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Comment by kzcqt | Hacker News Reader

This baffles me. The government is there to serve the people. People are unhappy about what the current mayor is doing, that's why she's getting kicked out. Advocating for the EU to step in and force people to stay unhappy will only increase the anti-EU sentiment, but I guess the cat is out of the bag on that one.

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The government IS serving the people precisely by putting in place measures to improve air quality.

Most of the backslash against Madrid regulations is coming from people that don't live in the center of the city and are using the issue as a proxy to voice their political views against the mayor's political party (affiliate to left-leaning Podemos).

Funny thing is that this measure was for the longest time in the previous mayoral team (under control from right-leaning Partido Popular) agenda as well.

On the anti-EU sentiment. I think it's important to point out that 62% of Spaniards (and rising since Brexit started) have a favorable view of the EU (according to Pew Research). Eurobarometer is also showing highest support for the EU in 35 years.

Pretty much any city in EU has now some forms of traffic restriction policies. The same is true for where I live as well.

The issue is not really the restriction, but the lack of alternatives. Very few cities have a decent metro zone: these cities are the only ones where I see no objections to stricter traffic policies.

Most cities are only served by public _road_ transport services. This doesn't have the same level of service, by a long shot. There's a huge, _huge_ difference between having to plan your move in 1hr intervals and just hop on a platform having to wait no longer than 10 minutes. Not to mention the cost, inevitable delays due to traffic, shorter service hours and so on.

I would ban all cars tomorrow and sell mine too if I could get anywhere in a metro. Reality is, this is only feasible for very few selected places.

The governments here should make public transport massively better first. The reality is that they just enforce restrictions and provide no alternatives. What do you do then?

Yeah, thanks for this comment. That's what makes this matter worse: they restrict private transport, but public transport just gets worse and more expensive every year.

This article talks about the improvements Madrid made to its public transport system. Are you guys talking about in general or specifically in Madrid?

In several places where I lived the public transport road service was subcontracted to the lowest-bidding private company of the region.

This in turn creates this shitty illusion of "public" service that nobody wants to use, because:

- it's unreliable (delays and strikes are common) - short working hours - poorly planned (or no) interconnections with other public services - abusive service costs to recoup the costs

Even factoring all expenses of a car, several bus connections I was forced to take in the past where in the order of 5-6 times the total cost of car ownership. This doesn't even include the grave annoyances I listed above.

Sad :(

>In several places where I lived the public transport road service was subcontracted to the lowest-bidding private company of the region.

They are required to do so by law.

And this is a problem. Lowest-bidder-wins always creates a race to the bottom.

At least in the province of Venice, there was a complicated set of rules to pick between bidders of public contractors - so the law is certainly not universal in this regard.

If I recall correctly, it was based on percentiles instead of taking just the lowest bidder in an attempt to avoid companies racing to the bottom.

This in turn created a system where winning ad these bids was mostly by chance, and unsurprisingly was found to be rigged several times. But I digress...

Not quite, but they have to justify the choice to use a service that costs more.

I think the actual (EU) law is closer to "best suited". You have a number of offers to select from and have to say why you chose that offer. Saying "I chose them because they were the cheapest" is the easiest and safest solution so that's what usually happens, but it's not the only option.

You have to pre-declare how you choose the best offer. Final procurement order is oftentimes made into existence after many rounds of rejection by procurement overseeing committee.

The city where I work has slashed public transport prices, -40% for me, as part of a package to combat pollution exceeding EU regulations.

I wonder what happens in places where private transport isn't restricted.

At least for the Madrid metro, they have what I consider to be one of the most accessible and convenient public transportation systems I've used. And compared to Indianapolis, where I currently live, Madrid's public transport makes what we have here an embarrassment.

Pretty much any European public transport is miles ahead of what most us cities have to offer.

Madrid public transit is pretty comprehensive, but not particularly cheap or accessible. The rail is a bit archaic to use (single use tickets require source and destination stations despite being mostly one fare zone), station layout is fairly confusing at the bigger stations IMO. Perhaps most importantly, the stations are often pretty deep requiring a lot of waking -- not a problem if you're able bodied though.

I didn't use the bus system at all so I can't comment there. Barcelona in comparison has fairly easy to navigate stations and a much friendlier fare system.

It should be mentioned here that in the case of Madrid, the metro is managed by a rightwing party who intentionally reduced the amount of trains when the car restrictions started, in order to cause discontent. See https://www.publico.es/politica/madrid-central-arranca-madri... (sorry for the link in Spanish).

