Rosario Macario, professor of transport, in the engineering department, of the superior technical institute is scientific coordinator of the cycle of conferences organized by the Association for the development of sustainable transport called ITS Portugal, whose objective is the promotion of intelligent transport systems and services to the cities.
What are the projects to be developed in terms of mobility in cities?
Rosario Macario: Mobility is a factor in quality of life. It is such an important utility as any of the others that we have come to live with sanitation and electricity. It is an essential factor in terms of the use of the city, meeting the needs for the fulfillment of social and economic activities, so it is important in the competitiveness of the city itself. There is no city that offers good quality of life, if does not offers good mobility and over the years there have been significant changes on how we looked to this paradigm and today there is a concern all over the world in all this interpretation is very focused on proximity and good quality of life unpowered. Therefore it is necessary that cities work and recover this concept and form of organization in order to provide not only the residents, as tourists or to temporary visitors are key elements of competitiveness of a city today.
There is a capital in northern Europe has announced a ban on vehicles in the city center. That's where we go towards to?
RM: It is not necessarily for this radical option. Mobility and acebilidade has to be seen with some balance and there is no copyable solutions, there yes, transferable to the different cities. The ideal is to have a good balance, have a good idea that each mode and the service has a specific role in the architecture of mobility and service to the city. The ideal is to have well-organized ways in which there is a priority for pedestrian mobility, others will be where is the public transport and still others in individual motor vehicle. There needs to be a balance so that the citizen has the right signals to power and choose their form of mobility options to have a good level of service, but also to help keep the city in good adequate levels of sustainability and today is a key aspect of the political agenda not only of Portugal, but worldwide. As you know there are agreements that have recently been made on climate change and its objectives, where mobility plays a key role and the cities too. It is necessary to look at this issue in a more transversal and integrated manner so that citizens receive the right signals to make decisions of your life to maintain very high sustainability standards.
In your experience it is easy to reconcile two types of mobility in relation to tourism and residents?
RM: It's so easy to say that is is an exaggeration. You can and should be done and this requires something for which we have less practice, which is essential, it is to have a strategic vision of our cities. As were we want them to evolve? How do we want to address them for the different segments? And through this strategic perspective that makes it easy to adapt the residence with the resident and tourist needs, without one being limiting the degrees of freedom of others and it is possible to organize services that are equally attractive both for tourism and for the resident. So the answer is that it is possible, there are cities that have already failed and there is no immovable impediment to any of our cities also follow this line of thought, especially when the strategic point of view for us. This tour is of most importance because it assumes that this tends to grow and this conference aims to make this reflection to fill this gap on the future of cities in 2030.
But there is more tourism, but this reconciliation is easy?
RM: Not necessarily. Since there is a good relationship between the territory and transport and the environment is a triangle that has to have a power of articulated decision to strategic levels of what we want for the future, both in terms tactical planning and the level of operation is the only one it is visible to the eyes of the population. But to have a good level of service we have to have other well articulated decision levels and aligned properly.
This implies a lot of investment by the municipalities?
RM: This involves a lot of investment by municipalities in terms of planning, ability to foresee their cities for the future and in terms of quality of the decision is fundamental and a great investment that must be made in the perception of what they are the needs and the ability to project the city in the future and maintain good levels of quality. This implies not only be able to design and invest the time, but able to maintain, monitor the time and adjust the measure of the evolution of their own needs and this implies say not a one-off race, but an ongoing effort to which we have to enable us that is the challenge of increasing tourism, which is the most demanding in citizens, means that all quality standards tend to increase their level of demand, therefore, the municipalities must be able to respond to this solicitation.
After all scheduled conferences across the country, you are aiming to issue a report by 2030? And it will be binding or not for the cities?
RM: ITS Portugal is an association of private institution therefore can never be binding on a public body and I myself am a university professor of the Superior Technical Institute and I am acting as scientific coordinator of this series of conferences, we will issue a strategy paper on each of the talks and in the end is the intention to publish a single document, we hoped to have a strong influence in the cities and especially through the participation of many citizens, but obviously cannot be a binding document. It can only be if the authorities see fit to adopt the recommendations that have been placed in those documents.
