 Welcome. Welcome to the second session on mobility, where we are going to focus on bicycles and urban planning. Understood as a tool for the intervention in public spaces. Last Tuesday we talked about aviation and next Tuesday we will be talking about the potential of railways. But I am really glad to be able to moderate this session because that's a means of transportation that I really love. So I would like to thank, as always, the organizations that made these days possible. The Green European Foundation, Transition Verde and the Foundation Nos Horizons. And obviously the speakers, who I will be introducing momentarily and everyone who is on the other side of the screens to try and compensate for this distance. You know, doing things online. You can always try and make yourselves heard and felt through the chat. So if during the presentations you have any questions or doubts, you can always ask your questions by using the chat function. We will be reading your questions and during the last part of this session we will be answering your questions. So my name is Raul Gometh. I did not introduce myself. I am the director of Transition Verde. I will be moderating this session, which as I said is the second session out of three sessions dedicated to mobility. We are going to be benefiting from these sessions to introduce the European Atlas on Mobility by the Heinrich Beul Stiftung. And I am going to share some information with you so that you take a look at the Atlas when you can. So you should be able to see my screen now. So the European Atlas on Mobility is actually a report made by Heinrich Beul Stiftung. And the Spanish version has been created together with the Green European Foundation. It is a large analysis from different perspectives of mobility, mobility in Europe. But more specifically with regards to bicycles, which is what we will be focusing on now. I wanted to show you that it actually tackles it from a perspective that is not your traditional perspective. It is actually something we thank them for because they consider bicycles as a tool and as a loading tool and its potential so that it could enter commercial areas and cities I thought was very interesting. And I also see here some good practices such as bicycle in Copenhagen and the extension of high speed routes. So high speed routes for bicycles that they are currently creating in the city of Copenhagen. So here you have a form. We sent you a form to register for these days, these sessions. And we will be sending it once again to you once we're done with the videos for these sessions. So since this is a European Atlas, we wanted to kind of land it here in Spain. And together with No Solitons, you can see some data regarding the dangerousness suffered by pedestrians and cyclists compared to other means of transportation. And we thought that we needed to land this here in Spain. So Transición Verde and No Solitons decided to work together to make an annex on Spain. And I also wanted to show you a couple images of the bicycle focusing on Spain. So you can see here stats of how many cyclist lanes we have per thousand inhabitants in Spain. It's actually 0.08 in big cities and in Amsterdam it's 1.5. So we have a long way to go to be at their level. And to your right you can see some maps of the lanes, the cyclist lanes in those cities. And I would like to shortly stop on these images because if we can see them on a map, we can see for instance that this is Barcelona. Here you can see in black lines the bicycle lane for movement, that the red one is what we consider leisure bicycle lanes. So bicycle lanes are very much included and integrated in the cities. There are some areas that are downtown cities, areas that should be pedestrian only. So we see in Seville that we have the same situation. We have a bicycle lane well integrated in the city. We have the historic area, the downtown for pedestrians in Valencia that has changed a lot. It's mobility during these last 10 years. We also see that it has changed. We have lots of leisure lanes, red lines. That's the old bed of the Turia River or the Albufera area. And then Madrid, where we see that the policies that have been the core of mobility planning in Spain have developed a red ring, a leisure ring that is actually very good for some days, but that don't really help for your day-to-day mobility, which is that of people who move around the city. So as I was saying, all of this can be found on the links that are available and we will be sending to you once again after these sessions are done. But I don't want to steal more time from the speakers with these documents that you have here at your disposal. They're all available for you. So we will now tackle today's topic, bicycle and public spaces. So in order to introduce the first speaker, I'm going to read a brief fragment of a book that I recommend to you, which is by Margo Gé that was published in 2008. I think I don't know if you can read it, but this is actually a note to bicycle. And the fragment is the following. It's a chapter called The Urbanization of the World, looking for the lost city. And he says, And what about utopia, transforming cities? Is it a feasible dream and bicycle? Does it have a protagonist role in this revolution? Because obviously we are talking about a revolution in the literal sense. When we talk about transforming the city, because urban extends itself all over, but we have lost the city and we also lose sight of one another. And facing this landscape, bicycle has a determining role, helping human beings recover the self-awareness and that of the places they inhabit. And with these words, I want to give the floor to our first speaker, Pilar Vergapintado, who is a geographer, who is an expert in urban planning. She's a professor of the Complutante University in Madrid and she's also a consultant in the CHEA 21. So Pilar, is it exaggerated to say that we live in cities that due to the increase of cars, protagonism has separated us and has left us as mere pedestrians? How can we change that? How can we revert the situation? What would be the role of bicycles in this revolution? Please go ahead. Good afternoon and thank you for the invitation. It's actually very complex to be able to give a solution here and no one really has this crystal ball that would allow us to see the future and cities are very complex. The problem with mobility is the following. There's always been transportation in cities. This is not something that can be avoided, the transportation of people and goods. But in the scale of cities, we have really seen the transformation of their scale in the last 100 years since the 20s and last century. It's been a complete transformation. So this idea of planning cities in an organized manner in an orderly fashion because they were anti-hygienic and they were too busy, it wasn't good for the productive system because they couldn't really transport goods quickly enough. They needed to be able to use this technological advantage that were motor vehicles and they couldn't really transport people in those cities. So there were traffic jams as you could see in New York and Madrid. So this model of a city, the pre-industrial city model was not good enough. So some well-considered architects such as Le Corbusier and the modern architects considered that they needed to do something like the charter of Athens in 1933. They signed it, ratified it and that's when urbanism, urban planning started digging deep into cities and that's when methods started to be applied. What they do is they organize cities in a way that they are segmented in time and space and what it does is allow for the growth of cities to take place at a higher scale. So what we currently have is the inheritance of all of that because our current movement plan is based on that charter. So all the left wing and right wing parties, green parties, yellow parties, all of them agreed with that way of organizing the territory and it was really difficult for us to fight against it because the way in which we have planned the cities is that way. So how can we improve what we have? Everything has been written for a very long time since the 60s in the last century. So the only thing that we need is political will. Is there political will? No, there isn't. Why? Well, because it's very difficult. We're always looking for additives, something so that we don't have to change the model. The model is based in functional segregation of the territory, urban territory and just one function for a specific time in a specific space, a specific collective or person or being, work, trade, housing and