The Montevideo Municipality announced its most recent project – the construction of a bike lane on Avenida 18 de Julio – last week and the criticism did not take long to arrive; starring him National Party and the bicycle lane groups who mainly demand greater security in the project.
Cosse announced last week the construction of the bike path, which will have an extension of 3.5 kilometers and will connect the Obelisk with the Independence Square, within the framework of a proposal that also includes the promotion of Greener Montevideo stamp for those businesses that include bicycle racks and favor users who choose to travel this way.
The cycle path will have a different width in Center and Cord and will be painted in the center of the avenue and against the north curb in Saint Joseph. Furthermore, since the Montevideo Municipality They stated that 600 bicycles circulate every day in the afternoons on the avenue, almost double the number of other streets.
Regarding the route, the I.M. He pointed out that the bike path will go July 18 until Jaguar, to wander down the street Saint Joseph, round trip, while it will arrive by Saint Joseph to the Independence Square.
Criticism of the cyclist group
During the presentation of the project, the mayor highlighted that it was worked with cycling groups, transport companiesand Center Group, representing merchants. However the cyclist collective He said that, on the contrary, after having a first meeting with the Municipality, where they were asked for their opinions, some did not even send them when the project had already been announced to the public.
In addition to this, from groups like “Coexistence Bike“, of the University of the Republic, “BIKE+” and “I go to work by bike” They established that the project presented is a pilot and that it will be carried out with very few resources, under a budget and that, in turn, the arrangement of the sidewalks and street furniture is not contemplated.
In that sense, the group highlighted that users who will not do the entire cycle path were not taken into account, but only those who will go from point A to point B are considered, because this will be in the middle of the avenue and There is no way to cross to the sidewalk, unless it’s getting off the bike.
Related to this, they highlighted that it was not taken into account, in the first place, that the bike lanes that go through the middle of the street have to have physical separations and not flexible bollards and that, on the other hand, no integral Project that takes into account means of transport, vehicles and pedestrians.
The opposition’s objections
The criticism from the National Party did not take long to arrive and came, first of all, from the councilor Javier Barrios Bove who came out to question the project, which he described as “crazy” and, regarding the viability of the initiative, stated: “We are concerned about the lives of cyclists.”
“It is enough to see the image of what that bike lane would be to understand the risk that cyclists are going to take walking around, competing with traffic,” said the nationalist mayor, who stated that “there is no security” for users.
Bove neighborhoods He maintained that “nowhere in the world is it planned that on an avenue like 18 de Julio there will be a bike lane in the middle” and that is why he considered the initiative “insane” and said that it is the “rehash of a proposal that was made Daniel Martinez and it was seen that it was unviable.”
For her part, the National Party candidate Laura Raffo also took the opportunity to criticize the Municipality’s project and emphasized the lack of public works in Cosse’s administration, who maintained that “the bike path is anecdotal.”
“Is that going to be the work that the government of Carolina Cosse? If you investigate, I believe that we are going to finish this Montevideo administration with the smallest and smallest works plan in the history of the Montevideo governments,” Raffo established and added that it is due to poor administration and management of the administration.
Carolina Cosse’s response
Faced with questions regarding the safety of cyclists in the project, the mayor came out to clarify that “safety has been especially taken into account.”
“You have to read what was published. In the cross section you can see that it is a segregated bike path, not separated with paint, it is separated by segregators,” shot the owner of the Montevideo Municipality at a press conference.
In that sense, the mayor added that it is a “segregated cycle path, it is not that it has a little tile next to it, it has separators”. In relation to this, Cosse assured that he will provide more information to the media so that it is better disseminated because, apparently, the image that was presented from the mayor’s office was not understood.
Source: Ambito
