Pontevedra began implementing measures to promote pedestrianisation in 1999. A strong political will and a favourable urban environment have since proved to be the keys to its success.
When you explore Pontevedra on foot today, with its pedestrian walkways and streets free of cars – free too of the noise and pollution they produce – it is hard to imagine an era when the city was not ideal for walkers. However, according to its own city council, in the 1990s Pontevedra was a town suffering badly from congestion. Not only was there little space for pedestrians and overbearing surface-level parking, more than 100,000 cars travelled around the city centre each day (compared with 69,000 today).
The first significant development occurred in 1999, with the election of Miguel Anxo Fernandez Lores as mayor. A doctor by training and politician from the Galician Nationalist Bloc (BNG), Fernandez Lores came to power with a new idea: to give the city back to its pedestrians. Helping his cause was the city’s own geography, Pontevedra being both flat and compact, while 65,000 of the municipality’s 83,000 inhabitants live within the 4.5 km2 surface area of its centre. These key facts all facilitated the move to promote pedestrianisation.
Nevertheless, there was never any question of simply copying methods applied with varying results in other towns. According to the mayor and his team, for the concept to work it was necessary to think about pedestrianisation in terms of the city’s own specificities. With this in mind, the city council’s departments were reorganised, making it possible to get almost every municipal service (culture, local police etc.) working together on issues of mobility.
Meanwhile, an innovative decision was taken to invert the usual list of transport priorities. Whereas mobility policies were previously drawn up to favour cars first and public transport second, with pedestrians, cyclists and the disabled all coming in last, attention is now accorded primarily to pedestrians and the disabled, followed by cyclists, with public transport the next priority and cars at the foot of the list. As a result, various initiatives – focusing on communications, redevelopment and so on – have been progressively implemented over the years, and with impressive results.