Barcelona’s urban landscape has recovered the appearance it had before the pandemic. The terraces allowed on the road to mitigate the economic consequences derived from capacity restrictions have disappeared. Its elimination has involved the removal of the concrete and plastic barriers that the City Council placed almost four years ago to isolate them from traffic and the recovery of 5,800 parking spaces in the city.
Almost 3,000 New Jersey model barriers and around 6,700 barriers better known as Sevillanas have been removed from the streets of Barcelona. Two and a half years ago, after leaving behind the worst ravages of the covid pandemic and entering the “new normal” proclaimed by the Government of Pedro Sánchez, municipal workers began the removal of these obstacles.
In recent weeks, the removal of all barriers, both New Jersey and Sevillian, has been completed in an operation that has cost the City Council 370,000 euros. These items are now stored on a large municipal property in the Horta-Guinardó district.
The disappearance of the terraces that were installed on a temporary basis and the barriers that protected them from vehicles allows Barcelona to now have 5,800 more parking spaces on public roads. On the one hand, places that were suppressed at the time have been recovered and, on the other hand, newly created ones have been added. Of the total of 5,803 spaces available, 5,072 are for motorcycles and the rest, 731, for cars.
The implementation of these new parking spaces will serve to partially mitigate the lack of spaces to park cars and motorcycles in the city. The district that most benefited from the replacement of restaurant terraces with these spaces is Eixample, which recovers almost 1,500 spaces: 1,339 for motorcycles and 150 for cars.
In the infographics that accompany this information you can see how Eixample is the district that gains the most public parking space. Next, Sant Martí (772 motorcycle spaces and 253 car spaces) and Sants-Montjuïc (786 motorcycle spaces and 24 car spaces) are the other two districts that benefit most from the measure.
At the opposite pole, Ciutat Vella only manages to create 112 new parking spaces (92 motorcycle spaces and 20 car spaces) and Les Corts, 262 (204 motorcycle spaces and 58 motorcycle spaces).
After the outbreak of the pandemic, the City Council authorized the installation of 1,550 terraces on the roads, of which 681 were definitively consolidated, according to the Gremi de Restauració of Barcelona. In total there were 8,496 seats, arranged mainly in Eixample, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi and Sant-Montjuïc, which are three of the four districts that have recovered the most parking spaces.
Of the 731 car parking spaces newly enabled, 68% are in the green zone, 18% in the blue zone and 6% for residents. The rest are dedicated to unregulated parking, official reserves and ambulances, among other uses.