Pontevedra — A Spanish City Centre Reclaimed from Cars Since 1999

After Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores became mayor in 1999, Pontevedra progressively pedestrianised its historic centre and capped speeds on remaining streets at 10-30 km/h, removing hundreds of surface parking spaces and building around 4,500 underground.
Reported outcomes include a fall in car traffic (citywide reductions cited between 40% and 53%, and far larger in the centre), a roughly two-thirds cut in car-related CO2, about 70% of trips on foot or by bike, and no fatal road accidents in roughly a decade, versus 69 road deaths recorded in 1998 as cited by the press. In Praza de España, about 26,000 cars a day in the late 1990s fell to around 800.
Caution: these figures come mainly from the municipality and journalism, differ between sources (for example centre traffic cuts cited as 92% or 97%), and are not from an independent evaluation. Some business owners reported customer complaints about parking, and the city is small, which limits transferability.

Read the full analysis: https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/made-for-people-not-cars-reclaiming-european-cities/