Let’s put bicycles on our streets. The way urban space is configured has an immediate effect on our quality of life. In Spain, there are more than 30,000 premature deaths associated with poor air quality.
Changes in the mobility of cities and the effects on it go through an evolutionary process. Years ago, lane expansions on the main thoroughfares of our cities were supposedly designed to solve traffic problems. Everything would be wonderful: cars would circulate without restrictions, without anyone stopping them and, meanwhile, filling our cities with asphalt.
The experience, despite warnings from mobility professionals, has led to a greater accumulation of cars, more traffic jams, more pollution and more public space dedicated to cars. Dietrich Braess, a German mathematician, already warned in the late 1960s about this phenomenon known as the Braess paradox, which stipulates that, when expanding the road network, the accumulation of individual decisions about the best route to follow leads to greater congestion .
Induced traffic they say nowadays; Knowledge of the existence of a new road or an existing road with greater capacity causes an effect of attraction on several levels: car users who change routes, users of other modes of transport who decide to try the car for its supposed speed, new residences in the surroundings of that road that guarantees quick and agile access to the city center (sic) and to new businesses in its surroundings due to its fantastic communication. In a short time, traffic on that road is worse than before the expansion and, as a result, the quality of air and life in the city also deteriorates.
Rehabilitation of cities and quality of life
Thus, the readaptation of cities after a process of transformation of urban space to the detriment of cars leads to a similar process of change. Merchants, residents and the mainstream media will be scandalized proclaiming urban chaos, the end of commerce, endless traffic jams, insecurity and so many other proclamations that, as the weeks go by, dissolve in the advance of a new normality.
This is known as leaked traffic. And, further on, we will analyze the process and the reasons behind these unfounded assumptions that proclaim an unbearable city. As a preview, let us think of Valencia, Seville, Barcelona, Berlin, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and many other cities that have decided to transform their mobility by taking giant steps in reducing the space allocated to cars and promoting public transport, pedestrian mobility and bicycles (cyclist mobility). There is no other. Protecting our health is inseparable from more sustainable cities. But let’s back up a little.
The way cities are configured has an immediate effect on our quality of life. Thus, no matter how many New Year’s resolutions we make for a healthier life, if the structure of our streets, squares, neighborhoods and municipalities do not follow the same path, they will again fall on deaf ears. The way we move has evolved, for the worse, in recent decades.
Everything that arises in terms of sustainable mobility lies in going back to times when our basic services were a 15-minute walk away; people moved (they moved) on public transport and the bicycle was not only used to go out on the weekends, but was a fundamental element in urban mobility.
The beginning of the car era
At the beginning of the last century, in the United States, Fordism (a production model associated with linear manufacturing) began to work on the idea of bringing a vehicle to every home, thus generating a need for consumption in all families and a whole model of capitalist production associated with the private combustion vehicle.
For that, he needed two essential tools: the media and the transformation of cities. And we already know what happened: car mobility was soon associated with freedom, with the aspirations of a supposed middle class, placing the car as an indispensable element in our lives while, at the same time, cities were filled with urban highways, large streets full of lanes shooting, giving up our public space and condemning our health.
And despite environmentalists, urban planners, engineers and health professionals warning of the dire consequences of designing cities designed for cars, the productive machinery of consumption has stifled any aspirations to maintain decent cities.
Alarming data on deaths from contamination
As of today, according to the Pollution and Health Commission of the magazine The Lancet Planetary Health, 9 million people die prematurely every year on our planet as a result of pollution. It is, therefore, a real challenge to approach this scenario from all possible angles and, in particular, paying attention to the air contamination, causing 75% of these premature deaths. In our country, which is by no means unrelated to this reality, there are more than 30,000 premature deaths associated with poor air quality, mostly caused by the combustion engines of cars.
The gravity of the current scenario requires measures in all directions: incentives for public transport, urban, productive and industrial transformation to reduce dependence on private motor vehicles and a radical change in the mobility paradigm to focus directly on what is sustainable. Take the car out of the equation. Electric too. Let’s take the bike to our streets.
To reach this scenario, there is a fundamental element: the dispute for public space. Here lies a challenge of enormous magnitude because it involves taking counter-hegemonic decisions. As I sketched at the beginning, aggressive capitalism, focused on unlimited growth and consumption, has established the car-centric model of mobility as the main form of settlement in our cities. And when resources are limited, it’s clear you’re doomed to fail.
Undo the current model of cities in favor of bicycles
However, undoing the current model of cities implies taking a path strewn with stones (rocks) by the automotive sector itself, which seeks to ensure a specific model of cities, and of interaction between them, that allows maintaining levels of consumption and production. . But I believe there is something crucial: those who today defend a car-centric model of the city are mortgaging the future of our next generations, condemning their health and ours and destroying our planet. They are advocates of atrocity.
Those who condemn the transformation of public space oriented towards a more sustainable life, arguing new traffic jams or longer driving time to their destination, as well as the need to inform themselves and observe the evolution of many of the aforementioned cities, are direct participants in the destruction health and the depletion of the planet’s resources.
Today, most cities have embarked on a very positive path, imitating trends already well established in many European cities: taking space away from cars to give it to pedestrians, public transport and bicycles. Focusing on space for bicycles, this distribution of public space is decisive for two fundamental aspects: it produces a pull effect, as it begins to be seen as the only viable option, and space for cars is reduced. Very important.
Commitment to sustainable mobility and bicycles
Barcelona, Seville, Valencia, Vitoria, San Sebastián, Zaragoza or Valladolid are some of the Spanish cities that have already started these transformations. The commitment to sustainable and cycling mobility involves creating a cycle path network that meets the following criteria: complete, continuous, uniform, direct, recognizable, dense and passing through main roads. And this transformation inevitably leads to the transitory period that all those cities went through and which I mentioned at the beginning of the text. The transition to a liveable, lively city with a desire for the future is inseparable from a car-free city. Or just the essentials. It is not a political strategy, as much as certain tobacco-loving mayors insist: it is the only possible path in the face of an ecological crisis and the unhealthy air we breathe.
In short, we have to look back and see how we moved more than 60 years ago, when pedestrians and bicycles occupied a priority space in our cities, which after all is our social environment, where we build lives, relate and associate.
I prefer this paragraph from the State Bicycle Strategy:
“The bicycle is not just another means of transport, its use produces value for society in terms not only of mobility, but also of habitability, health, environment, equity, sociability, etc. And it brings benefits not only to those who travel by bicycle, but also to other citizens, by freeing up space and reducing air pollution and noise emissions.”.
What better purpose for this year that begins.
