Santos, people in Portugal prefer to ride by car because there is few options on mobility! We must regard with caution to those numbers. In my opinion, car and automobiles where the choice because the State could not raise, in the due time, a proper public transportation network. Plus, geographically, we cannot compare to nordic countries, where the costs of building those networks are much less expensive. Braga has a lot of geological accidents. Till the 20th century, river streams were our highways, because it comprise the less expensive possibility (for enterprises, for sure). The costs of raw material, like coal, to supply the energy chain, it is also a problem. Our coal was not efficient, very different from the english one, and importing from England tonnes of coal is another dimension that put us behind the great step through efficient mobility. Cars are expensive. You pay for them, the gas is not cheap, insurances, etc. No one could say that choosing cars would be the best option in the market. Unless it is the safest. Or, if it is the only one.
@@Raphazoni sorry but that is not the case. Lisbon and Oporto and even Coimbra have the means to transport a lot more people than they do in public transports. You can check the numbers in 2018 (shifter.sapo.pt/2018/07/inquerito-mobilidade-em-portugal-estatisticas-ine/), people usually want to go by car. And I see this and have seen this for over a decade, as I moved solely in public transports. 80% of the buses in Coimbra are not nearly 60% full, for example. A lot of traffic in Lisbon can still be diverted to the metro, for example, but people just don't want to. There is, indeed, a 'car is status' culture, to the point that is is actually mentioned in Traffic Management classes in Civil Engineering universities (at least, it was mentioned in mine) and I could confirm this with many collegues, many other teachers, many friends even. "I'll just go by car, it is faster" is a sentence I've heard so many times, even in a city (Coimbra) where the public bus covers more than 70% of its urbanized area (except suburbs). PS: Just to show you how truth this is, I've lived in an apartment building with 30 other people in there. My mother still lives there. All of us, myself included, use the car to go to the nearest supermarket (Lidl) for groceries and other products. All well and good except that supermarket is 6 minutes away by foot. And we have ample sidewalks in the four roads leading there and only one of them is inclined. We could walk there, but 'going by car is easier and faster'.
I'm from Braga. The road in question (Av Liberdade) was done decades ago. Legacy from the 50s/60s/early 70s It connects directly to the city center and a tunnel that crosses it to connect to the "highway" style (via rápida) in the north of the city. This area didn't used to be city center, but with growth it is now. Having these huge avenues leading into the city center encourages people to drive there and with more people living here it's getting congested specially at rush hour when kids are being dropped-off at schools.
This was really interesting! Incredibly smug and arrogant though. lol But that's OK you seem to be even better informed and passionate about quality of life. Maybe more than just a bit reductive and dismissive of the actual parameters that are in play. I spent one day walking the town as a tourist and the historic areas were quiet and relatively traffic free. But I don't have to figure out where to live and how to get to and from work every day either. Almost all interventional activities these days begin with a survey of what the people who have a stake want. To do otherwise is its own version of antiquated 1950's Soviet top down imposition of norms.
There is no money for that in Portugal. The corrupt politicians are making the money disappear. One of the examples is spending millions on a broke national airline.
Although many points are valid and a lot could be done to improve the main arteries of Braga, one has to understand the reality of this region in order to comprehend why those mistakes happened. Cavado and Ave valley, region where Braga is located, is extremely industrial today but was completely agricultural merely 50 years ago. Explosion in economical, social, industrial growth on such humanly and naturally rich region, together with recent democracy led by a incompetent, immature and corrupt political class created a scenario of chaos impossible to control as things were happening too fast. One MAJOR problem that a look at the city doesn't tell you is URBAN DISPERSION. Unlike San Sebastian, who is a city much more concerted and dense, Braga has much of it's frequent visitors living OUTSIDE of the city. 200k people is nothing. Braga get's much more than that daily from villages, very small towns, spread out urbanizations and continuous chaotic housing areas for several tens of KM. This happened because the entire valley was used for farming. This was an intensely humanized territory from the Ocean to the Mountains unlike anything else in Europe. As the ownership of those lands went from Nobility, Church and Bourgeois, down to the people (when economical development allowed them to buy those lands off the medieval trilogy of ownership) that kept splitting it trough heritages, individual houses building happened EVERYWHERE. This renders public transportation nearly USELESS as it is impossible for them to be present in every single lost road up a hill or down a slope where people have built their homes because that was THEIR land. Due to this fact, people have to use their car to go in town even if they live barely 5km from Braga. So, there is no possible effective public transportation and bike lanes are fun in town but nearly unpracticable in a hilly / mountainous region that gets both 1500cc of rain on average per year and summer months that can be scorching hot for weeks at the time easily over 35'c. All this forced people to use their cars to go in town. That's why you practically have an highway crossing the TOWN CENTER and why parking is a major issue. The 2 largest cities of this region, Braga and Guimarães suffer from the exact same problem and traffic around them is madness when considering how "small" the cities are. The size of the cities are lying. Population around it, living anywhere from hill tops, to coves, in the middle of woods, on urban areas created RECENTLY far from any accessibility or in the middle of agricultural zones, make up for additional hundreds of thousands. And those people HAVE to use their cars to leave those areas. Obviously, once you are in your car, you will drive to your destination. You won't ditch your car and wait for expensive buses to get you into town and back when you could do it yourself. Other European cities are compact. You can see this on TV when, for instance, watching the Tour the France, Spain or Italy as Helicopters film from above. When the Volta a Portugal is on, i am always disgusted at how Northwest Portugal was developed.
