The City Council of Santa Lucía de Tirajana has achieved the support of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda for three projects that it presented to be financed by the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan with funds from the European Union. In total, an investment of almost two million euros will be made for a project to create a network of lanes for bicycles and personal mobility vehicles, another to implement zones and routes for pedestrians and a third that seeks to reduce polluting emissions through of traffic calming actions. Of the 88 Canarian municipalities, Santa Lucía de Tirajana is one of the five that has achieved support for its projects within this European program.
The NextGeneration funds of the European Union were created to support projects that help the recovery from the economic and social crisis caused by the covid 19 pandemic. The projects presented had to adapt to the objectives of “a sustainable and resilient recovery, with ecological priorities and digital. For this reason, 5 projects were presented to improve sustainable mobility and reduce polluting emissions caused by motor vehicles. The projects presented totaled an investment of 2.503.843, and support has been achieved for three projects totaling 1.868.405 euros.
The largest amount has been achieved for the project “Adaptation of roads and urban space for bicycles and/or personal mobility vehicles on the Vecindario ring road”, with a budget of 937.260 euros. It is proposed “the creation of more than 50 km of lanes reserved for bicycles and Personal Mobility Vehicles (VPM) by expanding the current bike lanes and the implementation of shared cycle lanes on urban roads to create an integrated cycling network within the rest of municipal transport networks. This action includes the conditioning of urban areas or parks, the installation of vertical and horizontal signage as well as the installation of new bicycle parking spaces.” In addition, we continue “with the projects of School Routes already developed previously in the municipality to facilitate autonomous, well-marked, accessible and safe routes to schools, encouraging travel on foot or by bicycle.”
The second project, for an amount of 518.459, aims to “Adaptation of urban spaces for the implementation of pedestrian zones and routes and improvement of accessibility in the Vecindario ring road.”
The other program is called “Traffic calming actions on the Vecindario ring road by improving signage and infrastructure actions” and will have 412.596 euros. Among the planned actions is the “reduction of lane width, staggered arrangement of parking strips, elevated pedestrian crossings, donkey backs, pavement surface treatments and intelligent pedestrian crossings, which are complemented by improvements in accessibility and “Existing cycle lanes will help achieve the objective of lowering traffic to 30 km/h.”
The Councilor for Mobility, Nieves García, highlights that "the support for these projects that we present allows us to maintain our commitment to public mobility policies, we will continue to build a more sustainable Santa Lucía and a city for people's enjoyment and leisure."