Elche experienced tremendous tension this Tuesday morning when work began on dismantling the bike lane on Avenida Juan Carlos I in the municipality. The bicycle users of this Alicante municipality have concentrated at this point where the Councilor for Mobility, Claudio Guilabert (PP), has called on the media to publish the details of the promotion, which will extend over this week at a higher price 38,000 euros.
Guilabert explained that they have started removing this bike lane, which completes the city’s cycle ring, to comply with the election commitment and government agreement with their Vox partners last June. In this way they also take care of the families of the Santa María-Jesuitinas Elche school, a religious and concert center on this street, who protested because they could not stop in the second row at the door, leaving the children outside. The city council justified the municipality’s decision to dismantle the cycle path with a report from the local police, signed by the chief commissioner, which deals with safety problems in this infrastructure. The document states: “It creates insecurity for cyclists and pedestrians and causes delays”. It also specifies that since January 2022 and up to now, a total of “ten accidents with minor injuries have been registered”.
Compromís spokeswoman and former head of mobility at Elche City Council, Esther Díez, has assured that there are other parts of the city where there are more incidents and that is why they will not be dismantled. Díez has asked the government not to remove this infrastructure, but to increase safety by installing traffic lights and signage. However, the popular mayor emphasizes that there are “many cross accesses” on the cycle path, which is why, in his opinion, a traffic light cannot be installed at each of these points.
PP and Vox have proposed another way with the creation of cycle lanes where motor vehicles have to coexist alongside scooters or bicycles. Guilabert has insisted that it is the model most recommended by local police. For her part, Esther Díez has described the action as “outrageous” and believes that it obeys “the fanaticism” of the right and ultra-right in Elche. Díez has asked Mayor Pablo Ruz to look the boys and girls in the eyes who use these lanes with their families, which is now causing insecurity on shared roads with motor vehicles. Among the Socialists who ruled with compromises in the previous legislature, their spokesman Héctor Díez asserted that “this alternative” was worthless, as other cities had shown.
But the Juan Carlos I bike path won’t be the only one to be removed. Claudio Guilabert has announced that he too will be removed, again relying on the report of the local police, built on José María Buck road, installed next to a central roadside car park. The document explains in this sense that “it poses a potential hazard for the passage of cyclists due to the possible opening of the doors of parked vehicles”. Another project that is in the crosshairs of PP and Vox is the project that in the street Mariano Soler Olmos was built, although in this case the City Council did not identify it as a priority. The latter is financed with European funds, so the city council could be forced to return the funds received for the construction.
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PP and Vos continue to defend their strategy of dismantling these infrastructures, ensuring that it is not an action aimed at sustainable mobility. In addition, they assure that they will be the government that will build the most kilometers of bike lanes. A justification which has been criticized by the community’s cyclists, who feel that by dismantling cycle lanes they are showing their lack of sensitivity on the matter. For his part, the socialist spokesman assured that this attitude of PP and Vox is “the worst policy” and they regret that they have come to destroy what is already consolidated in the community.