The vice president has highlighted that the use of the bicycle can contribute to decongesting public transport, allowing users to maintain a safe distance and avoiding the massive use of private cars, which would exacerbate air quality problems in cities. Measures of this type are being taken by cities such as Berlin, Milan, Paris or Bogotá.
The vice president refers to scientific studies that associate air pollution with a greater impact of COVID-19. He recalled that in current circumstances we are seeing how the forced restrictions on mobility have substantially improved air quality in Spain. In this context, the Government considers that the expectations of a way out of the health crisis offer an opportunity to promote a change in mobility patterns in urban centers that makes possible cleaner air and better living conditions for citizens.
As Ribera has transferred, after a meeting he held with representatives of the FEMP last week, the progressive recovery of activity implies rethinking the challenges associated with mobility in a new scenario. In this context, a new paradigm of sustainable mobility should be advocated that takes into account both the reduction of travel needs (promotion of telework) and measures to avoid the concentration of movements (time flexibility) or the promotion of means of transport sustainable, including active mobility and other modalities of micromobility.
Proposal for possible measures
Within this framework, the vice president has submitted to the FEMP a proposal for possible measures to favor the use of bicycles in cities, mainly in cities with more than 5,000 inhabitants, in the context of de-escalation:
- Promote the opening of public shared bicycle services, with the necessary guarantees and precautions to avoid contagion.
- Implement low-cost provisional infrastructures for the expansion of pedestrian and bicycle areas, which may include, for example, the reservation of the right lane in large arteries for bicycles or the reduction of speed in the city (prohibition of driving more than 30 km / h on single lane roads in each direction), a measure in which the General Directorate of Traffic is already working.
- Establish corridors in peri-urban areas that communicate polygons, neighboring municipalities or university campuses with city centers.
- Identify the bicycle as an authorized vehicle for travel in the activities and exceptions allowed, considering the bicycle as a means of transport and not as a leisure tool, thus avoiding potential misunderstandings.
- Facilitate and reinforce intermodality with collective transport modes (Metro and Cercanías), reducing as far as possible the restrictions on boarding a bicycle in them and facilitating the integration of bicycle loan systems with collective transport tickets.
- Promote secure bicycle parking in work centers, bus and commuter stations and strategic points.
- Dissemination campaigns to give visibility to the bicycle as an authorized and recommended means of transport and to disseminate good practices for the safe use of the bicycle, with the aim of reducing the risk of contagion, and the development of local guides with municipal regulations for traveling in bicycle.
Ribera has requested the collaboration of municipal entities in this area, given that they are competent in most of the measures to be adopted and because, as the administration closest to the citizen, they will have a central role in the following phases of crisis management derived from COVID-19.
The Government is also analyzing the development of support measures for the bicycle in the medium and long term, based on those already included in the State Bicycle Strategy, with the aim that the impulse to this form of active and clean mobility has continuity. and consolidate in time.
Likewise, the development, with the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, of a Strategy and a Law of Sustainable Mobility will offer the opportunity to address this issue beyond the process of de-escalation of the health crisis.
