The Ministry of Sustainability, Ecological Transition and Spokesperson, through the General Directorate of Infrastructures, has completed the elaboration of the Bicycle Strategy, a document that proposes a set of actions aimed at promoting and raising awareness in society about cycling mobility both for daily commutes and for tourism and leisure.
The Bicycle Strategy, now available on the Government’s website, has been completed after an extensive period of public participation and gives an overview of the actions that can be undertaken to promote cycling mobility.
The Government of La Rioja has advanced several actions in favor of cycling mobility contemplated in this Strategy, such as the inclusion of sustainable mobility and cycling mobility in the new Regional Road Plan 2022-2030; the already started construction of cycle-pedestrian lanes in the metropolitan area of ??Logroño with the Polígono de Cantabria, Lardero and Villamediana de Iregua.
Also the bike path in the polygons of El Raposal and Planarresano in Arnedo, already finished; and the connection by bike lane between Bobadilla and Baños de Río Tobía; It has also launched aid to promote the use of bicycles and aid for the purchase of bicycles for transporting goods and passengers, among other measures already implemented.
The main measure that it contemplates is the creation of a Regional Network of Bicycle Routes that goes beyond the metropolitan area in which the works of three cycle-pedestrian lanes have already begun. In fact, the LR -131 between the Logroño cemetery and the Polígono de Cantabria will remain closed for at least four months due to the construction of the cycle-pedestrian lane that will link Logroño with the Polígono de Cantabria.
The Minister of Sustainability, Ecological Transition and Spokesperson, Álex Dorado Nájera, considers that “with regard to the use of the bicycle, a path has been started in accordance with the rest of the objectives of the green agenda, since the bicycle provides efficient and respectful mobility environmentally friendly, cheap, versatile, faster and compatible with other modes of transport”.
“It entails a minimum occupation of urban space, favors personal and community health, with the consequent savings in public health spending, it is a good sporting exercise, easy and accessible for all ages and provides better knowledge of the territory”, he added .
In addition, promoting its use will promote the economic sector related to the manufacture and sale of bicycles and accessories and favors the economic sector insofar as it represents a boost to the bicycle industry.
In fact, the Government of La Rioja is the first regional government that has developed aid for the purchase of bicycles for use as regular passenger transport and for cycle-logistics activities, as recognized this month by the Association of Brand Manufacturers and Bicicletas de España (AMBE) at the presentation of the study “Aid for the purchase of bicycles: more employment and fewer emissions”.
As this report reflects, the bicycle sector represents 24,000 jobs in Spain through 400 companies, of which 180 are manufacturers of bicycles or accessories, and the 3,100 shops and repair shops that serve this market.
Along the same lines, La Rioja has joined the Network of Cities for Bicycles (RCxB), and is the second autonomous community, after Catalonia, to join this national association created in 2009 to generate a joint dynamic that allows facilitating, make it safer and develop the circulation of cyclists.
Its objectives include promoting initiatives to make cycling safer, intensifying the promotion of the bicycle and deploying its potential by increasing the infrastructures for its use, as well as promoting its use from the educational field, encouraging the use of the bicycle in access to work, promoting the distribution of goods by bicycle, facilitating intermodality between bicycles and public transport, and promoting bicycle tourism as a local economic engine.
This support for bicycles is also transferred to the metropolitan bus transport system to adapt them to intermodality, which allows access to buses with folding bicycles and skates, or to the La Rioja Climate Change Law project, which includes goals in low-emission cycling mobility to face the challenge of the climate emergency.
