Category Archives: Pamplona

Curious sign

As cities change towards a more human and sustainable perspective, governments include traffic regulations and special traffic signs like the following:

I took the photo in Pamplona, but you can see it in lots of cities. It means no entry streets except for bikes, which do can ride in the two ways. Of course, riders should put extra attention to the vehicles and people they come across when moving against car traffic. In fact, this sign is presented at the beginning of a pedestrian area in which vehicles different from bikes run like fire trucks, police cars, ambulances or delivery vans.

Separators

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Separators in bike lines are needed in some complicated roads, specially those which suffer from excessive car traffic or in which cars circulate at illegal speeds. They constitute a safety element to protect cyclists and give a clear message to drivers: You must not cross this line. Easy and direct. There are a myriad of separators in urban biking ranging from different colors and shapes to incorporated issues. In the following example from Pamplona, they integrate reflective elements (the gray stripes) so that drivers see them even in a close night. The distance between two separators was not chosen so by chance. Technicians optimized it to avoid cars intrusion into the bike line and create the psychological effect like “do not trespass this line” in the driver mind. Besides, their height improves this point in contrast to the ground level separators which can go unnoticed by car drivers.

Pamplona bike line

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Pamplona is one of those cities in the north of Spain full of trees and vegetables thanks to the raining weather they enjoy. Pamplona is also a good place to ride. It has experienced a urban bike development in recent years, partially because of the new bike infrastructures. Here you can see one of these examples:

A bike line in an avenue is shown in the picture. It follows the exact sketch as the car lines, but additional elements are presented. Zebra crossings indicate bikers the pedestrian priority to cross the avenue, go to the trash cans or access the bus stop (the begging starts at the right of the image). Moreover, this effect is reinforced by the yield symbols. These double signals establish without any doubts who has right of way here. Furthermore, the arrow with the bike indicates the direction of travel. By the way, there is a second, one-way bike line opposite to the aforementioned one since this is a two-way avenue. Finally, beyond the trash cans, you can see an open surface which was a car line in the past. Thanks to the urban transformation, pedestrians gain space.

To sum up, intelligent bike infrastructures separate spaces for bikes, pedestrians and the rest of ways of transportation.

Neighboring fights (2/2)

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Continuing with the neighboring fights, there are some that do not center on specific actions such as changing an avenue or buddying a railroad track. They look for a complete improvement in broader areas like the whole city. Given the dimension of the target, multiple actions are needed. In this second post on this topic, I am going to talk about Valencia camina (Valencia walks) and the 8-80 platform in Pamplona.

Valencia camina (http://arquitecturia.org/valenciacamina , in Spanish) was born in February 2018 as a shout from pedestrians against what negatively interfere in the day-to-day movements. You know, lots of architectural barriers, crosses with poor visibility, nonsense routes (for example the need to go from point A to point B in a straight line instead of walking in a U because of the bad urban development), etc. They claim for more safety, universal accessibility, school paths, zero vision (zero accidents), walking paths quality, streets with vegetables, noise control, pollution control, secure road surface, bus stops according to the pedestrian paths, etc. They collaborate to the European FLOW project (Furthering Less Congestion by Creating Opportunities For More Walking and Cycling) with the aim of putting walking and biking on the fair base with the motor-based ways of transport as a solution to jam among others (http://h2020-flow.eu/about/overview/). In a few words, they look for a more human city.

Similarly as above, the 8/80 platform in Pamplona started as a group of people demanding improvements in their lives. They have criticized laws which discriminate the use of bicycle or worsen pedestrian walkings. Furthermore, they publish a piece of news every time a pedestrian is killed in a car accident, denounce dangerous crossings and support bike vindications. This movement was imported from Canada (https://www.880cities.org) with the goal of improving the quality of life for people by bringing citizens together to enhance mobility and public space so that together can be created more vibrant, healthy and equitable communities.