In the end, this is what Mikael proposed: In a city that has a troubled topography (with altitudes ranging from 150 ft, give or take, to over 1400 ft - en-gb.topographic-map.com/maps/i3jq/Braga/ - which is clearly a contrast from Copenhagen, Mikael's city, as well as cities in Netherlands - en-gb.topographic-map.com/maps/lpne/Copenhagen/), lets give greater emphasis to biking and public transportation hoping that, somehow and magically, people would accept: 1) Biking over a dozen miles in hills and valleys, which makes it an extremely tiring effort, while having to face 1/5 of the year with high temperatures and another 1/5 with rain and/or snow. 2) They would want to do this despite the fact that this means taking 5x more to go from home to work and vice-versa. Meaning they would have less free time to spend with friends, familiy or simply hobbies, which is harmful. Example: my high school was 7 km away from where I lived and by car it took 12 minutes to get there while by bus it took 40 to get there. Another example: my university was 5 km from where I lived. For 5 years I lost every day a total of 2 hours moving to and from it by bus. In the following 2 years I started driving and the total time lost was only 15 minutes every day (7 going and another 7 coming back). And this doing exactly the same trajectory as the buses did. 3) If they wanted to go shopping, they would have to do so almost every day since you cannot bring many groceries in a bike, forcing people to spend even less free time. Unless, of course, you start to bring heavier bags, but then you would make your trip far more tiresome - especially, combined with topography and climate. 4) If they have work that requires them to travel through the city - salesmen, brand representatives, real estate dealers, goods transportation, etc - they would have to use bikes or public transportation and either do far less stops, meaning get far less costumers and screwing their jobs and income, or would have to work until much later to compensate for the time lost travelling from one place to another. Oh yeah, we can all see this working so well. The problem is that Mikael ignores various obvious facts that make all the difference. - First of all, topography. Denmark and the Netherlands don't have a significant altitude variation, making cycling much easier. - 2nd, the weather variations in Denmark rarely lead to hazardous heat conditions. In Portugal that is common. - 3rd, Portuguese aren't as used to cold temperatures and various rainy days. In Denmark and Netherlands they are. - 4th, the three previous points greatly effect the effort of cycling, making it much harder. - 5th, Denmark’s full-time employees work an average of 37.2 hours per week. About 2.3% of employees work over 50 hours per week. The average workweek for full-time employees in Portugal is 40.7 hours. The percentage of employees who worked over 50 hours per is a little high at 8.3%. (worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-work-week-by-country) Also, in Denmark they greatly respect the working hours. In Portugal it is common for people to work past the exit hours and not get paid for it. This means that if you greatly increase commute time, you greatly decrease life quality in Portugal. - 6th, the biking culture in Denmark started more than 100 years ago! In 1880! And in the 1950 they were transitioning to car-centric transportation. That is until an oil crisis hit and the people started to demand car-free urban centers because of cultural environment and health concerns, which are still not a wide-spread culture in Portugal. In fact, we have the opposite, with the car still being a sign of wealth and status - thanks to the dictatorship we suffered until the 70's. The wealth status is also the reason that leads many people to seek shopping malls rather than local neighborhood shops, buying a lot and eating a lot - a lifestyle that makes it even more difficult to combine with cycling. - 7th and finally, if you look at the numbers for Copenhagen, where more than half prefer the bikes, you also see that around 25% still own a car. However, his proposal was to reduce the available roads to less than 20%, even in major arteries. Result: traffic jams. So all this makes it impossible to make a transition quickly, in an instant, like Mikael thinks it should be done. And it is because urban planners like him ignore all these different factors and think that 'one size fits all', simply beliving "if you create it, they will come", that you have so many billions of € lost througout europe in urban projects that turned out as massive failures. An urban planner that doesn't look at topography, climate, working hours, commute time and culture is simply blind. Mikael turns out to be arrogant and blind who thinks that "because it worked in Denmark, it works everywhere". Would love to see him peddling his 'bike urbanism ideas' in cities built in the desert. However, credit where it is due: - Planting trees would be incredibly important, indeed. But shadow doesn't save you from dehidration when you exercise during extreme heat days. The very air is heated. You will still sweat a lot more. Your heart would have to work much harder, etc. So no, if the temperature is 37 ºC, simply don't got out and bike for prolonged periods of time, or you would be risking your health. - Investing in buses is important, with bus lanes, but only if the population is accepting it. There is a limit to the % of people that will want to use the bus and it is quite limited. Numbers already shown indicate how the number in Portugal goes to around 15%, perhaps a bit higher if the offer is increased during rush hours, but not much more. Why? Many reasons, like culture, commute time, climate, etc. And urban planning doesn't solve half of these reasons, you need to change a lot more things for Mikael's ideas to work in our country. - Underpasses are indeed a problem and should be replaced with normal crosswalks or overpasses. - Tram is simply a stupid idea given topography and worse of all the very cost of it. Again, blindness from an arrogant urban planner that can't see past his box.
Source? And even if that were true (doubtful), what of those living near the river Cávado? And all the suburban neighborhoods like Frosso, Merelim, Palmeira, Real, Espinho, and so on? Oh I know, f*** 'em, right?
An essay in a RUclips comment...if you can't explain what your point/argument is concisely it's not that good. Look at San Francisco for your hills combined with trams and cycling. He also mentioned busses. E-bikes are a thing. A flat city doesn't mean no effort, wind is a thing. especially in flat places.
Because of three reasons: -Righteous cyclists (usually captain spandex) who want to make a point that they are legally allowed to use the road (and who want to get the adrenaline rush of arguing with another person with road rage) -Pedestrians who continually invade the cycle lane. -Badly designed cycle lanes (too narrow, slippery surface, bad curbs, huge detours, dangerous intersections with traffic, or, the worst of all: the cycle lane is not part of a network.
@@andresilvasophisma once more he speaks without knowing anything. Most of the times pedestrians don't invade cycle lanes and the majority is well designed. But because he can only see his city, he thinks all cities are the same. Such blindness
The "big surface" parking space servers the Hotel that is the big building on the top right of the image. I believe it is private property, not municipal space. In the front of the hotel there is no need for 20 parking spaces, but some must exist because the underground isn't height enough and might be useful to have some parking outside for higher vehicles. Everything else is just great!
Wait until he knows this urban plan is less than 40 years old. The “new” car city is not that ancient, as most of Braga was just agriculture land until 25 years ago. It’s an awful city with its Roman culture killed off and buried underneath highways and tall buildings that are sinking in. Mesquita Machado should be in jail.
Are you serious man ? Did you ever live in a latin european city on a européan way. There will never ride a bike ! especially in a country like portugal, where roads up and down every where. come on did you see a lot of starbuck etc.. Latin people dont looking for uber cities. Portuges, Spanish, are othantic people. Keep your pen. Go to see the new municipal market in Braga, it is representing well the city, what you see and what you think about a portuguese market ??
He did not propose to remove all the city's parking spaces. If you're having a tantrum about the few parking spaces he proposed to reallocate for green space then you need to reconsider your life priorities. Also, get ready for parking meters everywhere. Thought you could occupy public space and not pay rent? A bar pays for their tables and chairs on the sidewalks and you will pay for the parking space for your car. Through the nose.
"ALL parking" You didn't watch the whole video, did you? Still an underground garage there. Parking your private car on the side of the street in everyones way isn't some god given right. That public space should have never been taken away from the people and given to carists.
He's a dumbass.....A bike guy, don't care about traffic jams, danger for pedestrians on crosswalks, etc. I much rather my kids take the underpass on their way to school, instead of standing on a street corner waiting for traffic to slowdown so he/she can attempt to cross the street without beeing hurt or killed....
Underpass have two major problems: one, if they are done by stairs they greatly discriminate between those who can walk properly and those who can't (this is the issue with several overpasses I've seen in Portugal as many simply have stairs rather than ramps). The second is they increase the risk of criminal activities, such as robberies, against pedestrians. Crosswalks represent some risk from speeding cars, but paired with traffic lights those risks become mininal. Obviously, without traffic lights, they are a much greater risk and disrupt the pedestrian flow even more. PS: There is another issue with underpasses: if the rain-water drainage system fails, or becomes clogged from debris and garbage, they become flooded easily, causing pedestrian traffic to halt. While rare, since it rains every winter, as the years pass the chance of this happening increases if the cleaning service isn't kept at high-standards (unfortunately, in Portugal, that is not always the case, as I've seen many water drains in the streets covered with garbage and debris from trees and the city hall doesn't bother with cleaning them).
I like to go for walks with my baby in a stroller/pram, but have to plan my routes so that I avoid underpasses (due to stairs). It annoys me that my demographic hasn't been considered in the city planning. I can only imagine what someone who uses a wheelchair (or who is simply less mobile) feels! Why are we paying taxes and voting if the city is going to be developed as if we don't exist?
The thing is without underpasses you get a lot traffic jams like in the early 90's. I still remember how it was. A lot of what he proposes is going back to that era. Most of what he criticizes is what allowed the historical center to be almost car free (exception to the occasional truck delivering stuff to businesses). Having people with low mobility in traffic can be a problem too as it can create accidents. I agree with the part that the underpassages can be used as bathrooms. I used those underpassages a lot of times (to cross the street not as a bathroom) and it's not nice. Another thing is extending the round corners to make them straight. That was how they originaly were but it was really tough to busses, they kept hitting them, and so they rounded them up. I was like 13 years old when they were made and I instantly noticed the problem they would create, I can't understand how a grown man with multiple PHDs fails to understand this. This guy's opinion is biased, and honestly he has a few idiotic arguments in some matters. But don't take my word for it, just watch his TEDx talk about bike helmets being dangerous.
You've just invented gunpowder. I imagine you living in the perfect city though. US ones are the perfect exemple of crappy places to live. You judje a city by one intersection?! Another "wise guy" on RUclips!
