In many cities in our country, municipal elections are usually announced with the hype and cymbal of bulldozers, in a kind of party.
The mayors trying to secure votes to stay in office organize the concerts to show that they care about improving the city, and no improvement as ostensible as the works.
Those who already sense that they will lose seem to make an effort to display their ability to annoy us until the last minute. It is true that they are entitled to public kicking, at least until the ballot count sends them home. They still have enough days left to show us their disaffection.
They show it to us with the prison devices, metallic bars of threatening ugliness with which they have populated various roads to reduce them to a single lane or with the barbed wire fences with which, apparently, they protect pedestrians in neighborhoods whose streets have been turned upside down, like It happens in some of the Eixample in Barcelona or in the Paseo Marítim in Palma.
The very laudable ecological concern of those who govern the cities has led them to declare war on automobiles. We already know how harmful CO2 emissions from vehicles with gasoline and diesel engines are. Hence, those who say they care about the health of all, including that of the Earth, lean towards electric cars. However, no one has calibrated to what extent waste batteries are detrimental to the sustainability of the planet. On the other hand, many people, faced with very inefficient public transport services, have no choice but to go to work in their van.
The reduction of the lanes of some streets favors traffic jams and these multiply the pollution that city councils try to avoid with their automobile restrictions, sometimes to the point of absurdity.
I wonder, for example, what will happen in Palma when traffic on the Paseo Marítim is reduced from three and four lanes in both directions to just two. A work that will not be ready next summer, when the cars of the natives are joined by those rented by tourists. I don't even want to imagine the CO2 emissions caused by so many engines running on days when, in addition, up to three cruise ships dock -previously five- whose maritime pollution seems to be careless to the authorities and whose passengers, apparently up to twenty thousand, circulate around that way in cars or buses.
I have no doubt that pedestrianizing cities is making them more sustainable. That is a common criterion of European municipal politics. In principle, a stupendous measure that all ordinary citizens should congratulate ourselves on. However, in some cities, at least in the two where I move, Barcelona and Palma, the criteria with which they are applied are sometimes detrimental to what is intended to be achieved. It seems that they are imposed without having viable alternatives. Converting the Paseo Marítim into a pedestrian space is a magnificent idea, but an alternative to circulation must be offered. The ring road, the supposedly fast access road to Palma, is already collapsed and will be even more so, and this type of collapse implies not only economic losses, more spending on fuel and time, but also serious damage to the health of citizens and medium. Finally, sorry for the inconvenience. Happy Easter.
