The opening of the new cycle path near the city of Huelva is yet to come. That will happen in the spring, but the path is already raising eyebrows. When cyclists saw carts drawing lines on the newly laid asphalt this week, they didn’t know what they were seeing.
‘I am dizzy’
Everything was crooked like a hoop. In some of the footage that exists, you hear cyclists asking road workers if they don’t see that something is going very wrong. But the leaders continued stoically, because their orders stated that it had to be this way.
One of the cyclists then made a video while trying to follow the lines on the new cycle path for the first time. “Can someone explain to me what happened here,” he exclaims, as he wanders from one side to the other. “I cycled a short distance and am feeling dizzy. Is this really intended, and by whom, the municipality, the company that works here?”
Since the man posted the video, it has gone viral throughout Spain and now beyond.
Local administrators who made the decision to build the 33 kilometer long cycle path were proud of the design in advance. They are now being bombarded with phone calls and difficult questions, but none of the politicians responsible answered those questions today.
Inspiration
They did send a copy of the plan to the press. They wrote that the cycle path is a design inspired by examples elsewhere in Europe of cycle paths with the same type of markings. But wait a minute… The photo next to it doesn’t show a cycle path, but the world-famous Superkilen park in Copenhagen.
The wavy lines also have a suitable symbolism, the politicians write. According to them, the lines emphasize the freedom of movement that cyclists have. On the bike you clear your head, you don’t have to follow someone else’s rhythm or direction.
Poetic language
The statement concludes with the idea that ‘the random lines were drawn to show how many options there are for routes and flows through the area the cycle path crosses’.
The drivers have not yet managed to convince cyclists with their poetic language. In Copenhagen people are indeed allowed to cycle in the park with the wavy lines, but in the Danes it is a space of 30,000 square meters, where people move slowly.
How further?
Very different from a one and a half meter wide cycle path in southern Spain that will be widely used by amateur cyclists who flash past at high speed.
The question is how to proceed. After all, they are already there and have been dry for a few days now. The bill will also have to be paid ‘normally’. The whole of Spain now has an opinion via social media and radio programs and it is usually destructive.
Yet a way out seems obvious. If the proud drivers don’t do it, there are others who can have the lines painted over. The cycle path partly runs through the Doñana national park, for which four different levels of government are responsible. Maybe one of those other governments likes straight lines.
2024-01-05 14:44:25
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