The traffic light of the bike lane in the street of Girona corner with the round of Sant Pere.MASSIMILIANO MINOCRI
The Barcelona City Council opened last Thursday to traffic the bike lane that crosses the Sant Pere ring road reaching Urquinaona square. Users of social networks and accounts of groups of urban cyclists soon praised the new infrastructure of which a peculiar traffic light installed by the Consistory in this lane has taken special prominence. This is the traffic light located at the junction between Ronda de Sant Pere and Carrer de Méndez Núñez. The signal has been baptized as Tetris traffic light because it causes confusion among users and has gone viral on networks because it has a dozen different indications.
Cyclists on the bicycle must be skilled enough to distinguish whether or not passage is allowed according to the direction they take. To do this, they must interpret at first glance, which of the 10 screens fits the route they want to take. They must choose whether to continue straight or turn left, with the complication that next to this traffic light there is another that regulates the circulation of cyclists on the street that crosses perpendicular. In addition, just above the Tetris traffic light, there is a traffic light – this time of the usual ones, with only two screens – that regulates cyclists who come down from the Eixample. The typical vertical traffic light has become a collection of horizontal lights that is generating a lot of debate on social media.
On May 11 it was the City Council itself who in its Twitter account En bici x Barcelona announced the opening of the bike lane of the Sant Pere round between Girona Street and Urquinaona Square. The Consistory was the one that published the first image of the Tetris traffic light. The reactions on social networks were not long in coming. Cyclists consulted assure that the sign complies with current regulations although they admit that its use is complicated. The same sources warn that most of the usual cyclists of the place will get used to the new sign that has already served as a point of attraction to the curious willing to photograph it and publish the new traffic light on social networks.
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