CONFUSION OVER TORREVIEJA CYCLE STREETS

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When Torrevieja council launched their new cycle lanes network to run through the city, it would appear that the actual plans as to how this would work in some places were omitted from the presentation, as has been clear this week with many residents questioning the appearance of unusual looking street signs in the city centre.

Since 2011, the town hall had been promoting their intention to create a dedicated network of paths for bikes, which would run from the sports city through the streets in the centre, the first time this dedication to green transport had been made, but the 100,000 euro project has done no such thing in many of the places considered most dangerous by cyclists.

The signs which have appeared on some of the streets indicate both a 30 kilometre per hour limit, and a pictogram of a cycle. It would appear that on certain roads where the bike passage was planned, it would have been impossible to create separate lanes, as this would have required the removal of parking places for cars. So, the solution on these roads is the creation of “Cycle Streets”, where bikes and cars same the same space and travel along the same route. Or, a normal road, as most of us would consider it.

The cyclists who have commented have expressed their concerns already, as this does not in any way offer any kind of additional protection, or incentive, as the bikes still have to cross countless dangerous intersections, and my mixing with the traffic in the busy centre of the city, as well as pedestrians, is the opposite of what was supposed to occur. As for the speed limit, as the streets are frequently congested with cars anyway, the natural flow of traffic is often slower than that anyway, and is therefore also seen as nothing more than a feeble attempt to try to mask the fact that the glory of the intended dedicated routes was once more premature.

The “Cycle Street” concept is not a new one, in fact there are already routes present in places such as Alicante, but the concerns now are after the way in which the route was presented and the promises perceived by those who were looking forward to a safer transit, as this project does not seem to offer any of the protection promised during that wave of publicity that followed the presentation by the government team.

Filed under: http://www.theleader.info/article/43344/

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