big communication and transportation axes that connect these pieces in this city. So it's very difficult. It's very difficult because how can we really change this scale by making it closer? Well, people have tried to do things in Barcelona or they have tried to do it in San Sebastian. We've tried to do it in many cities and we can try and improve the environmental quality of our cities but the problem is that the metropolitan peripheral areas still have a very high load of traffic that is unbreakable. So of all the solutions that we have, we have sustainable urban movement planning. I actually directed for some time many plans. I can say that almost 20 mobility plans, the first generation of mobility plans, I was in charge of them since 2004 when we started to do them with Vida and the subsidies that we had at the time, it wasn't until the economic crisis where we were doing mobility plans and all city councils that had over a thousand inhabitants do them, I'm sorry, 10,000 inhabitants do this but they haven't applied it. So everything is written. You have to do this, you have to do that now that they have to ask for the next generation funds, they haven't approved those plans, they don't know where those plans are and that can't be accepted. There is a lack of mobility culture in administrations. I mean politicians do not have that culture but all of our civil servants, technical civil servants and city councils don't have that culture either and that's a problem because we're always in a hurry to apply these or that measure that I know of actually. We have been asking for a change in the mobility model for a very long time. I have been since the 80s where the ecologist with different associations are asking for the time for downtown and cities to be changed, to change the territorial model, to stop having highway rings around the cities but no one listened to us but in the 70s we already knew that everything was going down during the real summit, we knew that that wasn't going well. So what can we do? We can't do much because we're a very late mobility plan if it is approved by someone, if there is money, it takes around 20 years to execute all measures and we don't have 20 years anymore, we don't have that time, the scenario has changed so we're not going to reduce climate change obviously but we're not going to stop it or anything. Let's see how we who live in cities make this more comfortable for us so that we can breathe without direct pollution and so on and so that there is less noise and so on. So that's the thing and now we're talking about low emission areas and there are lots of plans for bicycles in different cities since it's not mandatory and no one has ever said that this is going to be implemented well they don't do anything in Madrid for instance since I don't know maybe Laura has it fresh in her memory but it was a company who did it that plan the whole network it was a network with its meshes with its different levels connecting all the neighborhoods in Madrid but it has never been executed and why hasn't it been executed well because it was actually cheaper than having a parking lot to rent that tunnel or many different actions but they didn't want to do it so with regards to the low emission areas thing which is very much in vogue right now I think it's wonderful but the thing is that they are not going to be as powerful as they should there's going to be electrical cars there's going to be all sorts of vehicles that we are interested in having in those areas so in the end we will have low emission cities that will be collapsed with electric cars I don't know what solution that can really offer to the future of cities because we will have metropolitan areas that will always have traffic jams and they will be jammed with vehicles that require lots of energy for their fabrication I don't know if you have read the ecological accounts of transportation in Spain that we drafted in 2014 you will be able to see that much of the energy that is being consumed in transportation takes place when the vehicle is being manufactured and when throwing the vehicles for scraps so renewing the whole... all of the cars in the cities that are electrical is not a solution I mean we can either focus on public transportation or some questions on mobility but not a renovation of all the cars in the cities now people have their traditional car the one for the wife, the husband the teenager and then they have an electrical car because they also have some... some PV cells in their roof and they are very environmentally friendly well we need to use cars only for long distances we need to live in proximity and that's the only thing that could save us so that we can live in a more comfortable way so that our environment where we raise our children where people can go for a stroll or dogs can go for a stroll are more agreeable, more comfortable we really are not going to be able to save the planet if we don't improve our cities we have to and the recipe to improve our cities is actually a recipe that has been there since the Buchanan report in 1963 which was something that was commissioned by the UK government to this engineer so we have had that recipe for a very long time but we haven't applied it to cook our cities so we need to force politicians, civil servants to change their mobility culture and the first thing that we need to do well right now the citizenship movement is now having the polar revolution so that children can go by foot to school the organizations, cyclists organizations urban cyclists organizations are really working on this topic and that's where maybe we will be able to change the culture of mobility because there isn't much that can be expected from administrations otherwise administrations currently in Madrid for instance they have been thinking about parking lots tunnels putting bellways underground so lots of money that is coming from the next generation funds that are supposed to be green and for digitalization purposes are simply going to add new impact on the territorial model that is more extent and more dispersed and when we talk about the empty Spain well we don't see it because everything is concentrated in Madrid with the north area of Madrid and so on so I don't think that Madrid or Barcelona or San Sebastian will get out of the European trend how many bikes they have in the Netherlands which I believe is wonderful and I always admire them for what they do we also have to consider the ecological footprint that we all have we could always take the bike to go to work and it's better than private transportation but if then you do try some Atlantic trips because we're stressed in summer and we need to go to Fiji or whatever then that's not going to help the situation but what happens with goods transportation which is also considered by the European mobility atlas this sort of freight transportation has to be something that is done in cities obviously not just in the centre of the cities but also in the neighbourhoods and it needs to be done on a bike that's optimum but if the freight or the goods that is being transported is actually goods that had been travelling for thousands and thousands of kilometres then it's not useful it has to be proximity all needs to be proximity goods we need to think that that which is distributed needs to be something that helps local commerce not something that destroys local commerce if a bicycle comes from China or comes from, I don't know any country in the planet at a lower price then the local trade is going to sink lower so the territorial model goes beyond that and I really think that we should bet on a better development of local economy so that we can maintain those criteria those proximity criteria which are the ones that allow for a more sustainable city because when we talk about bicycle as an alternative we're actually saying that we wish for cities to be more sustainable to consume less energy in their mobility and for the emissions to be lower and obviously and most of all the impact on the quality of air which currently in Madrid is actually very low because you know that we have levels that are way above the limits that legislation sets and we are over the European legal limits and in no case whatsoever has any measure been taken to stop private transportation so I don't know if you want me to go on I think that you need to understand that we need to change the culture of mobility we would have to somehow talk to politicians and civil servants and city councils so that they understand the situation and this needs to change quickly because if we go step by step