We are all pedestrians at one point or another. Even if we are users of public transport or we go by car, motorbike, bicycle or scooter..., at one time or another we all walk along the sidewalks of the city. Based on this obvious premise, the urban mobility plan approved by Barcelona City Council in 2021 put the pedestrian at the center to ensure their safety and comfort when walking the city streets .
This goal, however, seems unfulfilled, according to the latest survey prepared by the RACC. Based on 2,000 surveys carried out over the last few months, 72% of Barcelona residents consider it less safe to walk on the pavements now than four years ago. Pedestrians and cyclists are the most critical groups regarding the feeling of insecurity: more than three out of four consider that moving around the city has become a less safe experience than before. Those who ride motorbikes and cars are also critical, but in a lower percentage. It is also overwhelmingly considered safer to walk down the street or take public transport at night or after dark compared to four years ago. 65% of respondents think so.
Those who move mainly by car and motorcycle are the ones who complain the least in terms of safety, but on the other hand, they are the harshest when asked about the congestion on the road. 80% of the respondents consider that the fluidity has worsened in the urban area, a percentage that drops to 61% if the focus is put on the roundabouts, the place that paradoxically already exceeds the pre-pandemic traffic levels, while that in the interior of the city the figures of 2019 have not yet been recovered.
The outlook for the future is not very good either. 65% of citizens consider that congestion will worsen in the next four years. Users of polluting vehicles are again the most distrustful four years on, while more than half of those who ride scooters believe that the situation will get better. "The measures being taken in Barcelona congest traffic even more, so the municipal government should rethink its mobility strategy, with more realistic goals and accompanied by an improvement of the metropolitan public transport network" , pointed out the president of the RACC during the presentation of the report.
Deputy mayor Janet Sanz accused the RACC of "entering into a campaign" with the study. "We know that it represents respectable and legitimate interests, but specific interests", pointed out Sanz after defending that "Barcelona must not do less, it must do more".
Aside from the perception of victimization that was so unpopular in Plaça Sant Jaume, the RACC survey provides some indicators that in a certain way even reinforce the Colau government to continue putting impediments to the car. In the same report, more than half of those who go by car or motorbike acknowledge that they have "a reasonable alternative in public transport" to make their journeys, a percentage that rises to 60% in the purely urban Therefore, if they don't make a modal change and leave their car parked at home, it's not because they don't have an alternative, but because they don't want to or because they think they won't gain in terms of reliability.
"Public transport has become subsidized or directly free and, even so, there has not been a massive modal shift because the problem is reliability, and in this case they feel that private transport is more reliable". evaluates Josep Mateu. The data from the weekday mobility survey prepared by the Metropolitan Transport Authority (ATM) point precisely to this question as a determining element, despite the fact that another RACC study prepared a couple of years ago showed that eight out of every ten drivers acknowledged that they do not use public transport because they consider it "not pleasant".
This resistance to changing to a more sustainable means of transport even if the option is available explains, for the RACC, that the modal split has remained stable in recent years. And all this even with a certain increase in private vehicles, while public transport has gone down in percentage terms (and at the same time records record figures in absolute terms) and active mobility is clearly on the rise, in which scooters included.
Faced with this scenario, the people responsible for the mobility club ask that the motorized mobility of Barcelona and the metropolitan area which has no alternative to the private vehicle be quantified in order to realistically analyze how many drivers may be forced to switch to public transport and how many really have no choice but to use the private vehicle for essential mobility. In this sense, as a solution the RACC calls for "improving the metropolitan public transport network to guarantee punctual, reliable, optimal, multimodal, safe and connected quality service". One of the primary elements that they consider fundamental is the improvement of the accessibility of metropolitan public transport stations, both on foot and by private vehicle, promoting dissuasive parking at the origin, with combined rates for parking and public transport to make - make it attractive to potential users.
