The City Council will continue with improvements in Ramón y Cajal, after a year with 57 accidents and new delays in removing obstacles from the crossings
Minimizing accidents in the streets and squares of the municipality of Cartagena is the objective of a road safety plan that includes the creation of new pedestrian crossings and also the improvement of visibility and accessibility conditions for those that generate the most problems. Last year there were 57 accidents and at the beginning of 2022 a 69-year-old man was seriously injured when he was hit by a car. It happened on January 3 at number 85 Ramón y Cajal street, near Fuente Cubas.
In this context, the Alameda de San Antón will be the first street where the City Council will favor the mobility of pedestrians, with the recovery of four zebra crossings in areas where they were suppressed. Next, the intention of the government team is to install more in other streets where they are considered a priority, such as Ramón y Cajal.
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Three sinister
Vereda de San Félix and Nueva Cartagena (San Antón). -
Two sinister
Tito Didio (Torreciega), Soldado Rosique, Calle Rubí (Urb. Mediterráneo), Juan Fernández, Mayor (Los Belones), Alfonso XIII (San Ginés) Painter Balaca and Painter Portela. -
A sinister
Alfonso XIII (Los Dolores), Amethyst (Mediterranean Urbanization), Ángel Bruna, Bateria (Santa Lucía), Bucharest (Torreciega), Budapest (Torreciega), Camino de la Escuela (Santa Lucía), Captains Ripoll, Ciudad de La Unión (San Ginés), Oran City (La Unión road), Dársena (La Manga), Ermita (El Albujón), Ascent to the Lighthouse (Cabo de Palos), Floridablanca, Ignacio Aznar (La Palma), José López Martínez (San Antón) , Juan Carlos I (Latin American Neighborhood), Mayor (Canteras), Menéndez Pelayo, Park. Peroniño (Barrio de la Concepción), Access to El Portús, Recoletos (San Antón), Salamanca (Cuatro Santos), San Antón, San Félix (Barrio Peral), San Juan, San Patricio, Ramón y Cajal, Sebastián Feringán, Serreta, Sevillano, Sister Francisca Armendáriz, Tirso de Molina and Trovero Marín. -
Total
57 claims
The Federation of Neighborhood Associations and the Vía Libre and MoviliCT collectives have spent years of debate with the City Council at the Mobility Table. The pressure that they have exerted to reduce the inferiority in which pedestrians find themselves in relation to motor vehicles in most of the municipality seems to have permeated the government team.
The 2022 municipal budget includes the creation of 18 pedestrian crossings, along with signaling with light alerts and the installation of projections in the vicinity of those that are considered most dangerous. This procedure began at the end of last year next to the entrance bridge to the Barrio de la Concepción, on the Rambla de Benipila, where a Navantia operator died in September 2020.
In November, the Councilor for Public Roads, Juan Pedro Torralba, and several technicians from his department held a meeting with the Alameda neighborhood association. In it, it was agreed to label four zebra crossings on that avenue. They are the first of the road safety plan. Vía Libre has repeatedly denounced, during the term of the legislature, that in Alameda de San Antón there are two sections of several hundred meters without any zebra crossing, since those that existed were suppressed.
One of the sections is between the traffic lights attached to Plaza de España and Reina Victoria, and the second goes from there to Plaza de María Cristina, where the Shield is located.
Two new roundabouts
In each one there are two points with recesses on the central boulevard, where pedestrian crossings can be easily enabled, although the City Council has not yet publicly specified which of them it will label them on. “It will be done during the first quarter of this year,” said a municipal spokeswoman.
An old proposal also appears in the road safety plan to improve circulation at the intersections with Reina Victoria and Trafalgar streets. It involves the construction of two roundabouts, since the traffic light system is incomplete and confusing. The first case is influenced by the increase in traffic caused by the opening of Avenida del Cantón and the future link with the West Access.
Ramón y Cajal Street is the next in the municipal road safety program. Torralba and his collaborators have well advanced a study of the almost 60 abuses in 2020 and the previous annuities, to detect the main black spots, and with the aim of focusing first on the places where it is most necessary. Among the first thing that has been decided is to include Ramón y Cajal as the main priority.
The absence of steps is not the only problem. In addition, there are others well located but in which visibility between drivers and pedestrians is conspicuous by its absence. Alfonso X, Carmen Conde and Juan Fernández streets are just three examples. Garbage containers and parking spaces that get in the line of sight abound. For this reason, according to the City Council, “the revision of the network of waste containers attached to pedestrian crossings is also being finalized.” The objective is to remove or relocate all those that impede or reduce the visibility of drivers and pedestrians.
From the City Council they indicated that this is only the beginning of an ambitious plan in which they have been working for a long time. In 2022 it is planned to make 18 zebra crossings more interactive and safer. But the implementation of these new technologies will continue in successive years.
“We are in a time of transition in which cities have to adapt to a new mobility model, in which pedestrians gain greater prominence. Cartagena will not be an exception, “said Torralba.
“Local Police reports on each improvement take a long time”
“We are aware of the problems of concentration of traffic and the lack of pedestrian crossings in the center, but the City Council will probably include the creation of those that are missing in its road safety plan. For this reason, we ask that they do not forget the neighborhoods and councils, where those gaps are even greater, “said the Trafficking member of the Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Cartagena (Favcac), Sonia Montoya. This organization has delegated to each neighborhood association the request for concrete improvements related to mobility in streets and squares. “But we receive many complaints about the slowness with which they are attended to. From what they tell us, we need reports from the Local Police that support the need for each pedestrian crossing and take a long time to prepare them, “he said. In addition, he asked that new traffic lights be installed, if possible with special sound alerts for the blind and in the surroundings of the main schools.
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