
The Catalan capital, with its Urban Mobility Plan 2024, aims to ensure that 80% of all trips are made by bicycle, public transport, or on foot. The goal: safer, fairer, and more efficient mobility.
Here are our Best-of-Barcelona bullet points on bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly urban design: 👇
🔸 Mobility meets Tactical Urbanism:
Barcelona’s famous Superblocks are designed to foster safe active mobility. Traffic-calmed, green spaces invite people to linger, while the need for efficient everyday and delivery traffic is addressed.
What stood out positively about the Superblocks and traffic-calmed zones:
- They often border school areas, enhancing safety for students.
- Bike-sharing stations provide excellent connectivity to other districts.
- Crossings between bicycle and pedestrian zones are well-marked with street markings or dedicated bike traffic lights.
🔸 Safe traffic during urban transformation:
In 2023, there were 47 major inner-city construction sites, causing significant road closures that affected pedestrian, bicycle, and car traffic.
This needs careful consideration in traffic management, including temporary safety measures for traffic routes. We frequently observed complete closures of cycling paths, which quickly led to informal detours.
🔸 Scaling the traffic transition beyond city limits:
The city’s grid structure makes it easy to scale up successfully tested inner-city pilot projects across Barcelona.
With 70% of the city now covered by the bicing bike-sharing system, the Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB) is rolling out AmBici, an e-bike sharing system for 15 municipalities around Barcelona. This aims to ensure seamless mobility across city boundaries.
As part of the European Digital Innovation Hub Thuringia initiative, the Smart City Expo gave us the chance to explore the current state and potential of digital technologies in mobility and to showcase our solutions in traffic planning and traffic management.
A big thank you to Thüringen International for the invitation and organization, as well as to Guiding Architects for the insightful tour through Barcelona’s Superblocks!
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