we'll never get there it needs to be done as fast as possible I hope I haven't taken too much time thank you very much thank you so much Pilar yes, clearly this is a very complex problem obviously but then we will talk about that maybe during the Q&A session when we're done with the first rounds of presentations although political will evolves at a slow pace I don't know if citizen awareness is evolving but it's going to be faster than political will our second speaker is Laura Berrara Roman who's the president of Convithi and she's a councillor in mobility and she's also vice president of the Women's Movement I met Laura a few days ago she explained to me what Convithi is and what they do, they analyse and they try to have an impact on legislation and that is what we're dealing with and maybe that is one of the most interesting things because I guess that it's difficult to have an impact if you don't do it in an organised manner with people who have knowledge so tell us Laura what is Convithi and tell us about these strategies and mobility laws are there reasons for hope or do you see it as black as Pilar has painted it well good afternoon no, in general I have to say that I am quite the optimist and I think that the organisation is optimist as well and I think that we have chosen the right path for change where we want to be headed to and we are... actually the route is the wrong one so we will always have to be asking for administrations and other agents to realise that they need to re-calculate the route so that we can get to the common objectives that we have set for ourselves so first of all, I would like to thank you I would like to thank the Foundation Transition Verde to the Green European Foundation and to Nos Horizons for this opportunity that you have given me to share with you Convithi is the coordinator of entities for bicycles and what we do is we are made up of small groups all over the territory and we are in charge of detecting and explaining to the different legislatures what the problems are and what are the solutions or the proposals that the social tissue, the organised social tissue offers and the people who use bicycles on our day to day or those people who will use the bike in the future because we are at a moment where there is maximum demand from the social side to use bicycles in a safe way so we have seen that there are specific blocks on the bicycle within the Atlas I would highlight the industry and delivery of goods, the transformation of cities and others that actually impact us directly such as the safety in roads and intermodality but it has not been treated as a system and that is one of the words that Pilat has been using that system, that mobility system because actually when we do our proposals we don't just think about the bicycle as a tool but also we think about how we interact with every other agent within the system which is an intersectorial system that is linked to what happens in the rest of the sector that is interdependent as well it depends on the ecosystem of cities of the natural spaces everything that surrounds us and that is necessary for life I mean mobility is one of the fundamental rights that we have and life cannot take place without mobility that is why we see the potential and we see that we have to bet for it and we see that the alliance of bicycles with pedestrian areas and public transportation as the main access and facilitator of life so in Comvithi we have set up collaborations and actions and I would like to highlight on the one hand the coordination of the cyclist ecosystem with public administrations on the one hand and on the other hand the political actions that are developed by each of our proposals initiatives, documents or interventions of each of our local groups in their territories so I would like to highlight 7 different blocks for action the first one would be strategies maybe in the context of the pandemic from our point of view that's what has changed the most which is the discourse or setting common targets common goals we have seen that there is a lack of public space and that's a great problem and it's not just a problem of cities it is a problem that is a state problem and it requires national policies and strategies that will set goals in the long term and in that sense we have seen that two have been approved and one is on its way of being approved the first one was the state strategy for bicycles which was approved in March 8th 2021 which is the one that really is the one that we have been fighting for most from the collective the second is the strategy for safe, sustainable and communicated mobility and this one transforms really the dynamics of the old ministry of public works and it is now the ministry for transportation so now they've not just changed their name they've also changed their strategy, their dynamic although there is still some to be done that discourse, that strategy needs to become a reality and needs to alter the real dynamic of the ministry so that they stop managing and building roads to manage that national policy for mobility and there is a third one which is being drafted by the general directorate of traffic which is the strategy for traffic in roads because safety always has to be the first thing it has to be a priority so if it is safe it will be sustainable and if it is sustainable it will be safer and vice versa so that's the one that we're working on and it will be approved very soon so what do these strategies entail? well, beside the discourse public administrations need to have an evaluation system and follow up system of their own public policies and this is where we have for instance for bicycles we don't have a good data system and we don't have specific indicators for the impact of those policies and that is what we want to see developed and this comes hand in hand with governance systems with management bodies and technical teams obviously this is something that is lacking in public administrations especially now that we will have the European funds that's when they realise that they don't have the capacity to project, to design, to manage and to develop investments regarding mobility that really generate a disruptive change in cities so it's not just about drawing a bicycle lane in their maps we need to have a complete redistribution of the public space and we need to have a mesh a network that will allow for reasonable and organised mobility on a bicycle and also having bicycle parkings and other urban planning elements that will generate those changes in behaviour and then we have the legislation in order to guarantee a safety and the legal safety of the people using it with a traffic law that has just been recently reformed we lost an opportunity, we missed out on an opportunity there are reforms that have not been put in place they did not dare and now we have to see how those small modifications could cause big changes in the circulation regulation so that we can ask for basic things such as the fact that any person who has an authorised bicycle could transport their miners in their bike or could go through the downtown if they have a wagon attached to their bicycle that is legal so this traffic law is conditioning the reform of ordinances that are linked to the application of low emission areas and all of this seems to be complex and it seems to be more of a strategic thing than an action thing but then there is the proposal for sustainable mobility law I thought that today, February 8th we would have read it for the first time at the council of ministries so that we could have a bit more information but it seems that it's being delayed and what we do know is that there are new documents they have strategic documents for planning we know that it includes very few sanctions and a very general character to it but we are waiting to read it so that we can make the relevant proposals but that law should be used so that we can go from strategies to action so that we can really establish priorities those priorities that have already been seen in the discourse which is public transportation and bicycle transportation so then there are physical changes I'm not going to talk about this but I think that Bilal has already talked about the multifunctionality and the dimensions that our cities have these are the ones that condition and create barriers to mobility to active mobility and those physical changes are seminal they are necessary for other changes to take place and this is pushed by a refocus of investments and I think that the next generation funds in this case were something that we were very hopeful