Lived in Braga a few years. It's true. An embarrassing city made out to concentrate people in the historical center and some shit shopping centres they have. The rest is dark, dangerous, smelly and boxes of houses everywhere with a small near to bankruptcy cafe in each corner. The disconnection between the centre and 2 other interesting places as Bom Jesus and Sameiro is another shame. Not a good city to live. half day visit in a car and bye, off to Ponte de Lima or Gerês.
What are you talking about? The percentage of residents in the historical center is virtually null compared to the periphery where are most habitation buildings. Shopping centers are around the city, not in the center. There are like 3 or four smaller ones that honestly are mostly abandoned because everyone goes to the other ones. You compare to Ponte de Lima and Gerês that are not even cities.
" The disconnection between the centre and 2 other interesting places as Bom Jesus and Sameiro is another shame." no shit sherlock. they're 8.3kms and 11kms apart from the city center, no wonder they are disconnected.
@@inkoma go hug a tree. Unless employers change their mentality first, you, absolutely, cannot ask people to not use a car to go to work. I'd do the daily 18/20k commute by bicycle, but my employer has no infrastructure for me to be able to comfortably do that. And public transportation doesn't suit my schedule.
I watched all the 11:44 minutes of your video, and I really have to say that it is as much of a disaster as the layout of my city, Braga. But i say this with full knowledge of both, whereas you make a completely wrong analysis of my city without ever being here... ridiculous. If you call yourself an urbanist, you should know that a picture of google maps will never give you an accurate picture of what you are trying to analyse. I've travelled everywhere in Europe, been to Russia, all the Sacndinavian countries, North America, a couple of countries in North Africa, and loved every city I've been. And they all have flaws... but I would never talk about any of the places I've BEEN, in the manner you talk about the cities you "analyse". You are only trying to cash in on the internet's criticism and trashing trend, or fad. Poor, very poor...
A few decades ago, GPL (natural gas) vehicles could not park underground. However, today that is no longer the case and they can park just like any other car.
Man, come to Braga! I invite you to stay at my home!! I Bet that you would remove this video after living there for 2/3 days!!! I don't understand how you can judge a City and make suck bold statements without knowing the reality of our country and my city Braga! Do you want us to have American BBQ and watch the Super Bowl just like you Americans?? Oh wait... we already do that stuff!! Loool tell you the truth, like the video, didn't like your easy judgment of my home!! Stay well and visit Braga please!
This video is biased and misinformed. It denotes poor research and is based on premises that are not applicable to the local society. The partiality is such that this particular urbanistic solution does not fit into the road environment. For those who claim to be an expert in urbanism and particularize an intersection in the city's global urbanistic solution, it demonstrates a lack of knowledge and adaptation to reality.
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I love the "last-century infrastructure" phrase!
Thanks for this. Turns out we pedestrians/cyclists in Braga are not crazy.... :D
Concordo XD
You are not crazy, just selfish.
Imagine looking at this (3:56) and thinking pedestrians and cyclists are selfish...
Mikael have you looked into Pontevedra, Galicia? I think that's the closest and best role model town for Braga, my town. Our mayor has already been to Pontevedra for some events on mobility on this euro-region but seems very hard to implement the most simple things. Can you believe we have approved plans in the city hall for dozens of kilometers of new bike lanes since 2017 and nothing has been implemented until now?! The current work is a renewal of some existing bike lanes that will be extended for some hundreds of meters to reach the university campus and they've started in a "great" way by chopping some trees when the plan states to transplant them. You should entertain yourself on looking on some other intersections such as Nó de Infias. Great video and hope you do others to follow up!
Transplanting trees is horribly expensive and risky. We're talking over 100k euros per tree. Investing those resources in new plantings means you end up with more tree in a decade.
The question here is why do the trees need to go? Why can't they plan around them? I doubt such change of plans costs more than 100k per tree. This situation is the result of a lack of legal framework protecting city trees. Plain and simple.
And make no mistake, the trees were chopped down to make space for a bike lane just as much as they were chopped down to continue allowing cars. Bicycles and trees complement each other because they regulate the climate for the riders. Cars however are harmful to trees due to the ground compaction and air pollution they bring.
@@ElectricityTaster I know transplanting is expensive. But why does the plan state that the trees are being transplanted and then the workers simply chop them down?! And probably the Municipality will pay the same for the works as if the trees were transplanted.
And even why did they chop the trees down on a Saturday when the City Hall's environment responsible just scheduled for the following Wednesday a meeting with environmentalists to discuss about the trees on the bike lanes plan?!
I would love to hear his thoughts on Pontevedra!
The rest of Portugal gets even worse.. they were trying to implement some changes to the downtown of Lisbon, similar to your ideas and people weren't being nice about because they still think that cars is the way to go
I think there is a growing support for those changes and that will be visible in the next local elections... if not then is better to close down the country an assume the failure in building a modern and progressive society
Yeah, I feel you. In Italy is the same. Only thanks to Covid-19 something changed
Very good video. I hope the Mayor see's it too and takes notes!
Dreaming, right? The guy only sees money.
I love these videos. What he does on his iPad in 5 minutes is what my brain does constantly wherever I am. Keep it up!
Greetings from Portugal! I loved it! Didn't know about the origin of underpasses - and they are absolutely EVERYWHERE!
"and they are absolutely EVERYWHERE!" where? Braga? There are 2, which are the ones he shows on the video and the ones he could find to fit his narrative. lmao
@@RuiPalmeira there are more than 2
@@mateuspereira8623 there are no more than 2 of the type of underpasses he shown in the video. Yes they are old, avoidable and useless, but there are no more than those 2.
As someone who lives in Braga I can give you a bit of context.
The city is encircled by a highway, which makes it very practical to get from a point in the city to another point in about 10 minutes (in normal traffic), which is not that bad.
From my house, which is in one side of the city, to the opposite side it takes me 7 minutes.
The downside is when there's an accident, the entire thing just stops.
Another thing is that that highway was created more than 20 years ago, since then the city naturally grew and we also had a huge influx of imigrants. First from eastern countries, like Ukraine (which left since then), and more recently from Brasil.
That putted a lot of preassure in road infrastructures.
If you think that now is bad in the 80s was a lot worse.
Now a bit of defending the devil:
2:03 - That roundabout is actually not that complicated, if you are going from from left to right or vice versa you can simply go above and avoid it. If you're going from north to south, or vice versa, you can simply go under it. You just need to take the roundabout if you need to change directions.
2:19 - What's a better solution, to put a crosswalk in the middle of a highway?
3:54 - Without the underpassages that cross would be stopped 90% of the time. Remember the highway I mentioned? Guess what would happen to it. Do you consider safer crossing a road in an under passage or in a crosswalk, where a car can still hit a pedestrian? Also, the crosswalks you drew on the vertical axis are already there, they're those parallel lines you can see where you drew the crosswalks.
4:14 - Those oldschool 1950 curved corners are there for a reason, if you drive a bus or a truck you'll understand why. Doing the 90º turns you propose is not so easy. If you actually used that sidewalk like I did thousands of times you would understand that you wouldn't gain anything from it.
5:00 - There's a lot of businesses on that street, the "parking spots" are actually spots for loading and unloading stuff. Without that you would have trucks stopping the traffic when unloading, that way they can do it out of the way. As someone who walked on those sidewalks, the space is more than enough for pedestrians.
6:05 - That's a parking space for an hotel (the huge building north of it), that's private property as far as I know.
