Jon Clarke (Publisher & Editor)CYCLISTS have won the battle of the pavements.
The Supreme Court in Spain has ruled that bicycles can be ridden on pavements and in pedestrian zones.
This decision, which overturns the 2008 ruling by the Andalucía High Court against cyclists, follows an appeal by the city of Sevilla.
The Sevilla legislation states that cyclists can ride their bikes in pedestrian areas, ‘always respecting the priority of pedestrians’.
Now the Supreme Court has maintained this is ‘consistent with the law’ and does not violate the traffic laws.
The new ruling also allows cyclists to tie their bikes to trees, as long as this does not damage the tree or get in the way of pedestrians.
I speak as an experienced cyclist – this is a recipe for accidents.
In Germany in many cities, pavements or half the pavements are clearly delineated for cyclists, that’s fine there because 99% of people obey the law. Try going the wrong way down a one way street and see the reaction.
In the Netherlands they have had ‘fietspads’ for generations. These are specifically for cycles and bromfiets/mopeds, complete with their own set of traffic lights but these are two sensible countries.
The caption photo is incorrect. It shows a proper bicycle lane, and not a pavement (notice white marker lines). As for Spain’s laws and the way they are chosen, you may as well ask monkeys to make it up. In Spain the “bicyle lanes” are frequently part of the existing pavement with a line painted on one side lol.
This law will soon be changed once floods of accidents and legal claims start arriving. A pavement is designed for pedestrians – Spain can’t even work that work out. Duh.
I cannot beleive this!!
My bike rental shop in Torremolinos, was closed down in June because the local council decided that it did not want bikes on the Paseo (very wide). They claimed that people could not even push the bikes from the shop.
We informed them that European law states that there is no law against cycling on paths but they just kept threatening us with more and more fines.
The really stupid thing is that they are planning on putting cycle paths on the beach. Yes, ON the beach!! Now that is a recipe for disaster
We have an apatment in Spain on a community, as we live on the third floor and there is no lift we requested at our annual community meeting that cycle racks were made available in the car park. This was refused and we were told we could not park our bikes in the car park but had to carry them up the three flights of stairs each time we used them. We are both in our sixties, my husband has a hernia and I have a bad hip. We are thoroughly disappointed with the decision and it means we may have to get rid of our bikes. We were using bike locks to attach them securely to the railings in the car park but we were told no, we had to carry them upstairs. The stairs are tiled , go round corners and if we fell we would be seriously injured. Is there any advice you can give to us to solve our problem? Please help…