about we thought that really they would renew the transportation system and with the first perte for e-vehicles we realised that that was not going to happen there is a complete imbalance in the transportation system that is going to be maintained thanks to European funds that does not mean that these European funds are not an opportunity for mid to big size companies to change certain things but what is obvious is that the investments and the modifications that are taking place with regards to e-vehicles are simply leaving us with cities that need the same dimensions that have many of the negative impacts that the automotive sector had that are not only left untouched but rather reinforced so that's bad news but we do trust that those investments at least will take into account the impacts in health, environmental impact, social impact and in the case of cyclist investments they should be significant they should be important and constant not just to generate new spaces but also to maintain them and for planning processes and I only have to talk about two last things the first one is training training skills for us to go around in bicycles it's an element that is very much integrated in Europe and it usually overlaps with the professional skills professional training we are a sector well they call us the new mobility although we're not new I don't think we're the new mobility because bicycles have been here for over 200 years it has been created to go for mobility purposes but we are generating new jobs and training for those new jobs or for the integration of bicycles in certain classic things such as urban planning, architecture and so on that are very much linked to those changes those changes of the dynamic of the mobility system is really a starting point for them to be integrated so the value that that training has and lastly the last block is that of communication and it's how we are transmitting the urgency of the fights against pollution, acoustic as well as air and as Bilal was saying not just to stop climate change but rather to mitigate the effects of climate change and the urgency, this emergency cannot be felt it doesn't seem that has been included in the modifications the actions that administrations are putting in place public administrations are putting in place so how do we want to do this? because obviously these are lots of elements lots of elements that need to be integrated but we want to do it from an equity perspective equity with regards to gender, with regards to generations with regards to a fair distribution of resources that we have and public space where we should guarantee that right to mobility and all of it from our point of view has to do with generating a diverse cyclist culture that will have that capacity to welcome everyone who is thinking of using bicycles so that's what we can put on the table and obviously we will be happy to answer questions during the Q&A thank you so much, Laura to be honest, I will ask you a question later on but I have a question when you talk about a communication when you talk about a system of communication but it's also communication between citizens how can I convince the parents of the kids in my kids schools not to park their car at the school store but we will talk about that later on and for the next speaker I'm going to read a small fragment of another book which is The Importance of Bicycles and I believe that I think this person, the person who wrote this book is one of your colleagues in Convicio, Ricardo Marquezillero and the book is a bit more recent it was published in 2017 and this is the last paragraph it says I personally am convinced that in a future not far from here the inhabitants of cities will remember the time when private cars dominated urban areas with the same unbelieving eyes as we now remember how people used to smoke in classrooms and buses this will allow us to have lots of space because the space that was used for transport was bigger with cars than now with bicycles so this will be space that will be used for leisure for the enjoyment of citizens obviously when you finish a book like this you are optimistic but it doesn't give us a deadline, does it? because he doesn't know it and he doesn't either say and we could talk about that if it will be a change of transition that is peaceful or not and I will now introduce Jaime Caballero who is someone who as a counsellor is trying to advance in this direction he is a counsellor for mobility and sustainable development in Logroño and I met him last year, in June last year we went to Logroño to visit different projects in the city and I interviewed him for a video that you can actually watch in our YouTube channel and the fruit of that visit was that we learned about the structures of Logroño open streets that had been awarded with the first national award on mobility and after we were there I believe that he also got the award few other cities that walk and it seems that something is being done in the right way in Logroño so I wanted you to explain to us to those of us who are here who are not from Logroño who might not know about this strategy so could you tell us about these open streets strategies and then tell us how the citizens are receiving it how civil society organisations are receiving this is there a change in behaviours and as we were saying previously since political life is completely polarised what is the resistance you are facing in the political arena as well as amongst the trades people in the city and so on Jaime Hello Raúl and hello everyone good afternoon I warm greetings from Logroño I would like to thank the organisers for having invited us to be a part of this round table so first of all Raúl I want to say that I share that fragment that you have read I completely agree with Ricardo's vision regarding optimism I think that we are at a tipping point an unstoppable change that has been accelerated by the pandemic has come about and I think that this is the beginning of that society that you were talking about of open streets so I'm going to tell you about the Logroño experience but I also wanted to say that when we have had conversations with other cities what I'm going to tell you is that that this is something that could happen in any place, in any national territory there is that rejection as you said Raúl and that is common in greater or lesser measure everywhere, I mean that's something that happens in every place in Spain Logroño Calles Abiertas was born during the pandemic it was an urgent need to redistribute the public space redistribution as Lauda was saying that needed to be more equitable and we put on the table what we most knew that 80% of the public space is dedicated to 20% of the population who moves around in cars so this is something that in the pandemic was shown we wanted to revert that situation and create more space to move in a safer way so this which was so necessary due to the health emergency as we started developing it we saw that it is also necessary so that we can address the climate emergency it's actually the same need to redistribute spaces and to promote a sustainable kind of mobility and we also saw something that we already knew talking about mobility is linked to public space it cannot be separated from it because when you talk about public space you say how much public space do we want to dust into mobility how much to cohabitation and how much out of that mobility space considering the inverted pyramid of mobility has to be divided and the most important thing is what is the active mobility and then mobility of public transportation so we need to talk about pedestrians firstly we needed to enlarge our we needed to change the infrastructure so as I was saying this is how with enlarging sidewalks and so on started our strategy that wanted to solve the transportation problem with tactical interventions this is what we have called tactic urban planning we'd rather talk about interventions and we have shown that we can when there is this discourse of no this is not possible this cannot be done streets are too narrow well then we see quickly we quite quickly see and in a cheap way we can see in a flexible way we can see that that redistribution can take place in the urban spaces so where do we get the space from because obviously it's logical if 80% of the space is dedicated to cars then obviously we must we see that in order to redistribute space we need to take space out of the car area so for instance parking lots as we made progress with the interventions after a presentation after intervention the first question asked by the press and