7:39 - By putting a "bus lane" there you're actually eliminating the only lane that goes up on that street (you can see the arrow pointing up). A few seconds after that you propose a lane in each direction in the middle of the road, which made me smile. The reason I say this is because the lane that you replaced earlier to put a "bus lane" doesn't get used that much and actually works mostly as a bus lane. Another issue is that some buses need to turn right in the intersection bellow, others need to go in front and others to the left, so they still need to position in the respective lane to turn, that kind of defeats the purpose of having like 500 meters of dedicated lane. Another thing is that in this street there's a lot more traffic going down, and I mean a lot more. The way you changed it you're giving traffic going up and down 50% of priority to each when in reality the ratio is closer to 90%/10%. And nevermind having one lane in each direction, is just not enough, you would be funneling the traffic going down into a single lane. That street is basically where the traffic of four streets with a lot of traffic meet. Another thing you can't see in the video, north of that place there's a crossing. By changing everything you would have nightmare crossing #2 to deal with. Currently it's relatively simple.
To add insult to injury, in a radius of about 1,5KM there are four major schools in the city: André Soares, Dona Maria, Carlos Amarante and Alberto Sampaio.
Reducing traffic lanes would be a nightmare in rush hours.
I'm not saying that everything is perfect right now, because it isn't, but the way you proposed things raises a lot more problems than it solves, the major one being the funneling of three major roads in a single lane of traffic.
Edit
Timestamps fixed.
Thank you André, exactly as I've stated in my comment. Literally replacing 6 one-way lanes for a single one-way lane for each direction would jam that street. And simply cutting the streets would not make the cars disappear, they would have to go somewhere else so they would also jam many other places in the city just to flow the traffic
Estes vídeos são demasiado avançados para vocês os dois. Têm de começar por aprender que, numa cidade, há outras formas de mobilidade para além do automóvel. Só depois de aprenderem, perceberem e aceitarem esses novos conceitos de mobilidade, poderão evoluir para esta abordagem às intersecções.
Por exemplo: é perigoso os peões atravessarem a via rápida? Tira-se a fonte de perigo! Não se tira os peões!
@@ricferr2 Não sei se és de Braga ou não. Caso não sejas fica aí a info.
A maior parte da população que vive ou trabalha em Braga vive nos arredores e em terras como Amares(15KM) e Vila Verde (12KM).
ir de bicicleta para o trabalho está completamente fora de questão, principalmente no inverno.
Se vais sugerir transportes públicos, coisa que já usei nos tempos de universidade, boa sorte a conseguir lugar em horas de ponta.
Usava muitas vezes o autocarro do Bom Jesus para chegar à Universidade do Minho e muitas vezes o autocarro nem parava na paragem devido a sobrelotação.
Importas-te de explicar o que queres dizer com tirar a ponte de perigo?
O video mostra uma zona com duas pontes, nenhuma me parece particularmente perigosa, em alternativa podes ir às duas rotundas quem tem nas extremidades dessa recta, lá tem passadeiras.
André Silva , o meu comentário inicial mantém-se. Não conseguirás entender este vídeo porque para as longas distâncias, para o mau tempo, para a falta de transportes públicos, a única solução que vês chama-se carro. Faz-me lembrar a enfermeira da minha escola que, quando lá aparecias com dor de barriga, ou com uma ferida no joelho, ela dava-te sempre uma aspirina.
Já agora, não sei se precisas de óculos, mas talvez seja parte do teu problema, porque onde eu escrevi fonte, tu leste ponte.
@@ricferr2 Obrigado por me dizeres como penso e o que consigo perceber ou não.
Eu sempre que vou ao centro vou a pé mas isso é porque vivo a 10 minutos do centro.
Talvez devesses fazer uma pequena pesquisa a que distância ficam terras como Prado, Adaúfe, Rendufe e afins, talvez até ver uns trajectos no google street view em vez de assumires que o discurso da mobilidade que está tanto na moda se aplica a tudo.
Braga não tem metro/barco/comboio como Lisboa ou Porto, é praticamente tudo à base de autocarro e camioneta. Bastava 10% da população dos arredores andar de transporte público e não havia lugar para toda a gente.
Bicicleta e trotinete é impraticável para essas pessoas.
O que falhas em compreender é que muitas das sugestões feitas no video são para pôr tudo como estava antigamente, o que era bem pior.
Three years later, I'm here to report that they remodeled that intersection, got rid of the underpasses, made the cyclelanes, but kept the parking lane and did not do BUS lanes although it's the busiest street of the city for buses.
yep. it was a bit underwhelming but still a lot nicer than before. if they go through with the BRT it will really improve mobility. looking at the rest of Portugal's same size cities, it's a really nice infrastructure we have in Braga
You shouldn't look at the rest of Portugal... Great video, as always!
Amazing work.
Thanks for it.
Best regards from Braga
As someone who lives in this city. I totally agree with your perspective. Traffic here is a mess, there's way too much traffic for such a small city but that's partly down to the not so great public transportation.
Anyway, I just wanted to point out that, the 20 space parking lot is likely not public, it probably belongs to the hotel sitting right in front of it, so I don't know if city hall can do much about that. Also, regarding the crosswalks, you drew them on all four-sides of that intersection but in fact, 2 of those sides do have them, you actually drew your lines inside the lines for those cross-walks. :)
Thank you Mikael for rethinking my hometown. There is one or other flaw, but the main arguments have valid premises. Braga was made for cars, and old-fashionable bus. It is time to drop this sketch. In your opinion, how could we invite the knowledge from urban planners to the community?
Great insights! I currently live in Braga. My work takes me to most major cities throughout Europe, and I have lived for extended periods in Vancouver, Canada, and Tokyo, Japan. Braga is by far one of the most frustrating cities I have ever spent a significant amount of time in. An intelligent, contemporary, non-corrupt and motivated urban planning team is desperately needed here. Thanks for drawing attention to some of the ways in which the city could be improved!
Man!!!!
Just met your channel, and I must say I love you now, and that is in less than 5 minutes!!!
If you wanna check more on portugal, write me, I have a lot to tell you!!!
Respect for your work, you just won a fan!
Very inspiring. Thanks, Mikael!
The biggest symbol of the car centric thinking of Portugal is the 25 de Abril bridge, with no pedestrian and bicycle access, compared to its sister bridge in San Francisco.
Do you think that in 50/60/70 years time there's a risk that planners will be rueing the changes we're now making to our cities, in the same way we look back at the 50s and 60s? Or do you think that planning is more thoughtful and empirically driven than before?
The first crosswalks you drew on the map are already there! They are just lines but they do exist.
I checked it out on Google Maps and it's quite insightful to look at the 3D view and Streetview. It tells you way more than just looking at the satellite map. Your videos might be a bit better if you showed that too. One question that was answered by doing this is the underground parking area top right is a Mercure Hotel, and the area you grassed over is actually their private land and guest drop-off area, so I don't think you could do what you proposed. The rest of the plan looks good though :)
It's public space and even has parking meter.
@@pedropinheiroaugusto3220 Oh ok, fair enough. It looked like a hotel parking area
Great analysis. Thanks!
I propose you take a look at Laval a suburb of Montreal. It’s very much car-centric although Bike lanes are starting to pop up here and there and the bus system is very much used. The amount of space given to empty parkings is craaazzy.
Nice video. :)
You need to see how Avenida da Boavista in Porto is (dis)organized. It's a 6km avenue that can't decide how the hell it should do urban mobility. There's disconected sections with bike lanes (in the middle of the avenue no less! so unsafe). Buses have lanes only in some parts and get stuck in traffic in another parts. No shade in many places, and a very harsh take on a highway underpass. The only thinkg constant? The holy car always has plenty of spots to park! The worst thing is, it used to be much more "boulevardy" and even had a tram, which was only removed in the late 90s (why!?)
Man… you’re cool! 😍✌🏾✌🏾✌🏾
make on of lisbon please
Thank you so much for this!
I'd advise you not to look at the rest of the country, but afaik Braga is the worst traffic monstrosity I've seen in the whole of Portugal. It has lots of space for beautiful streets but as of right now it's absolutely hideous.
