Alexandra Delgado participates in the report "Los problemas para avanzar hacia la movilidad sostenible" broadcasted by RNE
Changes in mobility are driven by urban development and the structure of cities and municipalities. In order to know how we move, we need to understand three pillars of mobility.
The first, the places where work or service spaces are located. The head of Greenpeace's mobility campaign, Adrián Fernandez, explains that the tendency is to move offices or shopping centres to the periphery, forcing people to make long journeys, as well as in smaller towns where they have to travel to provincial capitals.
The second pillar is the transport available to reach these services or jobs. "If there is only one bus to the provincial capital, there are only two options: a bus that runs three times a day or a car.
The third pillar is the personal decision of which method we use to get around. For this reason, Greenpeace points out that "we should not transfer all the responsibility to the user, it is the organisations, companies and policies that should modify these first two pillars without blaming the user, but without taking away the weight of individual responsibility".
The ways of getting around are diverse and depend on the city or municipality. The Cities for Bicycles Network works with 141 city councils, mainly in cities. Its technical secretary Nacho Tomás Ruiz argues that each city is different: "The idiosyncrasies of the cities, each with its own mobility difficulties such as its orography or climate, mean that specific and concrete decisions have to be taken for each one. But there are general guidelines that all cities can apply with ordinances, manuals of good use, public bicycle systems, etc.".
"The European Mobility Week is an opportunity for city councils to take courageous, temporary actions in terms of mobility, such as removing a lane, pedestrianising a street, etc. It's funny how citizens see these measures and in the end many of them, the ones that work well, become permanent," says Nacho Tomás Ruiz, from the Cities for Bicycles Network.
Although we were moving in the opposite direction, Greenpeace argues: "We have pushed people out of city centres and away from workplaces. Residential areas are more dispersed and less dense. We have made commuting time in Madrid or Barcelona more than an hour. This makes us use the car and that worsens living conditions".
Switching to electric cars
One of the solutions is to switch to electric vehicles. "We need to promote electric regulations, finance and subsidise the move to an electrified model and educate people about it," says Roberto Álvarez, an electrical engineer and researcher on electric vehicles. He also points out that an intermediate point is the hydrogen vehicle, but that the cost of this green fuel is high, "mainly because of the cost of transporting it, as it has to be mixed with other particles because the molecule is very small and easily filtered. The step would have to be to produce hydrogen at the place where it is going to be consumed.
"We have to make more space for pedestrians".
It is not the only solution, says Roberto Álvarez, "it cannot be a change of mentality to electric vehicles, it has to be a change of vehicle, of the way we move and use the car less". Greenpeace adds that no matter how much we change all cars to electric, traffic jams, noise and numerous other problems will continue to exist in cities. "It is not normal that in a street there are 5 lanes for cars and two people collide on the pavement".
Problems in rural areas
In rural areas the problems are greater. Most people use their own vehicles for all kinds of journeys because there is no other means of transport. In addition to this, Greenpeace argues, "if you also close doctors' surgeries, schools, etc., you force people to travel to the provincial capitals, normally without any means of transport, or very little, forcing them to travel by car".
"Trains are needed for cycling, but travelling the distance by train."
The Cities for Cycling Network is starting to work with provincial councils and autonomous communities to support interurban transport, linking nearby towns, with cycle paths and favouring intermodality. "Trains are needed to use bicycles, but to travel the distance by train," says Nacho Tomás. Greenpeace adds that there are already initiatives such as opening up school routes used by children to the general public and encouraging, for example, that an elderly person does not need to take their own vehicle and can go to a doctor's appointment in a larger town or the provincial capital on these routes.
Long-distance travel
On a larger scale are long-distance journeys. In Spain, cities served by high-speed rail have seen a sharp drop in the number of flights between them.
"The disappearance of night trains linking major European cities favours the use of air travel".
On the contrary, the disappearance of night trains linking major European cities favours the use of air travel. The same is true for freight. Alexandra Delgado, professor of urban planning at the University of Nebrija, says that since the 1990s, long-distance transport has grown in road transport: 50% by 2019. Meanwhile, rail transport remains stagnant at figures from more than 10 years ago. "On the one hand, to boost rail transport, thus reducing emissions. On the other hand, changing the vehicle fleet to a more sustainable and electric one, although the difficulties of the latter are numerous. The total conversion of fleets is neither quick nor efficient. The Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda is already working on a Mobility Law. Associations and groups such as Greenpeace are calling for this law to include the recognition of mobility as a basic right in the same way as education or healthcare and to recognise it as a service.