I’ve tried going over the article and cannot find any mention to any right-wing party intentionally reducing the amount of trains. I should disclose that Spanish is my mother tongue.

If anyone wants to pour over the article and explain it to me: EMT is the TfL of Madrid, Mayor's office is left-wing, Regional government is right-wing.

Sorry, the article doesn't mention that the regional government is right-wing (my fault), but it does say this: "Sin embargo, en lugar de reforzar el servicio, como prometió hace un mes el presidente del Gobierno regional, Ángel Garrido, la frecuencia de los trenes se ha visto mermada".

When we introduced speed limits, people were protesting. When we introduced catalytic converters, people were protesting. When we banned smoking in busses, people were protesting. When we banned smoking in restaurants, people were protesting.

Quite often, the people don't know what's good for them. That's we generally don't have direct democracies.

The government is also here to take into account the work of scientists & urbanists and lead the people towards a better, healthier and sustainable future.

That is a very complicated statement. People have a very short time horizon as a whole. Politicians that promise to take the short, easy answer are usually ignoring long-term consequences. That leads to a -kind of- populism.

Note: I'm not saying I'm in favour or against Madrid's Mayor, nor her policies.

The lifes of the few outweigh the convinience of the many. You are effectively arguing that because the majority wants to freely poison a minority (causing lung cancer and respiratory diseases), the major can't pass restrictions against that. This is a great example why a democracy has to have more principles than "what the majority decides goes".

You can't have democracy and consumer capitalism and at the same time save the planet from climate catastrophe. It simply won't work. This is what Naomi Klein is trying to tell us.[1]

At more practical level getting financing for better public transport needs providing forecast of revenues. And it does not justify investments in public transport as long as people use cars, ubers, taxis etc. And people will continue choosing personal convenience over the prospect of having grandchildren living on planet Earth.

Tough choice for elected politicians.

[1] http://www.naomiklein.org/articles/2018/08/capitalism-killed...

I think that's over pessimistic - we have lots of environmental laws and mostly fixed the ozone hole and lead pollution. CO2 emissions are tricky as so much of the economy used fossil fuel and the top four emitters being China, India and Russia as well as the US you can't stop it without getting those on board. It's not impossible though.

Recalls & reversals generally seem to very selectively incite the fringe. The center figures the matter is settled, and the very edges come in and undo it. So I personally tend to see recalls & reversals especially (except in cases of e.g. corruption, criminality, incompetence) as the will of the fringe, not the will of the masses.

Colorado is kind of an example for me. In 2013 the right mobilized over just-enacted gun control laws and recalled a number of Democrats, turning the majority to the right. But then in the general elections of 2018, everything went back to the Democrats again.

> The government is there to serve the people.

I think you could ask twenty people about what does this mean and you’ll get twenty different shades of ‘serving the people’.

Would you say the same about regulations against smoking?

Definitely I would. As a restaurant owner I should be able to dictate who can and who can't smoke in my premises. Having said that, cigarettes should be much more expensive so we can fund healthcare.

Smokers are actually cheaper for the healthcare system because they die early and don't require years and years of intensive medical care during old age.

People act against their own self-interest all the time (e.g. the modern Republican Party in America).

Spain is by far the least anti EU country in the EU. Also, it is a matter of who enforces pollution policy: Madrid is a city with limitations, Europe on the other hand is able to dictate directives.

On regards to the elections, let's see if she gets kicked out.

> Spain is by far the least anti EU country in the EU

No. In the latest Eurobarometer, confidence in the EU is one of the lowest in Spain. 54% of respondents do not trust the EU, vs. e.g. 21% in Lithuania or 31% in Denmark.

http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/...

However, in the same document you can also see that Spain is the second EU country with the most positive image of the European Union, second only to Sweden (page 10).

When asked about membership in the EU, the answer is also more positive than average, although in a more modest 9th place (http://www.europarl.europa.eu/at-your-service/files/be-heard... page 37).

So it depends on how you ask. I would say saying that Spain is the least anti EU country is quite an overstatement, but it's definitely more pro-EU than average.

I think the results of the question on trust may be biased by the fact that Spanish people don't trust politicians in general. In page 6 of this Eurobarometer survey (https://ec.europa.eu/spain/sites/spain/files/eb88_nat_es_es.... - sorry, in Spanish, I couldn't find it in English) you can see that while trust in the EU is not very high, it's quite higher than trust in the Spanish government. So most people wouldn't want to leave the EU.

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