the citizens was so how many parking how many spaces are going to be eliminated well and when we said how many parking spots were going to be eliminated they said well what alternatives are you going to give us and now we see that what happened was really that there were too many parking spots if we managed them well we had too many and then during the second round of the debate they would not really ask about the parking spots they would ask about about the second line well in Loroño as in many cities we have we have ways that are 5 meters wide so that we can really have a double parking line and thinking that cars go door to door in Loroño, Pemos and all the plans that we have had for mobility consider that these the main problem the main problem for mobility in Loroño is this double line of parking cars so when we have reduced our we have reduced the space and we avoid the double line that's where we really are touching a sour spot and that's where the citizens starts reacting and especially many tradesmen women that a percentage of their sales is due to people who park in the double line for a little bit so that they can purchase here or there so that's the debate and then we have a problem which is that which I always try to to talk about in all forms which is that of logistics we have the need for logistics for distribution that is actually hidden by this double line because we have in all cities spaces where we can we can simply stop for a few minutes to load and unload but people use double lines to do that to load and unload for parcels for goods and so on and now that everyone is doing online purchasing parcels being sent here and there are really on vogue so in order to really advance for a sustainable mobility in cities we have realized after these many interventions that have taken place we have realized that we have to to give an impulse and a solution to this logistics and I think that with low emission areas we're going to take a step forward but we need to really talk about the distribution of goods loading and upload to consolidation centers and we can't really have housing building or just a house we can't have three vans going during the morning to to give three little parcels from three different companies there should be just one vehicle and it should be a light vehicle sustainable vehicle for instance a tricycle at the beginning these images with logistics solutions with bicycles so that's how we need to advance and it needs to advance quite quickly so if you ask me this and the Laurentian strategy has it been useful in the city these open streets being helpful well it has helped to put this debate on the table we had a Pemus from 2013 which had not been developed and all of these concepts and all of these diversity diverse uses the worry about public spaces was something that hadn't been touched upon so this obviously creates different reactions so this is something that we need to take into account in the strategy open streets as I was telling you we are extending public spaces pedestrian spaces and also bicycles because we realized during the pandemic that it was a perfect tool to go from point A to point B in a safe way and to stop using buses and leave buses for those who needed it most because people used it less those buses were used less and the strategy that I will share later on allowed us to create a basic network for distribution so that is being now developed it's being currently developed and thanks to that basic network together with the reduction of speed within the city that has gone down to 30 kilometers per hour and with the super blocks residential areas we think that we can now share the space between cars and bikes but we have to start from a basic distribution network a segregated network where the most vulnerable people can feel safe and where we can promote mobility on bikes and to that infrastructure obviously we have to add training we set up the bicycle school for students who are in second year and the infrastructure needs to be safe to move around but there also needs to be an infrastructure such as bicycle parking spaces so that parking is safe as well we need to have a network of covered bicycle spaces that are under surveillance and so on and then there needs to be a promotion of that active mobility and that is where I'll stop and talk about the reactions because with this whole debate what we have detected was that there were five groups of stakeholders we could say five different groups with different reactions and you have to talk to each one of them with different promotion campaigns from different perspectives so the first one is that of the negationist we could say those who say no to everything we all know them they say that there are no mobility problems in Louraño because of Louraño it's small there aren't any big traffic jams as in big cities so there are representatives of associations who say no no in Louraño we don't have any mobility problems okay I say so what happens with those 400 people per year have to go to hospital as a result of a traffic accident not a mobility problem we have a third of of minors who have obesity problems isn't that a mobility problem we have big noise problems that is an invisible problem that is still there so there are problems that have been accepted as a reality how can you say there are no mobility problems well we do have people who say there aren't so you have to to really deal with them giving them information so that they understand what it is that they're saying then you have another part who say that they agree they agree with what is being done but they are not willing to pay a price for it so it's like yes okay great you do it but please do not have it impact me and my behaviour so when we're talking about reducing space for cars they say well no no no use bikes for pedestrian streets and for sidewalks but don't make me pay that price so I'm for mobility and transition but don't talk my part and it's like when you talk about schools I agree with having a peaceful environment around schools but don't touch my area because I want to keep on using my car as I used it before and then there's people who are for it they are willing to change but they still don't have tools what I was telling you about the people who are most vulnerable people who say well if I had an infrastructure a segregated infrastructure then yes I would take my bike or if I had a place where I could park my bike close to my home that is safe I would do it but I'm lacking tools so those are the people we need to work with and we need to create those infrastructures that they need then we have the the sector within that do listen to us like neighbour neighbour associations that say well the city council does not listen to us they don't listen to our voice and that's an interesting debate because due to the pandemic and urgency we did have some problems with participation but that has been improved but we never cover the expectations that everyone has with regards to participation and when you do cover their expectations what remains is is people a mistake participating without not listening to them yes we do listen to you we did listen to you we did receive your suggestions we have answered to your proposals not everything has been has been considered so they say I made a proposal and since you did not do what I said then you don't listen to me so we have to try and make an effort to try and put on the table interests the interests of one side of the other and try to explain very well explain very well when certain proposals need to be rejected others can be accepted and try and find this this common good which is on the table and then there are other people who say that what is being done does not work well and we have to insist in improving the ordinances and the rules and regulations as Laura was saying so we have to be very pedagogical about it well those are those five groups those five profiles that we deal with that we have detected and then the strategy I don't know how I'm doing time wise I'm going to finish by talking about something that is also a reaction I mean it's what we've done very often which are tactical interventions within our strategy and as I was saying we have to continue with this initiative but but it's not it's no longer open streets with tactical interventions but rather with a consolidation of what was tactical and now we have new projects that are now put in place as you would a project, a traditional project civil works and so on but for actions to be better understood they need to have an aesthetic quality to them they need