Are we aware of the consequences of the supervilla in Barcelona’s Eixample, which Ada Colau is applying at the loading step?
It is about preventing circulation, except for bicycles and scooters, in 18 streets. New in Llobregat-Besòs direction: Corsica to Viladomat, Provence, Consell de Cent, Tamarit, Parlament, Aldana, Ausiàs March, Valencia from Diagonal and Sant Antoni Maria Claret. And nine more in the sea-mountain direction: Llançà, Rocafort, Borrell, Casanova, Enric Granados, Rambla Catalunya, Girona, Sicily and Cartagena, to which the Via Laietana must be added. To all this, we must add the impediments of tactical urban planning to the rest of the streets and the proliferation of cycle lanes.
The result is a brutal strangulation of mobility, which will be concentrated in the remaining two-thirds of the streets, which will have to absorb not only private vehicles, but public transport, taxis, goods distribution services and other services (ambulances, firemen, police). The collapse of traffic will exacerbate the damage caused by pollution and noise on the majority of the population. The current situation of Carrer València is an attenuated sample of what will happen to Barcelona.
This cancellation of the Cerdà plan presents even greater irregularities. The first is the lack of democratic legitimacy caused by the absence of a public consultation, which should be extended to the extension of the tram along the Diagonal. Manu militari cannot be imposed, with a simple works plan, such a radical change, which compromises the present and future of the city and, beyond that, the functioning of the metropolitan region.
The second irregularity refers to the administrative procedure followed to approve the transformations. An agreement by the municipal government commission approving a works project as if it were to widen sidewalks, instead of what it is: the modification of the current urban planning, which will alter the mobility of the tertiary center of Barcelona, ??which is the the same as saying metropolitan, with an affectation on the needs of five million people. Because, and this must be emphasized, 78% of the vehicles that circulate in the Eixample come from outside the city.
The third irregularity is the concealment of the total cost of this transformation. Will it be 700 million to which the cost of the tram must be added? But there’s more to it. It is hidden what the exploitation regime will be. Will the private concession be maintained as in the current tramway, which would benefit in this way from the public investment made? Or will the concession be rescued and in this case another 400 million must be added to the cost? And if the privatization is maintained, how will it affect the income of the loss-making company TMB? The lack of transparency is absolute.
Finally, nothing is known about how it will disrupt economic activity and jobs. Shops, offices, workshops, car parks. Everything will change radically with a third less streets. What is the dimension of this relocation?
But it is that, in addition, all the kilometers of streets without traffic will be landscaped, more or less, which multiplies the cost of maintenance, if degradation is to be avoided, in a city that already suffers from this evil to an extraordinary extent. But precisely for this reason, and for the current poor state of the green areas, why should we trust that they would do good maintenance on a much larger scale when they are unable to do so at present? The experiments, with soda.
Colau would thus destroy the mobility of Barcelona, ??creating a first-class city: that of streets without cars, if not degraded by the massification of bicycles, scooters, the bottles and the night shelter for homeless people, and another second-class: that of collapsed streets, polluted beyond all limits and noisy to the point of sickness, like Valencia Street today.
But for the environmental prosecutor “it is not clear that, in order to carry out an arrangement of this public space, in the form established by these axes, the modification of the General Metropolitan Plan (PGM) is necessary beforehand”. It can be seen that it does not have enough for this with the liquidation of a third of the streets. “True things, Sancho, that will make the stones speak.” amen