But actually, that hideousness started in the late 1980s to early 1990s.
Our idiot of a former mayor is to blame. Tbh, I feel like our current one has done a really good job working with what he was left with.
Have you even been to Porto?
It's way worse.
@@slicklol not really
Oh man, I know that street! It was SO confusing doing something as simple as crossing the street in Braga. The crosswalks are hidden and many times you are in danger of being hit by a driver that will only see you after he turns around the corner. I had not realized that those underpaths were a thing. They're stinky, dirty and shady. The streets have no crosswalks, especially the big ones. The city is nice for visiting, but living there is bad, and the houses are falling apart and expensive. The streets make no sense.
funny that you mention trees - the mayor keeps cutting them down.
Hi Michael, I'm not bad judging your opinion or comments, but I think this review doesn't make justice to our city traffic plan. It shore has lots of issues but first of all, this main street in the city center doesn't have 7 lanes but 5. Our city is old and for shore needs help off someone, maybe you, but the review you made doesn't make justice to reality. I invite you to come and visit our city, eat really good food 😜 and maybe you can have a better look of it or even better, help our mayor to plan a new project to our city. Me and for shore a lot of other people here in Braga would love to see the tram become a reality and maybe make some connections with our 20kms neighbors Guimarães. Anyway, it's good to see such a small and old city like mine being reviewed.
Thanks.
"this main street in the city center" mas qual centro? O centro da cidade é a zona que vai do arco da porta nova até ao teatro circo (desenha uma circunferência num mapa, se quiseres, com ponto médio entre o teatro circo e o arco, de forma a que um dos limites da circunferência seja o teatro). É zona considerada "central", mas não é centro da cidade. Se isso for centro da cidade, qualquer um é do centro da cidade. roflol
@Gomes mano, é só uma expressão! 😎 No entanto, Braga é efetivamente uma cidade pequena, depende muito é do ponto de vista e com aquilo que estiveres a comparar...
@@RuiPalmeira o sr que fez o artigo está a falar de artérias circulares para automóveis da nossa cidade, por isso, sim, a avenida central é efetivamente uma artéria do centro da cidade no que toca ao tráfego e circulação automóvel. Aquilo que apenas quis realçar foi que a visão dele era demasiado redutora, mas hajam ideias e de preferência melhores, porque idiotas há muitos, mas poucos são os que realmente fazem alguma coisa!
French Kiss is the film. Love to play movie quotes:)
Excellent 9/10 - I was shouting Cycle lanes and Trams at the beginning of your video.
There are no trams in Braga.
And good luck with the cycle lanes:
Most people live in the suburbs which is far enough to invalidate using a bycicle for daily comute.
It's easy to look at a satellite photo and point out stuff without having any context.
Most of the stuff he proposes were already done in the past, they changed it because it wasn't working.
Around 130.000 people live within the city limits, of which almost 100.000 live in a flat and perfectly fit for cycling area.
Please show me where you got that data from.
Also, what percentage of those people can use a bycicle for daily comute.
Just because you live in a flat space doesn't mean you work in cycling distance.
I'm sure you're not suggesting flooding the city with 100000 bikes.
@@andresilvasophisma 100000 bicicletas ocupam muito menos espaço que 100000 carros, pelo menos. E até se podiam fazer parques verticais, portanto não seria por aí.
@@andresilvasophisma Are you actually this stupid or are you trying extra hard for us? Even if he was suggesting that somehow, magically these 100k people go to work by bike, how the fuck do you thing they go to work now? Car, exactly, which takes up MASSIVELY more space. He isn't suggesting that though, there are still some carlanes, busses and trams. Plenty of options for everyone, also the disabled.
That's not a good solution to that area. You should look better the city structure and the streets you are changing. Avenida da Liberdade is where all the trafic from the city center flow, allowing almost all the historic center to be pedestrian. And the other road is the only transversal road, cutting all the city area from east to West. Connecting with that inner highway circle road from the first roundbout.
I do have to say, the correct word is "roofs", but that is completely anal for cities that don't speak English!
You should take a look at Kiel, Germany
look at olhão , in the algarve . the mayor just put in 600 parking espaces garage and a lot of debt
Sometime when you get bored, look at North Howard Street in Baltimore, Maryland. It seems to have everything going for it, but it is lined with derelict buildings. A light rail line runs along it. The main train station for Baltimore is a few blocks off the northern end of the commercial segment of the street and is served by a branch of the light rail line. At the southern end of the commercial segment are the Baltimore stadiums. Lexington Market is along the street, and Baltimore's Inner Harbor is a few blocks away. Other parts of the city have become very trendy, Fells Point for example, but North Howard Street remains lined with boarded-up buildings. www.google.com/maps/@39.2933835,-76.6196607,3a,75y,2.26h,98t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRC1R_zr26pXeNJzAUuIvdQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
I'd love to talk about cities in Jamaica
There is a significant flaw in this video:
It is assumed the road is stupidly large for no reason. I personally don't know Braga, or even what that road serves and what it connects, but I seriously doubt the road would be a monstrousity needlessly.
The final solution turns a one-way massive road with 6 lanes (seems to me the 7th is horizontal parking) reduced into a two-way road reduced to 1 lane for each direction for individual cars and trucks, another for bus and another for bikes. Obviously, this leads to massive traffic jam. This solution also means the traffic would also flow through other areas of the city. Effectively, it creates more traffic there and in many other places that had no such problems.
And solely because of the flaw: it is assumed that people in Portugal travel, or want to travel, in a way similar to Copenhagen habitants. And that is simply not true.
In Copenhagen, "only 25% of its population have a car. Interviewing the population, around 56% said they prefer to use a bike to reach their daily activities, 20% stated they prefer public transportation and only 14% use a car" (conexaoplaneta.com.br/blog/numero-de-bicicletas-ultrapassa-o-de-carros-em-copenhague/#fechar).
These numbers are due to a number of factores, including cultural and economic factors.
In Portugal, the numbers are far from those of Denmark. 15~20 years ago, only around 7% of the population used public transportation. In 2018, in Lisbon and Oporto, and in due part to the rising cost of living in those cities (it more than doubled in a decade while salaries didn't) forcing people to find ways to save money, we have "Individual transport - that is car and motorcycles - is still prefered in Porto (69%) as in Lisbon (59,8%). Public transportation as primary means of travel represents only 11,1% in Porto and 15,8% in Lisbon" (shifter.sapo.pt/2018/07/inquerito-mobilidade-em-portugal-estatisticas-ine/)
These numbers cannot be changed simply by adding bike and bus lanes. In Portugal, because we lived in a dictatorship until 1975 that impoverished the country economically, socially and also in terms of education, we still see cars as something of a 'status'. After all, having one was a sign of being rich or at least well-off, so now everyone must have one. So simply adding bike lanes and expecting that to lead to a significant increase in bike traffic quickly is a mistake. Other measures would have to be taken, or at least expose the city to many many tourists (expanding the knowledge of the city's inhabbitants about other ways to live and travel around), otherwise it could take decades to achieve that effect.
Because of this flaw, the video proposes removal of parking spaces, without knowing who or what they are serving. What if the buildings adjacent to those parking spaces that were turned into sidewalks and trees are residential? You just screwed its residents. Even if they are commercial or service buildings, and once more because of the 'car culture', the buildings would still need those parking spaces.
Another error, and this one I simply didn't understand why it was made, was to look at a possible subterranean park and assume it can hold many vehicles including the 20 above. It is an assumption that should never be made.
