The generic objectives are shared by the RACC and the Barcelona City Council (a more pleasant city, who could not wish for it?), but in the way of doing it, they differ completely. “We do not agree on how or when,” concludes Josep Mateu, president of the mobility club. For him, actions such as the remodeling of Via Laietana or the green axes of the Eixample superblock may one day make sense, but not yet: “They must be stopped, they must be done once improvements have been made in public transport, not hasty manner”.
In other words, according to Mateu, “the solution is to first have more reliable public transport and then reduce the use of private vehicles”. It is a claim that the RACC has been making for years, but the evident progress of the work on the green axes shows that the cry of the entity has not been heard. Mateu criticizes that actions such as that of Consell de Cent “will be a very good solution for the residents of that street, but not for the peripheral ones” and remarks that “touching the Cerdà plan should be a consensual decision”.
Consensus is one of the most repeated concepts during the conference given by Josep Mateu yesterday in La Pedrera as a balance of the municipal mandate that is about to end. “In the last eight years Barcelona has stagnated, we have four key years for the progress of the city and make it a benchmark for mobility,” Mateu summarized.
So that the mayoral candidates take note, the RACC presented a decalogue of recommendations in which it outlines the most important issues in terms of mobility for the coming years. The aforementioned reinforcement of public transport takes the form of actions considered essential, especially in railway matters. Among them, the old demand to improve the Rodalies service stands out, as well as the construction of line 8 of Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat, which has just begun preliminary works, and a powerful network of interchange car parks at train stations. Reference is also made to the need to give more capacity to the Vallès de Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat (FGC) line, whose wagons exceed 100% of their capacity at rush hour. The union of the Trambaix and the Trambesòs by the Diagonal, on the other hand, does not fall within the petitions presented.
Other lines of action proposed by the RACC are a boost to electric mobility, the promotion of shared mobility and a political solution to the conflict between taxis and rental vehicles with driver (VTC). And all this, from a point of view that goes beyond the mental borders marked by the rounds, with a truly metropolitan vision.
In this sense, the RACC calls for the creation of a public-private metropolitan mobility agency that manages and makes consensual decisions, in the image and likeness of the Autoritat del Transport Metropolità (ATM), but with powers over all means of transport, both public as private. For the RACC, in this way it could be achieved that by 2030 30% of journeys on weekdays are made by public transport.
The format of launching proposals with the intention that the municipal government picks them up and carries out some of them was already done four years ago, and the result is not very encouraging. In that case, instead of a decalogue, 40 proposals were presented. Of these, only 20% have been carried out (the pacification of school environments, the extension of bike lanes and the renewal of public administration fleets stand out), 27% have been initially promoted and the remaining 53%, more half, have not been addressed or evolved.
