The changes carried out in the mobility of Barcelona during the last years could have gone much further if the government of Ada Colau had not been in coalition with the PSC. This is at least the feeling that Albert Batlle, deputy mayor for Security, has for the last term. He himself was defined yesterday in the Equestrian Circle as “a factor of moderation” within the municipal government and stood as a counterweight to some projects that Deputy Mayor Janet Sanz wanted to promote from the Urbanism area.
This constant bickering between the communes and the socialists in the matter of mobility has been a consequence of the organizational change promoted by the communes when they arrived at Plaça Sant Jaume in 2015. At that time they decided to separate the Mobility council from the Security council, which traditionally had been together It was thus sought that the portfolio responsible for public transport, the construction of bike lanes and other needs related to mobility be linked directly with the urban planning area that is in charge of carrying out the works. In 2019, with the socialists governing in coalition with the commons, this difference between the two areas was further strengthened when Mobility was left in the hands of the PSC under the command of Urbanism led by the commons. The tactical urban planning promoted after the pandemic showed the totally different approaches between the two government partners.
“I have had to endure the effects of mobility”, acknowledged the political leader of the Urban Guard during his participation in a debate on mobility with the president of the RACC, Josep Mateu, and affirmed that in the next mandate it would be appropriate to recover the old organizational chart so that decisions regarding mobility are taken again taking into account police aspects rather than urban planning ones. For the future, Batlle also asks “not to open more melons on mobility”, although he makes it clear that all the transformations started must be finished. “You can’t go back on issues such as the tram works, the remedy would be worse than the disease”, considered Batlle, in favor of “reflecting and rectifying if there is something that can be rectified, but without going back on nothing”.
At his side, Josep Mateu, on the other hand, opted to “stop everything” and criticized the lack of programming in the works and in the actions of the City Council in recent years. “We all want safer and more sustainable mobility, but it is being done with a lack of planning and communication that is collapsing and causing around 300,000 people to waste time in congestion every day,” assured the president of the RACC. According to Josep Mateu, “the private car will disappear from the city center during the next ten years, but it must be done in an orderly manner and accompanying the people”.
In this sense, Mateu and Batlle agreed that the solution is to promote once and for all a metropolitan vision of mobility policies, with the construction of large car parks at the origin (outside of Barcelona) and more reliable public transport on journeys from the metropolitan region, “with a commuter service that is not a shame like it is now”, concluded Batlle. The deputy mayor of Barcelona also charged the Generalitat when he considered that the most important lack of planning in recent years has been the absence of a strategy for the disappearance of tolls on Catalan motorways.
