The General Secretary for Transport and Mobility, María José Rallo, has been “perplexed” by the announcements from some town halls to remove some bike lanes, and has asked them to “calmly reflect” on it.
Rallo has not explicitly mentioned either these parties or specific cities, but he has made this comment in Santander, during his participation in a course at the Menéndez Pelayo International University (UIMP), after in recent days several municipalities that They have new local governments of the PP and Vox have announced their intention to remove some bike lanes.
This is the case of, for example, Valladolid, Elche, Palma de Mallorca and Gijón (where they govern together with Foro Asturias).
Rallo is struck by the fact that city councils are “willing to lose money they have received from the Recovery Plan to back down projects related to bike lanes” when, in his opinion, “it is an area that should overcome ideologies.”
This was stated during his initial speech in the framework of a round table on Transport, Mobility and Cities held within the IX Global Forum on Engineering and Public Works, included in the UIMP, in which he defended that the bicycle, as form of mobility in cities, has “tremendous potential”.
Although he has indicated that the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (MITMA), to which he belongs, is trying to promote its use, he has opined that it should be, “above all, the town halls and the autonomous communities” that carry out an “active policy” to encourage its use. He has called attention to the fact that Spain is “one of the countries where it is used the least for whatever reason”.
Despite this reality, he has insisted that the bicycle has “important potential for improvement in cities” and has stressed that it also “creates benefits for those who use it and for those who do not use it” because, in addition to being a way of healthy transport for its users, its use, as opposed to the car, contributes to an improvement in the quality of the air and the environment and a reduction in noise from which all people benefit. However, he has recognized that “it is not the solution to all problems” of mobility.
For Rallo, “the backbone” of sustainable mobility must be urban transport, the use of which -he has said- “has been tried to promote” from the Ministry and “sustain it in very difficult times”, such as the pandemic.
He has pointed out that with initiatives such as the aid implemented to reduce the price of tickets -something in which city councils and autonomous communities also collaborate- it has been possible to achieve “practically the pre-pandemic levels of use”.
In addition, he has highlighted that the use of public transport has grown more than mobility in general, which means that it has gained relative weight compared to the private vehicle in urban environments, something that he has considered “good news”.
Subsequently, in statements to the media and questioned by electric scooters, he explained that the General Directorate of Traffic has a role in its regulation, but he has indicated that it is each city “the one that has to establish this form of coexistence” between the different forms of mobility so that users of public roads, especially the most vulnerable ones, “do not feel threatened” by this type of vehicle “which seems in some cases to mainly overwhelm pedestrians”.
