Hiriko

Ecuador now knows of HIRIKO’s proposal in terms of urban mobility

The Ecuador Minister of the Environment, Marcela Aguiñaga, has expressed interest of the solutions applied by the concept of “mobility on demand” offered by the HIRIKO electric vehicle. In a meeting held in Quito with the executives of the consortium that is developing HIRIKO, Aguiñaga comment on the case of the Galapagos Islands “as a scenario for the service of a vehicle of these conditions: respectful with the environment and available to be used by different users”.

In the case of Quito it would be the municipality of the capital of Ecuador that would in charge of procuring the necessary agreements for the incorporation of electric vehicles, as is happening in Berlin, Hong Kong, Malmo, Barcelona and San Francisco or other cities with which the people responsible for HIRIKO have reached various project agreements.

Accompanied by her Secretary of State for climate change and president of the council of the Galapagos Islands, Aguiñaga met the person responsible for the internationalisation of the HIRIKO project, together with Iñigo Antía, the Director of HIRIKO.

ROAD SAFETY

Also, various HIRIKO executives have participated in the 1st Symposium on Road Safety organised in Bilbao by the HELTZEN Foundation analysing criminal responsibility in traffic accidents.

“We are closely following the process of arrival of electric vehicles in society –explains José Ramón Fernandez de Mendiola- in terms of what it is going to mean reference to new legislation, introduction of new concepts in circulation codes and in the definition of new 21st-century traffic in big cities”.

HIRIKO considers that the limitation of polluting traffic will be something habitual in all urban centres

The creation of these so-called Urban Areas with Protective Atmosphere (UAPA), that will limit automobile traffic in Spanish urban centres in order to improve air quality, is a “priority task in the design of 21st-century cities” according to those responsible for the HIRIKO Project that is now being developed in Vitoria.

The National Plan for the Improvement of Air Quality, the Ministry of the Environment, Rural and Maritime Environment, now in its publicising phase, proposes urban pay tolls and areas of “protected atmosphere”, apart from the labelling vehicles in order to limit the access of the “dirtiest” among them.

“Independently of how the final wording of the norms being prepared by the Ministry turn out to be–explains Iñigo Antia, director of HIRIKO- a solution of this type is necessary. Our proposal of Sustainable mobility for an urban centre conceives the primacy of people and bets for public transport, conveniently coordinated with electrical vehicles and a new management thereof”.

According to Antia, the measure proposed by Minister Aguilar has been under development for some time in various places around Europe: “The French minister of Ecology, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, will forbid circulation of the most polluting vehicles and of those manufactured before 1997 in the centre of eight big cities in 2012” explains the HIRIKO executive. “This means one step further in measures such as circulation permits for “alternate days” in certain capital cities –México or Santiago- or pay tolls to accede to the urban centre in cities affected by a growing and worrying environmental pollution as is the case of London”.

THE FRENCH EXAMPLE

In France, the restricted urban areas are denominated “APAA” (Areas of Priority Action for Air). This is a similar measure to that carried out in 180 European towns, amongst which are the pioneering Stockholm, London, Copenhagen, Prague and 43 German towns and cities.

“Our neighbouring region of Aquitaine -remembers Antia- as elaborate Atmosphere Protection Plan (APP) in which automobiles are directly involved. Bordeaux, like Paris, Saint-Denis, Lyon, Grenoble, Clermont-Ferrand, Niza and Aix-en-Provence, are already debating the prohibition of circulation in the centre of those vehicles that generate the most pollution”.

In France, a million and a half motorcycles and eight million private cars manufactured before 1997 will have access prohibited to urban centres, as will also be the case of thousands of light utilitarian vehicles and three hundred thousand old lorries, vans and buses.

HIRIKO executives suggest “road safety education for young people” should be updated

Executives responsible for HIRIKO project have asked authorities and educational centres “to go back to placing special emphasis on road safety education for children and young people in order to attain a citizenry that will respect the new 21st century cities which will have innovating designs, traffic and urban mobility”.

As José Ramón Fernández de Mendiola explains, “traffic, urban mobility and social relationships are changing a lot. In European cities there are more and more kilometres of bicycle lanes, priority for buses and taxis, pedestrian areas and alternative vehicles that do not make noise. All of that should be borne in mind in the training of our future generations so that they can operate adequately and safely in those new urban environments”.

Fernández de Mendiola observes that “sometimes there is the impression that less attention is being paid to education in road safety. And many of the Mediterranean countries, in contrast with Atlantic Europe, traffic lights and horizontal and vertical signals go unrespected. If those children see an adult person crossing wherever he or she likes, they will repeat that image quite naturally, thus unnecessarily multiplying risks. The first good example is to come from the elders”.

The new urban designs, with pedestrian streets and squares and thoroughfares dedicated solely to public transport, bicycles and services, have modified the basic scheme of children’s road safety education based on the concept of traffic lights/pedestrian crossing/look left, look right. “They now need to take into account more and more silent vehicles, bicycles that come up at all times or omnipresent and priority public transport” points out the HIRIKO specialist.

Less noise, more attention

“Very soon, a considerable amount of vehicles will make “noise” only as a result of their circulating” explains Mendiola. “Cities will be more silent and pedestrians, and now hear engine noises, will have to get used to the new environment. Nothing complicated, but something that will require new habits”.

For Fernández de Mendiola “There is still a considerable deficit in good citizens’ practices in terms of road safety: inadequate crossing of roads, invasion of bicycle lanes, automobile drivers’ abuses, defencelessness of people with impairments, the reflexes of the elderly and many other aspects in which we are to train young people within new good sustainable mobility practices”.