The road safety plans of any administration usually set the objective of reducing the number of accidents. It is its reason for being and only the strategies chosen or the way of facing the problem vary. The Servei Català de Trànsit (SCT) of the Generalitat has this time gone one step further in the strategic plan for the years 2024-2026. In addition to fewer deaths and injuries on the road (20% on the interurban network and 5% in the urban area), Trànsit is committed to reducing the number of cars that circulate on the road network. Specifically, they project up to 10% less private vehicle traffic in the metropolitan region by 2026 compared to 2019.
The way to achieve this is through a Trànsit strategy together with the Department of Territory – with whom they have agreed on the document – and the town councils that promotes and promotes sustainable means of transport to the detriment of private vehicles. It is a job that, with greater or lesser zeal, councils have been doing for a long time. Those responsible for the plan see it as feasible to achieve that ambitious 10% during working days in the metropolitan area, which is the area best served by public transport. At the end of the day, that is the fundamental recipe and over which Trànsit has no powers, although the plan includes the need to create dissuasive parking at the stations, also including spaces for bicycles.
Trànsit has more direct involvement in the main measure that favors public transport on the road: the bus lanes on the express roads entering Barcelona. The plan includes that of the C-31 from Maresme (already in operation in a section), that of the B-23 from Baix Llobregat (under construction) and that of the C-33 and C-17 (which does not include not even a draft draft yet). In these bus lanes and in the C-58, Trànsit is also committed to modifying traffic regulations and allowing motorcycles to circulate on them, an old debate that appears and reappears regularly over the years.
Aside from the large figures of objectives, the plan includes the arrival of the first four radars on Catalan roads this year, which will be up to a dozen later. It is a new radar model that is a hybrid between the fixed and the mobile, loaded inside a custom-built trailer to be placed wherever it is considered temporarily without the need for the presence of the Mossos d'Esquadra. “They are designed for all types of roads, whether it be the AP-7 highway or a municipal crossing in an urban or peri-urban area such as passing through the town of Coll de Nargó,” Lamiel exemplifies, giving the case of one of the small town councils. with very little budget and municipal structure that has asked Trànsit for help to reduce the speed of cars when they pass through its town.
In addition to radars, Trànsit is committed to taking advantage of technology with cameras equipped with artificial intelligence that serve to have a much more accurate image of reality on the roads, since it counts exactly how many motorcycles, cars or bikes can pass through a road, the hours at which they do it, the speed they travel... All this information wants to be used to make traffic management more efficient, which is linked to the deployment of variable speed on some of the access roads to Barcelona. The first to have it will be C-58, although the difficulty in installing the corresponding infrastructure is making it go later than they would like in Trànsit. The same happens with cyclist signaling systems in tunnels, where one was installed on a trial basis but has not been deployed further.
