A Spanish advocate of integrated cycling about conditions in Seville:
Disastrous: officially (according to the Seville City Council), some 120 km of segregated cycle lanes (most of them bidirectional) have been built at an official cost of 30 million Euros. (I say “officially” and “official” because I wouldn’t trust the Seville City Council to tell me the time of the day); there is also a bit of gossiping around (plausible enough, although there is no way to verify it) saying that a sizable part of that sum has been put not into the actual building of the structures, but into the political and social marketing campaign to sell the “Seville model of bicycle promotion”; one of the most visible elements of this marketing campaign has been this year’s Velo-City conference, held recently in Seville (http://www.velo-city2011.com/), conveniently, just a few weeks before the upcoming local elections.
The mantra of the Seville City Council’s campaign is something to the effect that “the cycling mode share in Seville has risen from 0.2% to 7% as a result of our commitment to segregated structures”. The numbers used change from time to time (essentially, they say different things to different publics at different moments: a couple years ago it got as high as 8%; now the most-repeated mark is 6.6%), with another often repeated line being that “Cycling in Seville has increased ten-fold in five years (as a result of our commitment blah blah blah…)”.
If you read Spanish, you can read an analysis debunking some aspects of the Seville City Council’s bull**** in this blog post by a member of the growing community of Spanish vehicular (or integrated, as we often like to call ourselves) cyclists:
http://bicicletasciudadesviajes.blogspot.com/2011/02/cambio-modal-realidad-o-ficcion.html [Translation of blog name is “urban bicycle trips” and of the title of the post is “mode shift, reality or fiction”]
I commented on this issue in this comments thread in an English-language blog you may know, when the blog’s author repeated a bit mindlessly the official crap:
http://quickrelease.tv/?p=1476#disqus_thread
The outcome is thoroughly disastrous at several levels: not only are the segregated structures senseless and completely substandard (I am using “substandard” in the British sense here, not implying that I accept any standard at all); the city is a showcase of lost opportunities to improve real cycling conditions placed right next to the segregated crap; the local dominant cycling culture has become one of passive-aggressive cyclestrians riding on sidewalks even in trivial streets; the social status of the cyclists AND PEDESTRIANS has deteriorated (the level of conflict between pedestrians and cyclists is appalling; you can feel the increased hostility of car drivers if you ride on the roadway in a street with a cycle lane, although I have to admit, much less so than I expected); the number of cars has not decreased at all; Seville is indeed becoming an example for other clueless cities to imitate; the segregated chaos is prompting a host of Kafkaeske local ordinances to regulate the behavior of the cyclestrians… but on the other hand, the number of cyclists who don’t buy into the crap any longer is growing (http://ciudadciclista.org), and even the fact that Seville has been so extreme and reckless in following the segregationist madness is in some ways acting to our advantage: Seville has wanted to become an amazing example: some of our efforts are now directed at turning it into a horrible warning.
I also asked about crash statistics:
Regarding your question about crash stats: the situation in Seville is that of a complete information blackout. As far as I know, there is just no data publicly available. Just to give you an idea of how things are around here: over one year ago there was an article in the local press stating that “according to the conclusions of a study soon to be made public, the cycle lanes are safe for cyclists”. As you can guess, no study has been published since. Fun, uh?
The article, and the parody of it I wrote are here:
http://www.diariodesevilla.es/article/sevilla/595289/los/accidentes/mortales/ciclistas/crecen/carretera.html
The contrast with Barcelona (one of the other, if less maddened, bikelaneist black holes in Spain) is stark: In Barcelona, a report is published yearly, and the news was for two years straight that the bicycle accidents were rising significantly, although it appears that they are lately down again (haven’t paid much attention to the issue).
http://www.adn.es/local/barcelona/20080110/NWS-1167-aumentaron-accidentes-bicicleta-barcelona.html [NWS-1167 — increas in bicycle crashes in Barcelona]
http://www.lavanguardia.es/vida/20090430/53693094057/los-accidentes-de-bici-son-los-unicos-que-aumentan-en-barcelona-en-2008.html [Bicycle crashes are the only kind that increase in numbers in Barcelona in 2008]
http://www.lavanguardia.es/ciudadanos/noticias/20090116/53619840434/los-ciclistas-sufrieron-492-accidentes-en-barcelona-en-2008-un-113-mas.html
http://www.elpais.com/articulo/espana/Bajan/accidentes/bicicleta/Barcelona/elpepuesp/20110112elpepunac_13/Tes
http://www.elperiodico.com/es/noticias/agenda/20110112/bajan-los-accidentes-bicicleta-mantiene-mortalidad-motoristas-barcelona/661506.shtml
They may be disasterous by engineering standards, but having visited Seville recently, it would be hard to urgue that they the are disasterous in their outcome. A brief walk or drive along the corridors quickly shows that there are *alot* of people using them.
I think the effect is similar to small winding mountain highways and Seville’s downtown labyrinth of impossibly narrow medieval streets – everyone (drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists) excercises extreme caution and awareness… and it works.
For information in English language about Sevilla you can read our article: Sevilla: a successful experience of bicycle promotion in a Mediterranean context in http://www.witpress.com/elibrary/wit-transactions-on-ecology-and-the-environment/191/29556