Other than that, the video does raise several good points. Planting more trees for a more cooling effect is essential - as the thermal island effect we experience in cities is a both a health problem as well as an infrastructure problem. Larger sidewalks are important to help pedestrian traffic, so removing curved corners and underground pedestrian crossings is good. Bike and bus lanes are also good, of course, but they can't be applied out of the blue just to "bring a city to modern urban-traffic ideas", without other measures that promote public transportation and bikes while attempting to erode the 'car as a status' culture.
So no, simply applying all these changes would not fix that intersection, it would in fact turn in and other parts of the city into a traffic nightmare.
In fact, the roads are large for stupid reasons. Namely, because infrastructure was done exclusively with automobile users in mind.
I know that particular street of Braga and I can assure you it is needlessly large. I mean, it would be so almost anywhere, but I actually know the place. The traffic jams you mention also wouldn't exist, as academia has pointed out many times.
As for parking, it's only a motivator for using the car, but even if you say that it's really needed, then you're not counting for the fact that massive underground parking lots have been built throughout the city. So capacity is not even a problem.
As for automobile usage, it's indeed a social 'status' that has been sold by the automobile industry and bought up by governments for decades. Fortunately for Portugal, this is starting to change. Speaking for myself, I don't really want to live in my country (except for Lisbon) because of this car dependence. I don't want to live my life with a car because I don't like it. But what other choices do I have?
@@PedroCstify as I said, I don't know the city. If you say they are needlessly large, that they are not full of flowing traffic, I believe you. Still, we are talking a reduction of 6 one-way lanes to 1 way lane for each direction, it would have to cause traffic jam in high-traffic hours at least. And maybe that would be good to convince people to drop their cars, yes, but it could cause frustration and steps backwards.
One question: "infrastructure was done exclusively with automobile users in mind". When was it done? Because 40 years ago, those were the only ones that concern infrastructure as, once more, it was expected that everyone would have and drive a car.
The massive underground parking lots are a good thing, no doubt, but they can only truly serve residential buildings no more than a 100 to 200 hundred meters away (people simply don't want to park their cars too far from their homes, in fact we see so many almost wanting to take their cars to bed with them, parking in sidewalks and other not appropriate spaces just so they are closer to home or work). Commercial and service buildings do need some parking space because of the 'car status' culture and because many people still think "if I go shopping without my car, how am I to bring home all those bags? By myself all the way home? On a bus? And get robbed??".
But like you said, it is fortunately changing, and that 'car culture' is starting to disappear but very slowly. Unfortunately, many cities still lack decent public transport, decent sidewalks, etc, so people are still forced to rely on the car. And it is not just a problem with infrastructure or public transportation offer, it is also a problem with working culture as well, where many people are coerced into working long hours - past the time they should leave work - or where people get in late, or where people have to quickly get to some other place in the city to do their jobs (example, showing houses to sell), etc, as those things also make people need a faster and more adapted means of transport (which the car is).
Still, the video didn't present itself as 'ways it can gradually improve' but rather as 'what should be done at once to make this acceptable and functional' and this general idea is emphasised by the speech used ("should appologize, beg forgiveness" and so on). Such drastic change would in fact be bad because making drastic changes that might cause traffic jams actually causes people to become frustrated and frustration walks 'backwards' in terms of progress. People would demand the end of bus and bike lanes and opportunistic politicians would use that to gain support. By the time the rest of the country started to abbadon cars and choose public transport and bikes, the city would be fixed on having wide roads for cars simply because the people would remember the frustration of when those were applied without concern to existing traffic.
PS: when you say 'roads are large for stupid reasons', you mean those in Braga? Because in Coimbra I can tell you that nearly 30% of its roads are actually too small/narrow, causing traffic jams because of parked cars and lack of sidewalks for passing pedestrians :/
@João Santos, people in Portugal prefer to ride by car because there is few options on mobility! We must regard with caution to those numbers.
In my opinion, car and automobiles where the choice because the State could not raise, in the due time, a proper public transportation network. Plus, geographically, we cannot compare to nordic countries, where the costs of building those networks are much less expensive. Braga has a lot of geological accidents. Till the 20th century, river streams were our highways, because it comprise the less expensive possibility (for enterprises, for sure). The costs of raw material, like coal, to supply the energy chain, it is also a problem. Our coal was not efficient, very different from the english one, and importing from England tonnes of coal is another dimension that put us behind the great step through efficient mobility.
Cars are expensive. You pay for them, the gas is not cheap, insurances, etc. No one could say that choosing cars would be the best option in the market. Unless it is the safest. Or, if it is the only one.
@@Raphazoni sorry but that is not the case. Lisbon and Oporto and even Coimbra have the means to transport a lot more people than they do in public transports. You can check the numbers in 2018 (shifter.sapo.pt/2018/07/inquerito-mobilidade-em-portugal-estatisticas-ine/), people usually want to go by car. And I see this and have seen this for over a decade, as I moved solely in public transports. 80% of the buses in Coimbra are not nearly 60% full, for example. A lot of traffic in Lisbon can still be diverted to the metro, for example, but people just don't want to.
There is, indeed, a 'car is status' culture, to the point that is is actually mentioned in Traffic Management classes in Civil Engineering universities (at least, it was mentioned in mine) and I could confirm this with many collegues, many other teachers, many friends even. "I'll just go by car, it is faster" is a sentence I've heard so many times, even in a city (Coimbra) where the public bus covers more than 70% of its urbanized area (except suburbs).
PS: Just to show you how truth this is, I've lived in an apartment building with 30 other people in there. My mother still lives there. All of us, myself included, use the car to go to the nearest supermarket (Lidl) for groceries and other products. All well and good except that supermarket is 6 minutes away by foot. And we have ample sidewalks in the four roads leading there and only one of them is inclined. We could walk there, but 'going by car is easier and faster'.
I'm from Braga. The road in question (Av Liberdade) was done decades ago. Legacy from the 50s/60s/early 70s It connects directly to the city center and a tunnel that crosses it to connect to the "highway" style (via rápida) in the north of the city. This area didn't used to be city center, but with growth it is now. Having these huge avenues leading into the city center encourages people to drive there and with more people living here it's getting congested specially at rush hour when kids are being dropped-off at schools.
This was really interesting! Incredibly smug and arrogant though. lol But that's OK you seem to be even better informed and passionate about quality of life. Maybe more than just a bit reductive and dismissive of the actual parameters that are in play. I spent one day walking the town as a tourist and the historic areas were quiet and relatively traffic free. But I don't have to figure out where to live and how to get to and from work every day either. Almost all interventional activities these days begin with a survey of what the people who have a stake want. To do otherwise is its own version of antiquated 1950's Soviet top down imposition of norms.
It’s one million times better than any city of Texas. From an Austin-ite
There is no money for that in Portugal. The corrupt politicians are making the money disappear. One of the examples is spending millions on a broke national airline.
Although many points are valid and a lot could be done to improve the main arteries of Braga, one has to understand the reality of this region in order to comprehend why those mistakes happened.
Cavado and Ave valley, region where Braga is located, is extremely industrial today but was completely agricultural merely 50 years ago. Explosion in economical, social, industrial growth on such humanly and naturally rich region, together with recent democracy led by a incompetent, immature and corrupt political class created a scenario of chaos impossible to control as things were happening too fast.
One MAJOR problem that a look at the city doesn't tell you is URBAN DISPERSION. Unlike San Sebastian, who is a city much more concerted and dense, Braga has much of it's frequent visitors living OUTSIDE of the city. 200k people is nothing. Braga get's much more than that daily from villages, very small towns, spread out urbanizations and continuous chaotic housing areas for several tens of KM.
This happened because the entire valley was used for farming. This was an intensely humanized territory from the Ocean to the Mountains unlike anything else in Europe. As the ownership of those lands went from Nobility, Church and Bourgeois, down to the people (when economical development allowed them to buy those lands off the medieval trilogy of ownership) that kept splitting it trough heritages, individual houses building happened EVERYWHERE.