to have a certain quality to them because that makes debate easier because in Lauderdale for instance we had this new debate going on with new concepts with new infrastructures with European standards that were not known here in Spain and at the same time with tactical interventions that were unknown to people as well so there were lots of new elements here and we obviously had that task of trying to separate one thing from the other so that people understood what was simply a change of modes what is this way of action so I don't know how am I doing time well Raul should I stop it here so that we have time for questions if you want you could have a couple more minutes to finish something but you can yes but you can take two more minutes if you wish so I'm going to use these couple minutes to talk about school areas because at the end of the other interventions they have talked about schools well in all of this strategy we are really working in school environments some cities with the low emission areas are also focusing on school areas because we believe that that is the seed to transformation because good behaviors need to start at an early age and by acting on school areas not only are you acting on the early ages but you're acting on the whole educational community families parents teachers so this is better understood when you act in these school environments the debate is not as great because who is going to oppose to a boy or a girl accessing in a safe way in a healthy way to transportation so that they can get to their school so it's an opportunity to work in that environment because it's not just the seed to the whole city it's also the seed to work on the super blocks what we call superman than us in Spain so I told you that the basic cyclist line had to be reinforced well in the super blocks these are a piece peaceful areas that can share all modes of transportation but in all super blocks in all of these neighborhoods there's usually a school within and that's the nucleus around which we can create that peaceful environment and I think that this is something where we are working and it is really giving us great results and we will keep on working along that way thank you so much Jaime well it's funny that when you think about bicycles when you think about it when you read about it and you don't think about interests it's all advantages it's more health it's cleaner air you said it Jaime and if you hadn't done it I would have done it it's also eliminating noise I remember I lived close to Madrid in Alcorcon when Filomena went through Madrid everything stopped for three days no noise no traffic I had never listened to that silence never I moved here so that is something basic as well and what I was saying jokingly which is not a joke is how do I convince parents to not park at the school door by leaving their children and there's tensions in that at that time when they're leaving their children in the chat there have been quite a few comments and it's actually quite lively with regards to comments I'm going to maybe ask some of the questions that have already been asked on the chat and then if you want if you wish we could look at the comments so Sandra was asking with regards to Barcelona she said that there were lots of initiatives of the pandemic there were tactic changes with regards to the public space but there were too many criticisms even by citizens who think that public space is for cars how can we tackle this change knowing that cars are a polluting element that worsens our health and wellbeing Pilar you were mentioning previously you were mentioning previously that you have been fighting for many many years what would you say about this well I will give you an example of what happened in my neighborhood and I am astounded because I live in a neighborhood that is very left wing very alternative well but it's really a suburban area very suburban area a very family oriented area lots of green areas close to the Casa de Campo and not long ago ecologistas and actions started a campaign so that we could have some means to measure nitrous oxide in the area and I wanted to have one of them here and I asked the parents and they said no how are you going to do that and I said well if the one in the Casa de Campo has high levels then we must have nitrogen oxide here as well but they said no one how are we going to have our kids how are we going to how are we going to make them come on foot and this is an area that's only 15 minutes and they usually drive them in their 4x4 I mean a kid who's 8 kilos who weighs 8 kilos we use tons of cars to move those kids around so it's actually very difficult because the culture the pro car culture has been there for years and years in favor of that model and it is now very difficult to show that what is green I mean having trees does not mean that there is no pollution and a 4x4 is not an ecological vehicle even if you can use it to go through mountains with it and 15 minutes can be done on a bike as well 15 minutes walking could be I don't know Lauda tell me what would it be 5x6 when I took my bike to the station when I was younger and I wouldn't fall and I wouldn't have any problems I would take my bike and it took what a few minutes but now these kids who then do football here and there so that they burn their calories they cannot take the bike or cannot go on foot to school so it's actually very very difficult because I don't know we have to change the educational programs in primary schools and secondary schools and university schools as well because I go to university and in third year when I start explaining my subject matter and I talk about blue-grand report they haven't heard about it or RIA's conference they haven't heard about it so we are in a situation where they leave university without really knowing half of the basic things that they should know with regards to geography I mean I teach geography it's not quantum science or exact mathematics so if you study geography and you don't know these things I think it's serious so the whole educational system needs to change we also need to change the way in which culture automotive culture works in publicity and ads that is is pushed not just on TV but in the press nobody reads it so that's not a problem but also in social networks when you are on social networks you see these cars for families 4x4s and so on so obviously there are lots of economic interests and you know car salesmen are in crisis because they haven't sold as much as they want to do it's not that they haven't sold it's just that they haven't sold as much as they would like to so now all the news say well there's a crisis in the automotive sector well it's very difficult it's very difficult I from my point of view believe that we don't need to make much investment many investments to empower mobility, pedestrian mobility with the current infrastructures that we have as they have done in Loroño as Jaime explained the same infrastructures that for cars can now be turned into something else they can change the rules of the game and now they decide who is going to use that space instead of being used by cars it will be used by bicycles instead of having such such narrow bicycle lanes let's have wider bicycle lanes and narrow car lanes so we have to change the role and we will change the role of the users and we will see that it will happen in New York City with all of the tactic urban planning that they applied obviously they have their own problems they have their own concrete consequences that will need to be analyzed but when you decide that Times Square is a pedestrian area it fills up with people and cars disappear that's it, those decisions like the ones that Loroño has taken or Potevita has taken without big investments are the investments that need to be put in place we mustn't wait for big European funds there are lots of measures that can be set up, we don't need to wait for funds if the funds come along then we'll do more things but if they don't come these are measures that mustn't just be done in the town centers but also in the different suburban neighborhoods my neighborhood is filled with cars, it's in the suburban peripheral areas we could take the bike to go everywhere but people take their car to go buy groceries to take their kids to soccer and so on so we have to change the model and we need to make political decisions so I don't know, I don't know I don't know what to do, maybe I should just do marketing and that's all and try and convince people but maybe I'm not the right person for it but I'm sure that there are people who could do it, those