Barcelona City Council will invest nearly seven million euros in the reform of the section of Balmes Street between Plaza Molina and Ronda General Miter, as detailed this Wednesday by sources from the City Council itself. The last municipal government commission approved that these long-awaited works begin in the fall and last for about fifteen months. The affected area totals about 15,000 m2.
The municipal objective is for this side of Balmes Street to once have the same appearance as the already renovated sections. In this way, the sidewalks will grow by about two meters, until they have a width of 4.35 meters, and the road will lose one traffic lane, finally having two uphill and one downhill lane. The City Council will also plant about 110 trees there to make the place much friendlier, so that it truly invites you to walk.
In addition, the road of this section will go from the current fifteen meters wide to only 11.20. And so it will only present three lanes: two going up, one for private traffic and another shared, for buses and private traffic, and on the other side another also shared going down.
In addition, the City Council will open a service lane next to the Besòs sidewalk with about 130 linear meters of loading and unloading spaces, 147 parking spaces for motorcycles and four parking spaces for vehicles of people with reduced mobility, as well as bus stops. and spaces for containers. It will also enable new zebra crossings.
We are talking about a project, the reform of Balmes Street, in fact the review of the connection between the upper part of the city and the center, which was conceived and took its first steps around three decades ago. Then the socialist mayor Jordi Hereu had the section between Diagonal Avenue and Aragó Street redeveloped. Then Xavier Trias promoted the reform of the sections between Aragó and Gran Via, Travessera de Gràcia and Diagonal and also Plaza Molina and Travessera de Gràcia. Later, however, under the mayorship of Ada Colau, the City Council prioritized the reforms of other roads in the city.
The oblivion seemed so long that the residents of the area, tired of waiting, were already reorganizing in order to put pressure on the City Council. “We are satisfied, despite so many waits,” they say on the platform they set up back in 2015. The truth is that for a few years now the City Council had been telling us that this work was a priority, but that they did not have a budget. In our opinion everything could have been done much faster. The problem is that the Sarrià-Sant Gervasi district suffers from a great disinvestment that we hope will finally begin to subside.”
According to municipal sources, this reform project updates one of the two sections of the executive project that the City Council prepared between 2017 and 2018, which included the redevelopment of Balmes from Plaza de Molina to Plaza de Joaquim Folguera.
The sources add that the section between the General Miter ring road and Joaquim Folguera square will be undertaken once the works on metro line 9 allow it and the City Council has the corresponding budget allocation. And then, no one is very clear when, the reform will have to reach its highest point, Kennedy Square.
