Barcelona's future mobility plan will prioritize pedestrians

The Municipality of Barcelona intends to strongly encourage walking mobility, as confirmed by Ms Mercedes Vidal, the councilor of Mobility of the government of Mayor Ms Ada Colau. The new urban mobility plan (PMU) – that will indicate the actions to be undertaken between 2019 and 2014 - will particularly focus on pedestrians and their needs.

The overall goal of the new PMU is to reduce the difficulties encountered by citizens in their daily journeys. To achieve this, some of the objectives identified for the next five years are the expansion of sidewalks, made possible by moving to the road part of the bike lanes that still run along the sidewalks of the city, add more parking spaces for motorbikes along roads, and increase the number of streets where pedestrians have priority.

"We have to ensure that pedestrians has safe, friendly, spacious and comfortable spaces where to walk with maximum reliability and comfort. More than 40 million euros have been invested in the last years, but further efforts are still needed” argued Ms Vidal.

Further measures are expected to be implemented, such as the enlargement of 30 km/h zones, the implementation of traffic calming measures and the diffusion of awareness campaigns, in order to actively involve citizens to the drawing up of the new PMU. About this last aspect, comments were made recently by several readers of La Vanguardia, providing interesting contributions to be taken into consideration in the view of additional modifications of the new PMU.

Finally, the improvement of the accessibility is another objective pursued by the Municipality of Barcelona, taking into account all people with any type of disability.

Source: Story first published in February on La Vanguardia