The Sustainable Mobility Area of the City Council of La Laguna faces the final stretch of the procedure to launch the first public electric bicycle loan system in the municipality. A project that is being developed in collaboration with Sagulpa and that will involve an investment of 1.3 million euros, co-financed by the Government of the Canary Islands through a grant of 720,000 euros that the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Housing published yesterday in the BOC . This first phase, which is expected to open in early 2023, will have 100 vehicles and 20 docking stations, which will connect the Casco and the university campuses.
The Acting Councilor for Sustainable Mobility, Rubens Ascanio, thanked his predecessor, María José Roca, and the Area’s technical team for the work done by “a new mobility model”.
The first phase of this public electric bicycle rental system is focused on the commuting of the educational community of the University of La Laguna and will be expanded, in successive phases, to generate a network suitable for the needs of the municipality. This first action will be centered on the two campuses and their connections with the city centre, since the trips to and from the University have an important weight in the matrix of daily trips and the student body is a sector of the population prone to traveling in more sustainable individual ways. . The proposed system will have physical stations, made up of a totem where the necessary procedures will be carried out (registration and deregistration in the system, payment, request and return a bicycle, etc.) and physical anchorages for bicycles, all supported by a mobile application that facilitates its operation.
This first phase is proposed with 100 bicycles distributed in 20 stations, each one having anchorages and space for 10 bicycles, a forecast that represents 20% of the optimal loan system for the entire town, according to its population.
new mobility
Ascanio stressed that the proposed public model will allow for an entity with “wide experience and access to a greater number of subsidies to finance the service at the lowest cost for the citizens of La Laguna.” In addition, he recalled that this system will be essential to change the mobility model in La Laguna, since, combining it with public transport, it will allow full trips to be covered, including the first and last mile. And, for this, it will be supported by a municipal cycling infrastructure, whose design is already well advanced and which will be key to promoting the use of bicycles and increasing these figures in the modal distribution.
From the Regional Ministry of Transport they highlighted that this initiative, together with the Lagoon Consistory, aims to promote sustainable, safe and efficient mobility among the population, modifying the current mobility model towards alternative, healthy and more accessible modes, to the detriment of the use of the car private.
The Governing Board of the City Council approved, last January, to develop the project with Sagulpa as its own medium, in accordance with the provisions of the agreement of the Canarian Federation of Municipalities of July 2021, which notifies the city councils that are members of the federation the possibility that Sagulpa be declared the personified medium of the municipal corporations.
