An Incredible Reallocation of Space in Valencia
They reallocated space between curbs for people riding bicycles, they reallocated lanes for buses, they closed streets in the centre and reallocated them for people instead of cars, and that’s all great… But I wasn’t aware that there is another amazing reallocation of space cutting through the city from one end to the other… Read on…
Reallocating Space for Bike Lanes
The bike lanes were a big draw to Valencia; all the marketing even tells you the bike is the best way to see the city, but with no bike data in Google Maps, I didn’t have a good picture in my mind of the extent of the network. It’s good though! We were able to get pretty much anywhere on a vast network of protected bike lanes…
It wasn’t always like this though. Up until 2015, the bicycle network was pretty much limited to recreational paths in parks. The city was largely car-centric, and riding a bicycle for transportation was not common. Things began to change in 2015 with the election of Mayor Joan Ribó, who prioritized sustainable mobility and made cycling a central part of that vision.
The city began rapidly building a network of protected bike lanes along major streets by reallocating road space from cars to bicycles. I understand the city's cycling infrastructure expanded from around 35 kilometres of bike lanes to over 160 kilometres today… Note that while my focus below is the bike lane on the left, the somewhat protected lane on the right is for buses and taxis…
The launch of Valenbisi, their docked public bike-share system, further encouraged people to get out on bikes… I think just regular bikes rather than e-bikes, which is fine as it’s a pretty flat city… The bikes are similar to many I’ve seen across other European cities the last few years...
I left Valencia very impressed by the network, but was soon made aware that all that good work was in jeopardy. After municipal elections in 2023, the new Mayor María José Catalá took office and began rolling back or pausing some of the cycling initiatives introduced by the previous government. These decisions have been strongly opposed by cycling advocates and local residents who value the safer, more sustainable urban environment created during the previous eight years, but presumably supported by others who think the car is the only mode that should be accommodated in the city…
Right now, Valencia is still an incredibly bike-friendly city, and I hope it stays that way… Much of the network was built by reallocating space from vehicles, adding bi-directional bike lanes using these quick-build curbs that are well spaced to allow for drainage and placed between a painted buffer. They are painted black and white, which I do think makes them more visible to people biking and driving compared with our concrete curbs that can tend to blend into the asphalt… The spacing obviously reduces the cost relative to providing a continuous curb and seems just as effective… Albeit that first one below has taken a hit of some sort…
These curbs are sometimes equipped with a plastic, flexible bollard well below handlebar height… As you can see, the bollards can take a few hits… The concrete curb is still doing its job, less a missing bit at the front…
Occasionally, I saw some rubber armadillos between the flexible bollards… Note the paint line along the gutter encouraging you to keep out of it… It is, after all, a space for drainage and not for biking… i.e., don’t include it in the facility width…
Not all bike lanes have reallocated space from vehicles… It seems that with wide sidewalks in places, space has also been reallocated from pedestrians to provide raised protected bike lanes behind the curb… I can’t tell if these are bricks or tiles, but the different colour for the bike lane makes it pretty intuitive that this is a different space…
It’s quite amazing how these tree roots aren’t causing issues with such close spacing between them and the bike path… Not sure what’s happening underneath in terms of providing soil volume, but everything seems to be working well in such a tight space…
Maybe a little bit of root heave along this section if you follow the white line…
At intersections, they’re not afraid of a big bend out, which should greatly help improve sight lines between people driving and biking, but can lead to people biking, or scooting in this case, cutting corners…
If you’ve read my Dutch blogs for a while, you’ll be aware of the flashing let-op or pay attention sign that’s used when drivers could turn across a bike lane while people are walking or biking through… Eindhoven does it differently with a flashing amber arrow for the right turn phase, and I found Valencia used a similar technique at both signalized and unsignalized locations. No reason we couldn’t trial something like this in Canada to replace our standard right turning drivers yielding to people signage… Here are a few examples…
There was reasonable wayfinding signage scattered around the city, but as we often had no real destination in mind, we often rode around somewhat on instinct in the general direction we wanted to go… When we did need to figure out a safe and comfortable route, it was slightly more challenging than in some cities. With no Google Maps bike information available, we had to resort to the OpenStreetMap webpage that did appear to be up to date and worked quite well…
