Barcelona is the large Spanish city in which people commute the most to their work or study centers by public transport or on foot. Or, in other words, where the car is least used for forced trips. This is reflected in a comparative report on mobility in Barcelona. Madrid, Valencia, Zaragoza, Seville and Malaga that the City Council of the Catalan capital has prepared from the data of the Survey of Essential Characteristics of the Population and Housing (ECEPOV) that has recently been made public by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). ).
The report indicates that in Barcelona only one in four people (24%) use a private car to go to work, a percentage much lower than that registered in Madrid (43%) and at a great distance from the main Andalusian cities.
In Malaga, the daily use of the car represents 56% of work and study trips, while in Seville it represents 53%.
The municipal technicians who have prepared this comparative study point to various explanations for these great differences: from the greater urban density of Barcelona to the availability of public transport or the effect of restrictive traffic policies through the application of the low emission zone or the pedestrianization of streets.
The authors of the report point out that "surely the explanation for this great difference between the data for Barcelona and the rest of the big cities lies in a combination of all these causes" and add that "in any case, they indicate that Barcelona's mobility is transiting towards a multimodal model in which sustainable mobility is gaining weight compared to the car”.
The INE data that serve as the basis for this Barcelona City Council report refer to the uses of daily mobility by people over 16 years of age. The survey points out which are the cities that have a better share of sustainable mobility, that is, those in which public transport is used more and in which people move the most on foot. In this modality, Barcelona is once again positioned as the great Spanish city with a better modality of sustainable travel.
According to these data from the INE, in the Catalan capital 57% of people choose to travel by public transport or on foot. This percentage is lower in Madrid (54%) and Zaragoza (47%) and drops to 35% in Malaga.
The report specifies that to complete the modal share data, the percentage of people who use the bicycle to get around would have to be incorporated. However, the INE survey does not break down the data at this level and includes bicycles and personal mobility vehicles such as electric scooters in trips "with other types of vehicles", but also motorcycles, which in Barcelona have a presence far superior to that of the other cities. In this case, the percentage of citizens who travel to their place of work or study with "other types of vehicles" is around 19% in Barcelona.
The INE data broken down by Barcelona City Council analysts also allow a breakdown of urban mobility by sex and age to calibrate the profile of users of each mode. The most evident conclusion is that there is a clear correspondence between the use of public transport and these two variables.
Thus, it can be seen that in Barcelona 54% of young people (a category that includes people between the ages of 16 and 30) use public transport on a regular basis to go to work or study. This percentage drops 18 points, to 36% in people over 50 years of age. If the age ranges are compared with regard to the use of the car, a similar difference is observed, since only 10% of young people use this mode of transport for their daily trips compared to 32% of those over 50 years of age.
People's daily mobility uses also show notable differences based on gender. In Barcelona, women use public transport much more than men. The difference is almost 20 percentage points, from 50% in the case of women to 31% among men. And as with age, big differences can also be seen in this section: women use the car for their daily trips in 18% of cases compared to 32% in men.