who sell shares and banks they have the capacity to convince so we should hire them so that they sell sustainable mobility around I have been in this for a very long time and often you recover everything that has happened and you think why is it taking us such a long time to do such simple things, such easy things things that could be so quickly done well Bilal, I don't know if the people for marketing are already busy convincing us that in an era that we should be reducing our emissions, now people are purchasing our purchasing a car, now the weight of cars that move around in cities is bigger so I'm sure that there are some people in marketing that that might be for this sustainable mobility but I think that most of them are not, so Lauda I am going to ask the question that Kristoff was asking, you were talking about the next generation funds, these funds that come from Europe and actually Spain has been a very good student, has presented his plans before anyone else, they have been approved I know that the political discussion the debate is on but I was in a meeting the other day about this topic actually and someone from the platform for public transportation said well let's stop talking about e-vehicles the e-car was invented over a hundred years ago and it's called tramway and I thought well that's a great way of saying that we need a change in paradigm not go from diesel or gas cars to e-cars that's another problem with energy, minerals and so on but if we had that transformation it wouldn't really affect many of the problems that we have in cities so I don't know Lauda if you are finding an excess of optimism with e-cars and mobility plans and in strategies for mobility that you are currently analysing or in general well yes the problem is that I'm not finding it there the problem is that I am finding it in processes and legislative processes in the congress well last week for instance they approved for the procedure, the royal decree that would then that would be processed urgently on energy efficiency led by the ministry for the ecological transition so it has three measures one of the measures is to make all legal changes that the automotive industry has asked for and they call that for the efficiency of electric mobility which is a lie and then we have two other elements with regards to renewable energies and other matters so when I see that debate in the congress I see that everyone is using the data that the car manufacturers association is providing them with so I call them I call the political groups in the parliament and they say what are you doing how can you defend this as a priority when the national plan the integrated plan for energy and climate also approved by the ministry for the ecological transition has set a change in mode to electrification of e-cars so the policies are doing what they think is easiest what they think would have the best message and with the best figures and data but if you scratch the surface according to articles that we have recently read it seems that the industry the car industry is simply lying and they are accounting for their contribution to GDP multiplying it by 3 and to the added value of production they are multiplying it by 3 and not only has this been allowed but it has been integrated in that royal decree in the minutes of the board of the ministries council when they when they approve the perte for for cars so without a political filter they are giving priority to that which is easy and to take into account the external elements negative external elements of that part of the sector they haven't taken into account the cost the economic cost of the fatalities and accidents that they cause they haven't taken into account the health implications noise pollution they haven't taken into account premature deaths that are caused by cars they haven't taken into account the environmental impacts and biodiversity impacts and ecosystems by big infrastructures of road transportation they haven't taken into account the unbalance that that access to employment has and the access to cars which is that gives access to that job which is an area of the city that is called industrial area which is which is which is foreign to public transportation and active transportation and all of that without filter is not that it has gotten to the general population as an acquired right that they defend to the death because they are not capable of seeing that there is an alternative that in that neighborhood you could go on foot to your school or you could go on bike to your school so that change cannot just be by convincing everyone one by one all of your neighbors it needs to be a structural change it has to come with physical changes infrastructures and transportation infrastructure changes that will allow for that active mobility and it needs to be structural because of the investments that are being made and because of the calls for European funds but it also needs to be structural with regards to the laws and the strategies and the actions political actions that are put in place I mean the social social tissue organized social tissue as well as public administrations need to need to see that so we need to give visibility to the falseness of that data and give visibility as well to everything that they are not showing which is that that impact and all of that take it to the people who are deciding to the decision makers because I feel ashamed of the fact that the ministry for the ecological transition to be the one leading this perpetuation of the privilege of cars through electrical cars yes absolutely it's really complex and it's also true that this is a sector that has a lot of impact in the economy with their jobs and as Laura said we should review that information with care but it looks like what we are doing is kicking the can down the street instead of doing the transformation that we should do we are getting ourselves in a bigger trouble just a comment because I saw something that has been said the job thing some funds some European funds are being given to the automotive sector that generates a series of jobs but that is not conditioned by by reconverting the industry so when we don't defend the automotive industry is not that we are not defending jobs what we have to defend is actually those jobs and that is what really hurt me from the parliamentary groups they were not defending the job itself what they were defending was the industry and the production of the e-car yes that is the institute of just transition from the ministry for ecological transition has actually decided very well with regards to the closing of mines of coal mines and nuclear power they should be the ones to really tackle many other industries that will not be maintained because climate change is serious ladies and gentlemen Jaime there was a question for you by Kristof who said that in Bilbao we have 30 kilometers per hour in the whole city two way two way lanes were simply a hurdle along the way he wanted to know if you had done an analysis of traffic density if you take out one and a half meters for the bike lane how many more people could be included I understand that he refers to the capacity of our streets and our roads that is the question of the lanes by doing this red distribution well first of all we Loroño haven't really seen a change there hasn't really been a change it's funny because that that excess of space for cars was causing as I said this double line so when we have reduced the space what we have eliminated is actually the possibility of parking in the double line but that lane was already eliminated by the double line so the capacity of the lane itself is the same one and what we try now some ways to really care for intersections because in urban spaces regardless of the speed whether it goes down to 30 since it is more seamless the traffic in the end it takes a shorter to get from A to B as it has been proven but what defines the streets is the intersections so in intersections we have had to get to some situations where we try not to have a very harsh alteration but in general it hasn't really affected our traffic but what is what's fun to see is the difference in interpretations and perceptions by people who use the car because when that space is occupied by other cars parked in a double line they understand that that does not that does not reduce the capacity but when it's used by other users of other vehicles such as bicycles then they think that they are still in capacity from them or if it is a bus lane or bicycle lane many more people can use it so we have been also doing exercises on