A world congress on sustainable mobility studies the Benidorm model as a success story

Benidorm City Council's commitment to increasingly sustainable urban mobility has been given as an example of management in a world congress on this matter that is taking place these days in Valencia. The mayor of the city, Toni Pérez, and the chief municipal engineer, Juan Carlos Galiano, have participated in the presentation titled 'Benidorm, a model of success in sustainable mobility' within this Thursday's program of the 'eMobility World Congress', where They have transferred the different actions that have been developed in the last decade to outline a city strategy linked to mobility.

During his presentation, before a large forum of attendees among whom was the general director of Transport, Manuel Ríos, the first mayor explained that all these actions, which had their origin in the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (PMUS) approved in 2016, set out with the common goal of turning Benidorm into a “friendlier, more comfortable and more livable city and, consequently, with a greater capacity to generate happiness.”

Toni Pérez recalled that, after the SUMP, the approval of different documents in successive years – such as the Sustainable Urban Transport Plan (PTUS); Sustainable Parking (PES); Universal Accessibility; Global Road Safety Plan; Cycling Plan; of Electric Mobility (MOVELE) and ultimately the development of a Low Emissions Zone, which started in 2021, and which has now been expanded to cover 75 hectares – “have made it possible for pedestrians to recover spaces in Benidorm, which These spaces are accessible to all people and are also safer, that pedestrian journeys represent 70% of those recorded daily, or that the use of private vehicles has fallen by 15% while that of urban transport and bicycle does not stop growing.”

Pérez has defined the pedestrian street of Tomás Ortuño Street as the most paradigmatic example of these policies in favour of sustainable mobility. The councillor recalled that until 2016, “a traffic lane, a parking strip and two very narrow sidewalks for a volume of intense pedestrian traffic” coexisted just over 5 meters wide, making it “practically inaccessible.” And that, after the two phases of pedestrianization, today it is “one of the busiest streets in Benidorm, completely accessible,” he explained.

Along with the experience of what happened with this road, which in the last eight years has been replicated until reaching more than 40 streets and avenues with a single platform and priority for pedestrians, the example of the comprehensive reform of the Avenida del Mediterráneo, where “we went from four traffic lanes to just one, the size of the sidewalks was doubled, a single platform was chosen to guarantee total accessibility, bike lanes were implemented and a maximum traffic speed was established.” of 10 kilometres per hour", which has "achieved a total transformation of the space and the way of living in it", said the mayor.

The creation of park-and-ride facilities throughout the municipal area, which now has more than 8,000 available spaces, as well as actions to improve the connectivity of these spaces with the urban centre; the configuration of a pervasive cycling network, which currently exceeds 130 kilometres in length between bike lanes, cycle paths and cycle paths; the implementation of the Low Emissions Zone; or the development of the Electric Mobility Plan (MOVELE) to expand the electric charging points for existing vehicles to almost half a thousand, have been other aspects addressed by the first mayor.