January 11th, 2017

At the beginning of last month, in 30 minuts, a weekly program from the autonomic television of Catalonia, TV3, released a report entitled Torna la bicicleta -The bicycle returns- which talked about the development and the future of this vehicle in the city of Barcelona.

“It is: learn the new rules of the game”, comments  Enric Batlle, an architect in Barcelona, who talks about the interaction between bicycle, pedestrians and motor vehicles. This interaction, such as the report shows us, results in a real conflict in Barcelona, especially when a new bike lane is opened.

This piece of informative -which we can find in the Corporació Catalana de Mitjans Audiovisuals web- results in the key for anticipating the importance that the bicycle is obtaining in Barcelona. In addition, they present Copenhagen as an example, a city which, nowadays, could be a reflection of our city -Barcelona- in a few years from now, if we are capable of doing a good transition from motor vehicles to bicycles.

If this city, from Denmark, spent around 30 years to change the citizens’ habits, in order for them to start using the bicycle, nowadays, according to the experts, this transition can be done in 4 years. This number attracts the attention of politicians, who can see one of their electoral points during their government’s period complied with.

Something very interesting about this transition, which is also emphasized in the report, is the fact that around the year 1910, when there was a transition in the streets of Barcelona for incorporating the cars, the discussions were very similar to the debates about bicycles that we have nowadays. Cars also had to make way in the streets and the news about accidents was incessant -numbers much more disproportionate in comparison to the present victims related to bikes-.

Surely, from our point of view, which is not objective, we cannot stop seeing a great number of positive points which are explained about the bicycle. For this reason, we want to encourage everyone to have a look and make their own conclusions.

The bicycle is here to stay, so, the best thing we can do is for everyone to be in agreement.