bus lanes as well so now instead of having a double lane we have a bus lane and people complain but we say no listen we haven't done much what we have done is the car capacity is the same you have the same lane but now we are giving capacity to other vehicles who are transporting 100 people who are many more than the people who are in a car and it goes it works better it's more agile and more comfortable that is why I insisted to convince people not only do we need to be pedagogical about it but by reducing double lines in cities it is uncomfortable to use cars what makes cars comfortable is to be able to have this feeling of going from door to door and being able to stop wherever you want but if you take that possibility out of the equation and it is not comfortable to take your car in the city that's the best pedagogy because people will say I'm going to park somewhere else instead of in the school I will park somewhere else because I know I won't be able to park so I will take the bus or I will go walking or I will take my bike so that's the best pedagogy really and Laura was talking about cars we are being accused of going against cars and so on we don't want to criminalize cars because they are good in their way but cars can be very useful to travel and so on but what we need to to abuse their use in the downtown so there are many other many other uses that are not the cars so cars are not there to abuse of them so in cities we have to care for spaces for other uses I think that was all I wanted to say take a look at all these things I hope that was enough yes thank you Jaime thank you very much it's already 22 past we still have 8 minutes so I'm going to answer to the last question that is being asked and I'm going to ask this question to all of you so that it is time to take the floor and I ask you to be brief to be short because we only have 8 minutes so Carmen Molina was asking why does it take so long as she was asking Pilar she said very true Pilar and the question is why does it take such a long time to convince of necessary changes when they're easy and simple I would like to say that when I learned about this about this strategy when I learned about it in one of the meetings of the Green European Foundation was that it was really cheap that any city could put it in place it was static sometimes it's something that is not very expensive you don't need a very big infrastructure and it's very efficient why does it take such a long time to convince of necessary changes when they're easy changes and simple changes who can answer this question well why well because I think it's very important what Lohroño, what Santarstean have done what Ponte Bredra have done because when people see it when people see that there aren't problems because you take a lane and give it to some other means of transportation everyone sees it when they see that in La Conta it took 20 years to be done ever since the first demands that cyclists made in Donosti until it was open and now people realize that it worked very well and there weren't really traffic problems due to that well you need to have a politician and someone in the city council who is a civil servant who makes this decision that's the main problem we either train politicians and civil servants so that they understand the reality and we take them to spiritual retreat so that they understand the need for these changes or I don't know what to do we don't take the decision we can't prove citizens that that is possible Jaime must have been to one of these retreats hasn't he I think that it is it can only be proven with practice I mean someone has to try it out someone who tries to move around in bicycle because bicycle is one of the best sustainable means of transportation in cities such as La Oroño with regards to agility and time if you try it out you realize and then when you choose the way in which you want to move around you always choose the most practical way and the most useful way so it's about incentivizing those means that are not sustainable like cars and to incentivize those which are sustainable so I think that that transformation is going to take place even with people who really are reticent because I think that cars are not good and we have been for many decades having a status quo and a distribution of a public space that is unfair and we were born with it and we have seen it and when we've done tactic interventions in the sidewalk we did for instance an intervention and we gave priority to or I'm sorry in the streets we gave priority to pedestrians people really didn't didn't go and walk down the street because they they weren't used to it but if you get used to it that's how you change and if you ask Google how do I go from here to here and it tells you how long it takes you to go on a car, on a bus on a bicycle etc and that's how you see and in that time estimate the sustainable means of transportation should be faster should be better than the car because otherwise people will keep on choosing the car when with a car you see that you have to go round and round you have to park your car then you will not choose the car that's how you incentivize the you de-incentivize the use that's how I see it thank you Jaime Laura well if I have to choose one I would say the social organized tissue the social organized fabric and political action I think that we are in the midst of a transition moment it is the most important moment for us to participate in spaces in spaces for social action and for interaction because the more we say the the more we repeat it the more proposals we we generate the closer we will be from change because as I said in the beginning it seems that the speech of discourse has changed and I agree that we need less resources than other parts of the sector but they are necessary for us to change things especially physical elements that will cause that change and the rest will come I mean bicycle is so thankful really that when we have those public administrations those people who make decisions to approve it to integrate it in their policies people will change their behaviors they will change it and it will be accepted will it be too late well I hope not I honestly hope not but let's recalculate the route constantly recalculate the route we have to we have to have a common road ahead there are many topics we haven't been able to talk about we haven't talked about health we haven't talked about humor because you don't feel the same way when you go on your bike to work than when you're on your car stuck in a traffic jam and we haven't talked about what world we want but we don't have time for all of those things Kim actually wrote a comment saying that it's also important to get renfe to stop being an obstacle for bicycles we need to have more trains to get adapted to bicycles etc absolutely everything that is making bicycling easier is obviously positive but I wanted to use this this comment to tell you that next Tuesday we will have our last session on mobility and we will be talking about the railroads and the potential of railroads not just to turn into an alternative for freight for freight transportation and to reduce CO2 but also to to connect the territory something that is quite important and that session will be at six as well just as today and we will have T-limits and a European MP the president of Transitio Necológica Quanto Orale will be present and I don't know maybe Manel Ferri I don't know I don't know because we don't know we were asking him to be a part of this so we invite you all to participate during our next session and that is all I just wanted to thank Pilar Laura and Jaime obviously for being here with us it has been a real pleasure to listen to you all although you always have this bittersweet taste wouldn't it be wonderful to bet for this but how difficult it is it's always so difficult although it shouldn't be that difficult I mean if we weren't pushed here and there by interest we wouldn't be able to do it and I wanted to also thank the people who make this make this possible John who is in charge of all the technical aspects Matilde our translator and we are also recording this session so that it's also available in English and my colleague Solida for organizing this whole thing so Solida is actually sending me he is sending me a message you should have also mentioned José Luis Alvañez who is the spokesperson for the state coordinating platform who will be present next Tuesday so thank you all, thank you all so much for dedicating your time to thinking about these things and let's start cycling thank you so much greetings to you all