Where the bike path is behind the curb, the intersection design naturally adopts a protected intersection design, albeit with some tight 90-degree turns in places in the example below, and vehicle-like yield markings both to the crosswalk and anybody coming from the crossing…
Perhaps as a legacy of the car-centric build-out of Valencia, there are some huge roundabouts almost like the Arc de Triomphe in scale but with better-defined laning, and they all appear to be signalized… I’m sure they could give up a lane for the bike infrastructure, but it appears to be largely behind the curb adjacent to the pedestrians…
An example where it seems like they did just that…
Bus stops are often floating designs, not that dissimilar to what we would do in Canada… Tactiles blending in rather than contrasting are different and only located at the back of the bus…
This was interesting, with the approach having a red light, but the signal pole also featuring a little amber bike signal, I think indicating it’s okay to turn right on red… which is typically not allowed anywhere in Spain…
A neat little innovation I liked was the use of signals that show both a pedestrian and a bicycle so that it’s very clear when riding a bike that you follow this signal rather than the vehicle signal… When we provide signals only for vehicles and pedestrians, it can be confusing for people cycling… This is one way to solve the issue without providing totally separate signals… If our infrastructure is to encourage people to be more active, it has to be intuitive…
This was the only bicycle street I saw, immediately parallel to a street with a protected bike lane on it… I didn’t see anybody using this street, walking, cycling, or driving in the short time I was there…
This bike route ran immediately through the centre of this linear park, except where it routed around this presumably valuable tree… It was nice to sit in the shade at the side and watch people rolling by in the middle, but I feel like the park would be more useful as a park if the bike lane had been off to the side… It felt kind of intrusive…
In the centre, many streets might feature a place for vehicles and sidewalks, but are essentially shared spaces as vehicles are outnumbered by people and move slowly due to the confined feel of the street…
Another example, pretty comfortable…
We saw quite a few Bromptons on this trip… They are a great tool for such a city, and by that I mean flat, good bike infrastructure, but no secure bike parking… Secure bike parking really is the next thing we have to get much better at… At a minimum, let’s start requiring all multi-storey commercial parkades to re-purpose some parking stalls for more secure bike parking such as Bikeep… It would make such a difference…
Good light on old buildings is so nice…
Pedestrian space, but bicycles allowed… Probably…
You don’t need special clothes to ride a bike…
Love the street trees providing shade on what were consistent 28 degree days while we were there…
Curbless streets with a bit of a woonerf like sign in the background there…
I should probably include a few shots from the beach. The bike lanes, of course, took us all the way there, but I think this section is actually pedestrian only, but these guys weren’t riding fast…
A little further along, a bike lane brings you down to the beach from behind the line of restaurants…
But turn the camera 180 degrees and this planter seems misplaced… When hazards such as bollards are often deemed unnecessary, a huge concrete planter seems even less necessary…
When cruising through urban streets or along the beach, again, you don’t need special clothes, shoes, or helmets… Anything works, even on a road bike… Cycling isn’t dangerous… Cars are dangerous…
Let’s hope these protected bike lanes survive… For some reason, bike lanes are becoming increasingly political almost everywhere… Cities need to work for everyone, and not everyone can or wants to drive. Cities need to work as the population increases, and the reality is that one more lane will not make things better for cars… In most cities, you’re not getting any more lanes once you take out that bike lane… That lane might buy you a year or two if that, but cities will keep growing beyond that and what do you do then? A street with people walking, cycling, and taking transit carries far more people than one that only accommodates cars… Cars are not space-efficient, not when they’re moving, and not when they’re parked…
Reallocating Space for People
It’s not just the bike lanes though, the pedestrianization of the centre in Valencia, especially the area in front of City Hall (Plaça de l’Ajuntament), has been a prominent symbol of the city’s recent urban transformation. Prior to 2020, this square functioned primarily as a large traffic circle, dominated by car lanes and on-street parking… It’s pretty interesting to look back, I can imagine the naysayers saying this will be a disaster… But for people, it’s amazing what you can achieve with a few planters…
Like with the bike lanes, the push for pedestrianization accelerated under Mayor Joan Ribó’s administration. In the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the city used the opportunity to test out a temporary pedestrianization of Plaça de l’Ajuntament. The success of this trial, combined with public support, led to a more permanent redesign. Traffic was removed or significantly reduced, and much of the square was repaved and reconfigured for pedestrians, public seating, and cultural events.