This renders public transportation nearly USELESS as it is impossible for them to be present in every single lost road up a hill or down a slope where people have built their homes because that was THEIR land. Due to this fact, people have to use their car to go in town even if they live barely 5km from Braga.
So, there is no possible effective public transportation and bike lanes are fun in town but nearly unpracticable in a hilly / mountainous region that gets both 1500cc of rain on average per year and summer months that can be scorching hot for weeks at the time easily over 35'c.
All this forced people to use their cars to go in town. That's why you practically have an highway crossing the TOWN CENTER and why parking is a major issue. The 2 largest cities of this region, Braga and Guimarães suffer from the exact same problem and traffic around them is madness when considering how "small" the cities are.
The size of the cities are lying. Population around it, living anywhere from hill tops, to coves, in the middle of woods, on urban areas created RECENTLY far from any accessibility or in the middle of agricultural zones, make up for additional hundreds of thousands. And those people HAVE to use their cars to leave those areas. Obviously, once you are in your car, you will drive to your destination. You won't ditch your car and wait for expensive buses to get you into town and back when you could do it yourself.
Other European cities are compact. You can see this on TV when, for instance, watching the Tour the France, Spain or Italy as Helicopters film from above. When the Volta a Portugal is on, i am always disgusted at how Northwest Portugal was developed.
Show this to Mesquita...
mesquita set the concrete, rio is cutting the trees. what will the next mayor do to make our lives worse?
In the end, this is what Mikael proposed: In a city that has a troubled topography (with altitudes ranging from 150 ft, give or take, to over 1400 ft - en-gb.topographic-map.com/maps/i3jq/Braga/ - which is clearly a contrast from Copenhagen, Mikael's city, as well as cities in Netherlands - en-gb.topographic-map.com/maps/lpne/Copenhagen/), lets give greater emphasis to biking and public transportation hoping that, somehow and magically, people would accept:
1) Biking over a dozen miles in hills and valleys, which makes it an extremely tiring effort, while having to face 1/5 of the year with high temperatures and another 1/5 with rain and/or snow.
2) They would want to do this despite the fact that this means taking 5x more to go from home to work and vice-versa. Meaning they would have less free time to spend with friends, familiy or simply hobbies, which is harmful.
Example: my high school was 7 km away from where I lived and by car it took 12 minutes to get there while by bus it took 40 to get there. Another example: my university was 5 km from where I lived. For 5 years I lost every day a total of 2 hours moving to and from it by bus. In the following 2 years I started driving and the total time lost was only 15 minutes every day (7 going and another 7 coming back). And this doing exactly the same trajectory as the buses did.
3) If they wanted to go shopping, they would have to do so almost every day since you cannot bring many groceries in a bike, forcing people to spend even less free time. Unless, of course, you start to bring heavier bags, but then you would make your trip far more tiresome - especially, combined with topography and climate.
4) If they have work that requires them to travel through the city - salesmen, brand representatives, real estate dealers, goods transportation, etc - they would have to use bikes or public transportation and either do far less stops, meaning get far less costumers and screwing their jobs and income, or would have to work until much later to compensate for the time lost travelling from one place to another.
Oh yeah, we can all see this working so well.
The problem is that Mikael ignores various obvious facts that make all the difference.
- First of all, topography. Denmark and the Netherlands don't have a significant altitude variation, making cycling much easier.
- 2nd, the weather variations in Denmark rarely lead to hazardous heat conditions. In Portugal that is common.
- 3rd, Portuguese aren't as used to cold temperatures and various rainy days. In Denmark and Netherlands they are.
- 4th, the three previous points greatly effect the effort of cycling, making it much harder.
- 5th, Denmark’s full-time employees work an average of 37.2 hours per week. About 2.3% of employees work over 50 hours per week. The average workweek for full-time employees in Portugal is 40.7 hours. The percentage of employees who worked over 50 hours per is a little high at 8.3%. (worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/average-work-week-by-country)
Also, in Denmark they greatly respect the working hours. In Portugal it is common for people to work past the exit hours and not get paid for it. This means that if you greatly increase commute time, you greatly decrease life quality in Portugal.
- 6th, the biking culture in Denmark started more than 100 years ago! In 1880! And in the 1950 they were transitioning to car-centric transportation. That is until an oil crisis hit and the people started to demand car-free urban centers because of cultural environment and health concerns, which are still not a wide-spread culture in Portugal. In fact, we have the opposite, with the car still being a sign of wealth and status - thanks to the dictatorship we suffered until the 70's. The wealth status is also the reason that leads many people to seek shopping malls rather than local neighborhood shops, buying a lot and eating a lot - a lifestyle that makes it even more difficult to combine with cycling.
- 7th and finally, if you look at the numbers for Copenhagen, where more than half prefer the bikes, you also see that around 25% still own a car. However, his proposal was to reduce the available roads to less than 20%, even in major arteries. Result: traffic jams.
So all this makes it impossible to make a transition quickly, in an instant, like Mikael thinks it should be done. And it is because urban planners like him ignore all these different factors and think that 'one size fits all', simply beliving "if you create it, they will come", that you have so many billions of € lost througout europe in urban projects that turned out as massive failures. An urban planner that doesn't look at topography, climate, working hours, commute time and culture is simply blind. Mikael turns out to be arrogant and blind who thinks that "because it worked in Denmark, it works everywhere". Would love to see him peddling his 'bike urbanism ideas' in cities built in the desert.
However, credit where it is due:
- Planting trees would be incredibly important, indeed. But shadow doesn't save you from dehidration when you exercise during extreme heat days. The very air is heated. You will still sweat a lot more. Your heart would have to work much harder, etc. So no, if the temperature is 37 ºC, simply don't got out and bike for prolonged periods of time, or you would be risking your health.
- Investing in buses is important, with bus lanes, but only if the population is accepting it. There is a limit to the % of people that will want to use the bus and it is quite limited. Numbers already shown indicate how the number in Portugal goes to around 15%, perhaps a bit higher if the offer is increased during rush hours, but not much more. Why? Many reasons, like culture, commute time, climate, etc. And urban planning doesn't solve half of these reasons, you need to change a lot more things for Mikael's ideas to work in our country.
- Underpasses are indeed a problem and should be replaced with normal crosswalks or overpasses.
- Tram is simply a stupid idea given topography and worse of all the very cost of it. Again, blindness from an arrogant urban planner that can't see past his box.
Too long to read but... 80% of the city population lives in a level part of Braga.
Em que planeta é que vive???
Source?
And even if that were true (doubtful), what of those living near the river Cávado? And all the suburban neighborhoods like Frosso, Merelim, Palmeira, Real, Espinho, and so on? Oh I know, f*** 'em, right?
An essay in a RUclips comment...if you can't explain what your point/argument is concisely it's not that good. Look at San Francisco for your hills combined with trams and cycling. He also mentioned busses. E-bikes are a thing. A flat city doesn't mean no effort, wind is a thing. especially in flat places.
Fun fact, Braga has bike lanes but people still think that using the road right beside them is the way to go.
Because of three reasons:
-Righteous cyclists (usually captain spandex) who want to make a point that they are legally allowed to use the road (and who want to get the adrenaline rush of arguing with another person with road rage)
-Pedestrians who continually invade the cycle lane.
-Badly designed cycle lanes (too narrow, slippery surface, bad curbs, huge detours, dangerous intersections with traffic, or, the worst of all: the cycle lane is not part of a network.
@@ElectricityTaster legally here you can't use the road if there's a bycicle lane next to it.
