The parking odyssey in Buenos Aires: they will allow spaces next to bike paths

With a
intervention in the ochavas of all neighborhoods of Buenos Aires has gained 22,000
new parking spaces. It was something simple: the extent of yellow cords where vehicles were prohibited was simply reduced. The measure served
to alleviate a problem throughout the city, the lack of public space in the streets, even if it does not seem to have responded to the demand for a growing car park.

For this reason
the secretary of transport and transit of the city Pilot test to generate more parking. Or? Beside some bike paths that run on streets more than ten meters wide, with one hand and no collective traffic. General César Díaz will be the first trace to have a parallel parking.

The resolution will be published today in the
Official Bulletin and will begin with the work of conditioning the bike path between Chivilcoy and Artigas streets, a trace of 1870 meters of extension between
neighborhoods of Floresta, Villa Santa Rita and Villa General Miter. The section where you can park will be from Chivilcoy to Nazca, about 1,300 meters.

Buenos Aires represents a challenge for urban mobility, especially in high traffic areas. Every day, some 700,000 vehicles enter the city, giving a stable place for 900,000 pbadenger cars, 10,000 taxis and 37,000 buses.

The number of available parking spaces exceeds 356 000 after the modification of the angles (334 654 places previously). When
The new measured parking system is put into operation (it is estimated that in the coming months), 78% of the places will remain free and 26% will be paid. In other words, the new system provides for 86,768 spaces to be monitored by at least 2,000 parking meters. Today, you must pay 4000 of them.

The pilot test that will start on one of the bike lanes is the result of meetings and workshops with neighbors in different parts of the city. At these meetings, one of the biggest requirements was the number of parking spaces available.

"The collaboration with the neighbors has been carried out with the aim of defining together the mobility solutions and constantly studying new opportunities for improvement.We are moving forward in this proposal with a proposal to optimize the possibilities of improvement. "Parking space according to the experience of other cities of the world," said Juan Jose Mendez, the city's secretary of transportation.

Some of the models studied are those of Copenhagen (Denmark), New York (United States), Santiago de Chile (Chile) and Barcelona (Spain), among others. In Buenos Aires, the system will begin to be used on streets at least 10.40 meters wide, in routes where public transport does not circulate and with only one direction of traffic.

The parking spaces will have, on the driver's side, a space of one meter wide between the bike path and the parking area. As if it was a pedestrian lane, this area should be used to get off vehicles without invading the bike lane. Thus, the road safety of pedestrians, cyclists and motorists would be preserved.

Parallel parking will not apply to existing roads and can only be considered in the footsteps of the cycle paths to be built and those on roads that meet the above mentioned characteristics.

In some neighborhoods, this happened every day, but without the law allowing it: in the absence of parking, the cars were left behind each other next to a bike path.