Barcelona’s Radical Move: Erasing Bus Routes To Shield Locals From Tourists [Roundup]

News and notes from around the interweb:

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

More articles by Gary Leff »

Comments

  1. Weird that the dates go from right to left. Have they never seen any chart or graph before?

  2. @Mantis
    Not all the world reads from left to right. Not all graphic representations are designed for those who read from left to right.

  3. Interesting story about the residents of the La Salut neighborhood in Barcelona. For starters, I’m surprised that getting the route removed from Google and Apple Maps had the effect that they claim: When I’m traveling internationally, I go directly to the websites of the public transportation companies, and assume that most seasoned travelers do the same. Moreover, it sounds like it could end up being a tale of unintended consequences. Assuming that virtually all of the displaced tourists end up in Ubers instead, the clogged traffic could actually delay their commute. In addition, for those who believe in the Theory of Anthropogenic Climate Change, it would mean a lot more CO2 as well.

  4. What’s the code for the Robert Kraft treatment at the Pier Lounge? Asking for a friend.

  5. @Mantis — From the comments on Reddit:

    “It’s because it was painted on (what was presumably) the open wall at the entrance to the CR Smith Museum. It happened to be on the right side of the entryway, hence the non-traditional right to left flow as you “walk forward in time”.”

  6. Count me amongst those who say the answer to a perennially jammed bus is to add more buses. Demand clearly exceeds supply.

    I can understand time of day crunches, it’s not always economic to add more for rush hour, but if it’s usually jammed, add more!

  7. ubers are already a problem on the narrow streets around the park entrance. this will make it even worse. the apartments on the streets leading to the entrance all have banners, yard signs. telling ubers and taxis to drop dead

  8. @Bill. Good explanation. It is a tad bit disorienting and I was thinking it was for a more balanced display of the airlines name. Most advertising pictures of an airlines’ aircraft show the left side with title graphics running from nose to tail.

  9. Interesting diagram about the airlines folded into American. Among them at the very beginning is AVCO, the Aviation Corporation Of America, which was the holding company for Pan Am. I’m not sure how that worked out but it’s interesting nonetheless.

  10. I’m a big fan of Google Maps to figure out public transport in foreign cities and I’m not a fan of nimby’ism. I do understand this situation though:
    The bus 116 is a tiny bus (think hotel shuttle, maybe 10 seats + standing room) that winds it’s way through narrow neighborhood streets, up & down hills, mostly used by elderly people with mobility issues.
    Replacing it with a bigger bus is not an option and buying more (specialty) buses to cover peak tourist days doesn’t make financial sense.
    And a taxi is not really necessary – most visitors to Park Guell already walk 5 min to the next major road or a little more to the metro station.
    This is not as big a deal as the many reports make it out to be…

  11. The Europeans seem to be on a big tourist-hating trip. In the Netherlands, Amsterdam has plans to have a block on issuing new hotel building permits and prohibit any net increase in hotel room counts. It doesn’t take genius to figure out that they want to increase the costs for tourists to stay in Amsterdam and this will tend to do that.

  12. Let the big European tourist destinations charge the crap out of tourists. How about a $100 nightly fee? That will do it nicely.

Comments are closed.