Winning Entry of Bike Path Design Contest in Caracas, Venezuela

The proposal for a bike path system for Venezuela's capitol Caracas, designed by architects Andrea Hernández and Cruz Criollo, has won the first prize in the competition Metropolitan Transportation System, Caracas to Pedal. The best and most innovative proposals of this competition, which seeks to promote cycling in the city, were recently awarded by the Metropolitan Mayor of Caracas.

Project Description from the Architects:

The proposed CCS Bike incorporates two types of circuits, an espresso and other recreation. The expressway is a permanent road designed for daily mobility operation from Monday to Sunday. It has 6 circuits. The road is a road recreational provisional in nature tourism and sports use during weekends or holidays. It has two circuits operating at an altitude of one thousand and one that runs east-west of the city connecting the most important public spaces such as the Parque del Oeste, the Calvary, The Caobos Park, Park East, etc..

Both circuits are green and are shaped by a system of urban elements such as:

The smart striped, which is green stripes whose intensity is constant traffic channels and becomes more dense to indicate the approach to traffic lights, crossings, bicinodos. The bike path is the symbol for the exclusive use bicycles and the corresponding smitten.

The urban signage, special lights made up for the passage of cyclists and ads bicinodos symbol or bicycle parking.

The barriers are two types, the perimeter of the bike path that serve to protect and warn drivers and speeders that prevent motorcycles or similar vehicles from entering the bike path.

Boxes waiting at traffic lights are and serve as a waiting area for cyclists to make a turn or change direction. The width is 2.50 m and must go before the striped crosswalk.

The bike path should have a width of 1.20 m and 1.50 m. It will be located on the left side of the road either street or avenue. In the center the bike path will be marked with a white dot to not affect the existing pavement.

Bicinodos

They are the Metro-bikes (public system of bicycle hire)

parking and connections to public transport systems and are located near subway stations, bus stops and Metro Bus. The idea is to recover residual spaces within the city to become public spaces that house the bicinodo. The parking lots are of three types, one that can be placed vertically within an existing public space or recovered, the underground-parking infrastructure which can be placed on the metro stations to places densified, and the individual, which has no cost and can be placed in squares and parks.

BiciBus and Bicivagón

These systems facilitate the transport of cyclists to far off places in the Greater Caracas.

Management and funding

The system would depend on administrative management of the metropolitan transport body cover four of the five municipalities of Greater Caracas, however we propose a decentralized management scheme and co-managed with local municipalities so that the bike path as a means of transport corresponds to metropolitan mayor, while the public parking systems as well as bicycles bicibuses to local mayors. In the installation phases of both the bike path and the system bike metro-financing would come from the Four Wheel Tax, this tax would be collected by local municipalities and directed entirely to the financing of the system, the tax are to shoulder one half-unit rate annual tax on private vehicles with four wheels, so that in the first year the system would have a budget of approximately one million tax units

Relevance and feasibility of the project

The large volume of private cars on the roads of Caracas and its subsequent occupation of the city road network and public transport deficit in the capital, make it necessary to incorporate new solutions to mobility within the city space . The addition of a new public transport system in harmony with the structure built of Caracas as CCS cycling systematizing the relationship with the bicycle creating a public transport system. Taking the time average value of transportation from one place to another bicycle in the city can ensure faster routes to outrun average private cars, public transport and even the subway in their current circumstances, making the new system in a feasible option for urban transport.

Find the complete design boards in the image gallery below.