The May 28 elections are getting closer and the people of Barcelona continue to send their messages to mayors through the Your Opinion Counts macro-survey, which La Vanguardia runs to coincide with the elections to collect the opinions of its readers on the main problems of the Catalan capital and the present and future city model.
Among the mobility issues raised and after having already collected more than 16,000 opinions, the people of Barcelona are clear: nine out of ten readers demand greater regulation and greater control of the movement of bicycles and scooters through the city.
This majority outcry reflected in the survey seems to be in line with the latest measure recently announced, a few weeks before the elections, by the City Council regarding the new traffic ordinance, which prohibits the use of bikes and scooters on all sidewalks ( with the exception of children under 12 and accompanying adults). This decision has been taken due to the increase in conflict with pedestrians and due to the expansion of both bike lanes and areas with a speed limit of 30 km/h.
Now, the scooter is a vehicle that is causing more and more incidents in the city. It is not strange that 92% of the readers who have already participated in the survey demand that it be controlled and regulated more.
In this sense, after they have been vetoed on public transport, specific measures have been announced in Barcelona, ​​such as the prohibition of more than one person traveling on a scooter, the obligation to wear a bell and front, rear and brake lights, as well as such as the duty to get off the scooter when there are crowds of people on pedestrian streets and that the maximum speed limit has been set at 25 kilometers / hour on the road and 10 kilometers / hour on the bike lanes on the sidewalk.
Parallel to the increase in Zones 30 in the city, the number of radars has also increased. On this question, seven out of ten readers consider that there are too many of them and attribute it more to a collection effort than to a real need or effectiveness of road safety.
Of the 17 new radars that Barcelona has incorporated, a dozen are in school environments, where the maximum speed is limited to 30 km/h, while the other five sanction from 50 km/h on large avenues such as Diagonal , the Gran Via and Aragó. The result is a fine every 4 minutes.
An evaluation of the 30 Zones in the Poble Sec neighborhood revealed that the vehicles that circulated at the highest speeds were motorcycles. Precisely, the regulation of this other vehicle is being another of the issues of the campaign in terms of mobility and with a view to a possible implementation of greater control measures in the next legislature. Currently, there are registered in the Catalan capital about 350,000 motorcycles.
According to a RACC study, half of motorcyclists consider it dangerous to ride in Barcelona. And one of the reasons has to do with the coexistence with bicycles, since they indicate risk points, especially in turns at intersections with two-way bicycle lanes. Last year there were 23 fatalities in traffic accidents in the city, of which 16 were motorcyclists, according to municipal data.
The campaign is talking about the need to agree on a mobility plan for the motorcycle, after more recent emphasis has been placed on the bike and the scooter. An issue that could be key in the next four years is the lack of parking for motorcycles in a city with less and less space on the roads and where there is a conflict between the pedestrian and the motorcycles parked on the sidewalks. How will it be solved? ?… We will have to wait for the results of the elections to find out.