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MOBILITY AND TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURES

The mobility network in the metropolitan area is dense and capillary, enabling more than ten million journeys to take place every day. These mobility flows reflect the region's accessibility and integration: they increase the population's opportunities and possibilities for choice.

MOBILITY AND TRANSPORT INFRASTRUCTURES
  • WHERE ARE WE?
    The way we live and travel are interrelated: the effects of one determine the other. However, urban development and mobility are disciplines that tend to be planned independently. In medieval times, cities were designed for travel on foot; during the nineteenth century, as cities expanded, they were designed for travelling by public transport and carriage, and later, in the twentieth century, they were planned according to the logic of the car, with dispersed growth and the implementation of an extensive network of roads and roads.

    Today, 3.2 million people live in the metropolis of Barcelona, and they make more than 10.2 million journeys every day. Together with freight, these journeys account for more than 28% of Catalonia's CO2 emissions and as a result, their impacts seriously affect health, the environment, the economy and social equity.

    The city's development has led to urban dispersal (people live increasingly farther apart from each other), the territorial fragmentation of neighbourhoods and open spaces due to infrastructure, high levels of consumption of energy resources and public spaces, and a vast array of harmful effects on the population (emissions, noise, temperature increase, etc.), which seriously affect urban habitability.
  • WHERE ARE WE HEADING?
    The metropolitan PDU aims to consolidate a more compact metropolis, with a model of proximity that brings activities closer to people, and consumes resources rationally.

    We need an infrastructure network that is integrated into its environment, which will restore ecological connectivity and restore the habitability of road spaces for use by the public, and which will guarantee mobility for pedestrians and bicycles. We want a public transport network that structures the metropolis, and channels a large proportion of the mobility that today involves cars.

    This will all require broad and cross-disciplinary urban planning, which integrates the needs and priorities of mobility, and is able to rethink infrastructure and modes of transport in a manner consistent with how we live in the metropolis, in order to find synergies and by doing so reduce the negative impacts on the environment and human health.
12.3 million journeys are made every day in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. This figure gives some idea of the importance of mobility in social and economic interactions in the metropolis. Mobility is the result on the one hand of a land use model that has followed various patterns in terms of the segregation of uses and urban density, and on the other hand, of the level of supply of infrastructure and mobility services that this segregation permits, with the reduced journey times and the increased territorial coverage that it entails, especially for automobile mobility.

This mobility system creates significant challenges. Some of these challenges are related to mobility management and the sectoral planning of infrastructure and services. However, many others have significant links to urban development. For this reason, urban planning can correct the current mobility model by creating more balanced settlements, consolidating metropolitan continuities on a human scale, improving the habitability of urban fabrics, and in general, creating efficient mobility with the existing resources.
  • GLOBAL MOBILITY – MAJOR INFRASTRUCTURES
    The territory of the metropolitan area of Barcelona is an important mobility node in the Mediterranean and Europe. It is Catalonia's most complex point, where major infrastructures, such as the port, the airport, the high-speed train and the main highways and motorways are all located.

    These large infrastructures must overcome the difficulty of their relationship with the various urban settlements and open spaces. In addition, the territory is limited in size and the outlook for the growth of these infrastructures mean that Catalonia's territory must be considered in terms of a large network of infrastructures.

    GLOBAL MOBILITY – MAJOR INFRASTRUCTURES
  • METROPOLITAN MOBILITY – PUBLIC TRANSPORT AS A CORNERSTONE
    The metropolitan area has a major influence on the rest of the region in terms of mobility, but how the rest of the region behaves also influences the metropolitan area. Regional mobility costs are very favourable for car users after years of investment in road infrastructure. This situation creates a modal distribution of regional journeys that is clearly geared towards private vehicles.

    Meanwhile, public transport is structured using a radial model, which hinders the development of the network, and needs to be rethought based on the desired urban development. In this respect, the railway network may become one of the main vectors in metropolitan mobility, and the road network has the potential to become an above-ground public transport network.

    PUBLIC TRANSPORT
  • URBAN MOBILITY – SOCIAL STRUCTURE
    Many of the metropolitan settlements have experienced a decline on the human scale in recent years. This was based on urban continuities, streets with moderate levels of density of activities and people, and high quality public spaces that made active mobility and public transport possible. However, excess traffic, mobility infrastructures and the segregation of uses have now put an end to some of these continuities. A basic challenge is therefore to restore metropolitan cohesion, with an urban and social structure that connects centralities by means of avenues and streets.

    Reducing traffic flows is essential for regaining space from the road system for sustainable mobility, and for other public activities and uses. More than 20% of the urban land in the metropolitan area of Barcelona is currently allocated to road use, and most of this is occupied by private mobility. The area covered by private and public car parks must also be added to this figure. It is therefore a challenge for urban planning to minimise the use of the public space that is directly related to mobility infrastructures.

    URBAN MOBILITY – SOCIAL STRUCTURE
The diagnosis of the metropolitan region's mobility and transport infrastructures presents challenges that planning must address according to its general objectives and its capacity for action.

After the evaluation and final selection of the various alternatives has been completed, the PDU will be able to address the challenges and outline its proposals.

These proposals are defined in the specific terms of a preliminary document, in the objectives, section, which is divided into four broad categories of contents: structural elements, the agroforestry mosaic, urban fabrics and areas of action.
ACCESSIBILITY AND PUBLIC TRANSPORT NETWORKS

This map is based on maps ‘I.16.1 Public transport networks' and ‘D.IV.01 Accessibility by public transport', which are part of the graphic material of the Preliminary Document.

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