Thanks to new bike lanes recently introduced throughout the city along Calle Colon and events such as the one I saw today, in the city centre near our Palacio Tamarit; it makes me even prouder to be a daily cyclist. It is great to see fellow citizens out and about, enjoying the sights and sounds of Valencia in an open inclusive way.
Slowly we will reconquer the streets, one by one and turn this city into an even friendlier cycling, pedestrian safe city. As I have mentioned in previous blogs, I have been an avid cyclist since I moved to Sevilla back in 2009 and have kept it up ever since.
The advantages of cycling are numerous, and not only for the individual who makes his daily cycle to work, but the cyclist is even doing the rest of Valencians a favour by reducing both pollution and car traffic, as one more cyclist means one less car on the road, one less parking space being occupied by another car and obviously less air pollution for all of us who live and breathe in this city we call home.
There are of course much further reaching advantages of cycling, in terms of affordability, health benefits and also politically speaking, but as some of you may already know, I covered these points in a previous blog titled «Driving Vs Cycling».
I would like to stress however that there is a vital role for cars in society, especially if you live on the outskirts or in order to reach villages which have few bus lines if any to connect them to Valencia. Although, it is my belief that city dwellers, who live in Valencia capital have few justifying reasons for the use of private vehicles. As with many humans traits, it is done for more capricious reasons, such as personal comfort or a lack of desire to make any physical effort during your daily commute. This is unfortunate as the world’s aim is not to eliminate pollution completely, as this would be unrealistic but rather to reduce it to manageable levels, whilst creating a healthy city environment for us to live in, and the only way this can be achieved is for individual citizens to make small sacrifices for everyone’s benefit, instead of just an individual’s benefit.
After all, we have to share this city.
