The ban on bicycles and electric scooters on the sidewalks of Barcelona had until now one exception, which was not a small one: sidewalks of more than five meters. There are not many of them in the city, but based on this asterisk in the regulations, bikes have had a free lane in recent years to travel along the central promenade of Avinguda Icà ria or along Avinguda Meridiana at the height of Can Dragó, for give two examples. In recent years, the use of 4.75 meter sidewalks (the standard measure of the plot of the Eixample) has also been allowed between ten at night and seven in the morning for safety reasons.
The imminent approval of the new traffic ordinance will end these exceptions, and will definitively banish bikes and scooters from all city sidewalks. The municipal technicians consider that the limitation to 30 km/h on all urban roads and the expansion of the network of bike lanes make it possible to dispense with the small print and bet on concluding the discussion regarding the permissibility of bikes in the reserved space for the pedestrian 24 hours a day, no matter how wide it is. In this way, the purpose of the moratorium will be completed, which since January 1, 2019 already allows cyclists who ride on the sidewalk to be fined in order to reduce a conflict that has gone down with the col cycling group but that the scooters have shot up alarmingly.
From the outset, the only bikes that will be able to use the sidewalks when the new regulation comes into force will be those of children under the age of twelve and their companions, with no time or size limitations. All in all, the public exhibition of the ordinance has received about fifteen allegations, to which those in charge of the City Council’s Mobility Department are responding these days. Among these, one of the aspects that is requested to be reviewed is the maximum age at which it is allowed to ride on the sidewalk, and a slight raising of the bar to 14 or 16 years is being considered in order to promote safe travel by bike up to school and high school and to adapt to the age protected in regulations of the same area of ​​the General Directorate of Traffic (DGT).
Another allegation that has been presented and that goes along the same lines urges the City Council to allow those cyclists who carry a child in a child seat to continue using the sidewalks. The answer to this allegation and the other allegations will be known in the coming days; it is a technical job that does not stop despite the electoral campaign. Among the entities that have presented allegations are all kinds, from the Association for the Promotion of the Bicycle to the Motor Guild and the RACC, also passing through the National Association of Companies in the Sector of the Two Wheels (Anesdor), as well as the lawyer and former popular councilor Alberto Fernández DÃaz.
Although the municipal government accelerated the tasks during the last months to close the mandate with the new ordinance already approved, the large amount of allegations received has delayed the calendar more than the account and it will be left for the next one. It is expected to be approved at the first ordinary plenary after the constitution of the new City Council, in July, although this decision will be in the hands of the future mayor. If there is a change in the mayor’s office, the folder could lose priority and be postponed to an undetermined date.
Be that as it may, there is consensus among the main parties with options to govern on the main modifications of the ordinance, designed especially to adapt it to the arrival of scooters, such as the mandatory helmet (which does not affect the bike) or the prohibition of two people traveling in the same vehicle. At the end of the day, it is not an invention of the current councilor, but rather the application of the recent Traffic law, in force since last year, but of which there is still no developed the regulation.
When this happens, issues such as mandatory helmets and the 16-year minimum age to ride a scooter will be mandatory in all municipalities in Spain. The modification of the ordinance makes it possible to advance this scenario and advances its application. Girona and Lleida have already done it.
However, in the case of the Barcelona ordinance, the devil is in the details and this is where there may be certain changes that affect the fine print. ERC and Junts also presented allegations on very specific issues of the wording.
Despite the fact that the issues concerning the scooter are the ones that have grabbed the headlines since the modification of this ordinance began to be discussed, most of the allegations revolve around issues of urban distribution of goods. The association of self-employed workers and transporters, food distributors and the association of manufacturers and distributors Aecoc have also submitted allegations. Even the municipal company Barcelona Serveis Municipals (BSM) has done it.
The proposed changes in this area focus on the regulation of the loading and unloading of delivery tricycles. As usually happens, some complain that it is too restrictive a regulation and others say that it is excessive.
An aspect related to scooters and which is not included in the ordinance are shared scooters, present in many European cities but which Barcelona has kept at bay after a first attempt by some companies that ended up with their junk in the warehouse of the municipal crane. The regulation in this case will be metropolitan, but the text of the traffic regulations sets a guideline that will significantly condition the hypothetical deployment of shared scooters: it forces them to be parked in designated parking lots (the same as those for bikes) and always tied In this way, the aim is to prevent scooters from being left lying on any pavement, as already happens in Madrid or Paris, where the chaos has been of such magnitude that citizens have voted in a referendum to put an end to this kind of shared vehicles for rent by the minute.