@@andresilvasophisma once more he speaks without knowing anything. Most of the times pedestrians don't invade cycle lanes and the majority is well designed. But because he can only see his city, he thinks all cities are the same. Such blindness
Fun fact: Braga has ONE bike lane from nowhere to no place, and it has holes in it.
@@pedropinheiroaugusto3220 FUN FACT: Braga means panty in spanish.
The "big surface" parking space servers the Hotel that is the big building on the top right of the image. I believe it is private property, not municipal space. In the front of the hotel there is no need for 20 parking spaces, but some must exist because the underground isn't height enough and might be useful to have some parking outside for higher vehicles. Everything else is just great!
It's public space. It even has parking meter.
Look at Cairo, Egypt... i think they need some advice
bottom right must also changed
Wait until he knows this urban plan is less than 40 years old. The “new” car city is not that ancient, as most of Braga was just agriculture land until 25 years ago. It’s an awful city with its Roman culture killed off and buried underneath highways and tall buildings that are sinking in. Mesquita Machado should be in jail.
Most of the plan is from 1944, from Architect Etienne de Groer. But everybody after just made it worse...
Here is the video from our mobility specialist Miguel Bandeira facebook.com/141280443232198/posts/610736629619908/?app=fbl
Are you serious man ? Did you ever live in a latin european city on a européan way. There will never ride a bike ! especially in a country like portugal, where roads up and down every where. come on did you see a lot of starbuck etc.. Latin people dont looking for uber cities. Portuges, Spanish, are othantic people. Keep your pen. Go to see the new municipal market in Braga, it is representing well the city, what you see and what you think about a portuguese market ??
yeah. lets just remove ALL parking spaces. it is gonna work, for sure.
He did not propose to remove all the city's parking spaces. If you're having a tantrum about the few parking spaces he proposed to reallocate for green space then you need to reconsider your life priorities. Also, get ready for parking meters everywhere. Thought you could occupy public space and not pay rent? A bar pays for their tables and chairs on the sidewalks and you will pay for the parking space for your car. Through the nose.
"ALL parking" You didn't watch the whole video, did you? Still an underground garage there. Parking your private car on the side of the street in everyones way isn't some god given right. That public space should have never been taken away from the people and given to carists.
Whats the reasoning behind the underpass comments? From my perspective they are better and safer. I don't have to stop and I'm separated from traffic
He's a dumbass.....A bike guy, don't care about traffic jams, danger for pedestrians on crosswalks, etc. I much rather my kids take the underpass on their way to school, instead of standing on a street corner waiting for traffic to slowdown so he/she can attempt to cross the street without beeing hurt or killed....
Underpass have two major problems: one, if they are done by stairs they greatly discriminate between those who can walk properly and those who can't (this is the issue with several overpasses I've seen in Portugal as many simply have stairs rather than ramps). The second is they increase the risk of criminal activities, such as robberies, against pedestrians.
Crosswalks represent some risk from speeding cars, but paired with traffic lights those risks become mininal. Obviously, without traffic lights, they are a much greater risk and disrupt the pedestrian flow even more.
PS: There is another issue with underpasses: if the rain-water drainage system fails, or becomes clogged from debris and garbage, they become flooded easily, causing pedestrian traffic to halt. While rare, since it rains every winter, as the years pass the chance of this happening increases if the cleaning service isn't kept at high-standards (unfortunately, in Portugal, that is not always the case, as I've seen many water drains in the streets covered with garbage and debris from trees and the city hall doesn't bother with cleaning them).
I like to go for walks with my baby in a stroller/pram, but have to plan my routes so that I avoid underpasses (due to stairs). It annoys me that my demographic hasn't been considered in the city planning. I can only imagine what someone who uses a wheelchair (or who is simply less mobile) feels! Why are we paying taxes and voting if the city is going to be developed as if we don't exist?
...plus, the underpasses are used as public toilets.
The thing is without underpasses you get a lot traffic jams like in the early 90's.
I still remember how it was.
A lot of what he proposes is going back to that era.
Most of what he criticizes is what allowed the historical center to be almost car free (exception to the occasional truck delivering stuff to businesses).
Having people with low mobility in traffic can be a problem too as it can create accidents.
I agree with the part that the underpassages can be used as bathrooms.
I used those underpassages a lot of times (to cross the street not as a bathroom) and it's not nice.
Another thing is extending the round corners to make them straight. That was how they originaly were but it was really tough to busses, they kept hitting them, and so they rounded them up.
I was like 13 years old when they were made and I instantly noticed the problem they would create, I can't understand how a grown man with multiple PHDs fails to understand this.
This guy's opinion is biased, and honestly he has a few idiotic arguments in some matters.
But don't take my word for it, just watch his TEDx talk about bike helmets being dangerous.
You've just invented gunpowder. I imagine you living in the perfect city though. US ones are the perfect exemple of crappy places to live. You judje a city by one intersection?! Another "wise guy" on RUclips!
wait till you see the united states lmfao
I want to live in Braga.
Lived in Braga a few years. It's true. An embarrassing city made out to concentrate people in the historical center and some shit shopping centres they have. The rest is dark, dangerous, smelly and boxes of houses everywhere with a small near to bankruptcy cafe in each corner. The disconnection between the centre and 2 other interesting places as Bom Jesus and Sameiro is another shame. Not a good city to live. half day visit in a car and bye, off to Ponte de Lima or Gerês.
What are you talking about?
The percentage of residents in the historical center is virtually null compared to the periphery where are most habitation buildings.
Shopping centers are around the city, not in the center. There are like 3 or four smaller ones that honestly are mostly abandoned because everyone goes to the other ones.
You compare to Ponte de Lima and Gerês that are not even cities.
@@andresilvasophisma I meant when not at home.
" The disconnection between the centre and 2 other interesting places as Bom Jesus and Sameiro is another shame." no shit sherlock. they're 8.3kms and 11kms apart from the city center, no wonder they are disconnected.
@@RuiPalmeira ouch. I'm being chased by residents with a car. Congrats for your Google maps skills
@@inkoma go hug a tree. Unless employers change their mentality first, you, absolutely, cannot ask people to not use a car to go to work. I'd do the daily 18/20k commute by bicycle, but my employer has no infrastructure for me to be able to comfortably do that. And public transportation doesn't suit my schedule.
I watched all the 11:44 minutes of your video, and I really have to say that it is as much of a disaster as the layout of my city, Braga. But i say this with full knowledge of both, whereas you make a completely wrong analysis of my city without ever being here... ridiculous. If you call yourself an urbanist, you should know that a picture of google maps will never give you an accurate picture of what you are trying to analyse. I've travelled everywhere in Europe, been to Russia, all the Sacndinavian countries, North America, a couple of countries in North Africa, and loved every city I've been. And they all have flaws... but I would never talk about any of the places I've BEEN, in the manner you talk about the cities you "analyse". You are only trying to cash in on the internet's criticism and trashing trend, or fad. Poor, very poor...
The surface parking must be for natural gas vehicles.... I think....
It's public space.
A few decades ago, GPL (natural gas) vehicles could not park underground. However, today that is no longer the case and they can park just like any other car.
Man, come to Braga! I invite you to stay at my home!! I Bet that you would remove this video after living there for 2/3 days!!! I don't understand how you can judge a City and make suck bold statements without knowing the reality of our country and my city Braga! Do you want us to have American BBQ and watch the Super Bowl just like you Americans?? Oh wait... we already do that stuff!! Loool tell you the truth, like the video, didn't like your easy judgment of my home!! Stay well and visit Braga please!
This video is biased and misinformed. It denotes poor research and is based on premises that are not applicable to the local society.
The partiality is such that this particular urbanistic solution does not fit into the road environment.
For those who claim to be an expert in urbanism and particularize an intersection in the city's global urbanistic solution, it demonstrates a lack of knowledge and adaptation to reality.