The project is a great example of how to repurpose public space for people. Apparently, as you would expect, it faced criticism from some drivers and business groups concerned about access and circulation. There will always be naysayers with such projects, but it was amazing to walk down that street… At the end of that street, this woonerfy design is also new… What was previously just a plain old street with vehicle lanes and sidewalks, it’s now a much nicer place to be…
For now, the new Mayor María José Catalá has not reversed this change, but it seems some worry that the momentum for expanding pedestrian zones may have come to a halt. I hope not…
Nobody wants to visit Valencia to see car-clogged streets, but maybe some residents would choose that if it meant fewer tourists… Just after we left, there were protests about over-tourism across Spain related to housing shortages and high costs… With so much of the economy reliant on tourism, I’m not sure driving tourists away is the right solution… Maybe more Airbnb regulation (there’s already some) and approval of more hotel beds would help… It’s complicated of course, and there are many moving parts that influence such things, but bringing this back to transportation and bike lanes… When housing is expensive, turning the clocks back to a more car-dependent network only increases people’s transportation costs and reduces their ability to pay for other important things such as housing… I know how much extra income we have since we sold one car and paid off the other… Car payments take up money for the fun stuff like trips to Valencia…
That street in front of city hall is not the only pedestrian street of course… I love these narrow streets, and we absolutely need to include narrow streets in our guidance for commercial areas. Think of the additional tax income the extra buildings would generate, and the reduced cost of maintenance from a narrower public right of way… Never mind the fact they are nice places to be…
There are wider pedestrian streets of course, and they’re great too… More of a shopping street…
As a pedestrian, we often crossed in gaps… Jaywalking isn’t really a thing in Europe, albeit we’ve found compliance with walk signals seems to vary from place to place… But on some streets, this being one of the main shopping streets below that is not pedestrianized, they really want pedestrians to cross only on the green…
Talking of crosswalks… This intersection of two narrow little streets had some interesting crosswalk markings essentially filling the intersection… A scramble crosswalk of sorts… The Brompton store in the background contributing to the many we saw… Nice compact electric delivery vehicle too…
Lastly, I liked these little route-to-school signs… I’m not sure, but I’m guessing this is wayfinding to make it easier for kids to walk to school by themselves…
Actually one more of the pedestrianization in front of city hall when it’s a bit busier… Would you go back to filling this with cars?
Reallocating Space for Transit
We used the bus quite a few times, but they have an underground metro and LRT system that we didn’t use. On the street, there are many dedicated bus lanes, often with similar protection as the bike lanes…
All of the bus stops we used featured real time information…
The buses were well used and often standing room only…
The closest we got to LRT…
And the most I saw of the metro dropping down below some historic city walls by the look of it…
Reallocating Space for a Park
Onto the final and most incredible reallocation of space… Valencia has a huge linear park that runs through the city. I knew that before going, but didn’t realize how it came to be… It wasn’t always a park…
Now, if you’re familiar with Utrecht and how they took out a road and added a canal, or South Korea that took out a road and added a river of sorts back, you might think this is a similar story, and I did wonder if this was an old highway… But no… Valencia took out the River Turia, managed to not put a highway along the corridor, and built an amazing park through the city…
This is an amazing facility for everyone in the city, but it was borne from a tragedy… The river flowed through here up until 1954 when a huge rain event flooded the city, killing many people. After that, it was decided that the river should be diverted around the city, so today, to the south of the city, you’ll find what looks almost like those huge LA drainage channels overbuilt to accommodate such flooding, and where the river once flowed, is now a park… The fact that there were so many bridges over the river means as you ride along this park, you never stop for traffic; you simply pass under both old and new bridges, 14 by my count... This is clearly an older one…
This a newer one from up at street level…
What I also didn’t realize until researching for this post is that just last year in 2024, the city received a year’s worth of rain in 8 hours, an event that pushed the new drainage channel to its capacity, but saved the city… Unfortunately, in the surrounding regions, the floods were still devastating, and the most deadly in the country’s history… I believe other areas nearby are considering similar measures to manage future floods… The view from one of the old bridges… There are dedicated bike paths on both sides…
The park wasn’t the only option though after the river was rerouted... In line with trends at the time to design for the automobile, one of the dominant proposals would have turned the old riverbed into a highway that would cut through the center of Valencia and address (so they claimed) growing traffic needs… Can you image wanting that over this…
The internet tells me that the highway proposal sparked public backlash, especially from local residents, urban planners, and environmental advocates. By the 1970s, a movement under the slogan “El riu és nostre i el volem verd” ("The river is ours and we want it green") called for a public green space instead of a highway...
That public pressure, combined with shifting urban planning ideals, eventually led to the abandonment of the highway plan. The land was instead converted into the now-famous Turia Garden (Jardí del Túria)—a 9-kilometer-long urban park filled with walking paths, playgrounds, sports fields, and cultural institutions… The park, or gardens, was officially inaugurated in 1986…
Valencia has a lot of historic buildings in the centre, but things change a bit in the park where the City of Arts and Sciences (Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències) lives, these eye catching buildings were constructed in phases between 1994 and 2009…
It includes several striking buildings and attractions, including an IMAX cinema, planetarium, laser show, an interactive science museum, landscaped walkway and sculpture garden, the largest aquarium in Europe, an opera house and performing arts centre, and multipurpose space for events… More Bromptons…
Trying to find interesting angles and light through all the unique buildings and structures…
I struggled a bit though… Some more focal lengths than the X100 offers might have provided more options to capture these interesting buildings…
That’s it for Valencia… Let’s hope those bike lanes stick around, the pedestrian streets expand further, and the Turia Gardens never become a highway… Next stop Gdańsk, Poland for Velo-City…