Such humanized spaces are just the icing on the cake, which is added after public transport is fixed. Until it is done in Vilnius, such chasing of Instagram photos from western cities seemed cynical. The structural problems of transport are not solved by remembering parking spaces and traffic lanes.
However, narrowing and humanizing are not the same and there is another side to this process: the Lithuanian Regulation (STR) provides for optimal street widths according to street categories, when a large part of Vilnius streets are paved according to Soviet standards and are significantly too wide. It costs more to reasphalt the Soviet lanes, and the additional width when driving at 50 km/h does not benefit anyone: the throughput does not increase at all, only the crossing cycles are lengthened, because it takes longer for pedestrians to cross such a street, and the rest of the road users lose a lot of space. It is currently illegal to build such streets in Lithuania.
A good example of the “narrowing” of Soviet lanes during Šimašius’ time could be the intersection of Pylimo, Basanavičius and Trakai Streets. The same three lanes remained for traffic – they perfectly fit both the buses that often go there and the rest of the traffic. However, there were still a few parking spaces, which are lacking in the Old Town, and a lot of greenery, and it takes less time for pedestrians to cross the street. Also, at peak times, there are no more gimmicks trying to make four lanes out of three. So everyone won.
After Benkunskas took office, the streets started to be re-asphalted massively, which is great, because some of them look very bad. However, I was shocked when I found out that all of them are not only repaved according to Soviet widths, but also marked according to Soviet markings. It wouldn’t be legal for new roads, but it turns out that repairs to existing roads can be done the “normal” way (whatever that means).
According to STR, the traffic lane on the city street must be up to 3.25 meters wide – the width of the asphalted lanes on Panerių Street is barely 6 meters! More parking spaces could freely fit on that street, more space would remain for pedestrians, and crossing cycles would be shortened. The same was done in Liubart, Jakšto and many other streets.
Since I often ride a bicycle, I am really looking forward to the coastal bicycle path between the Green and White bridges – however, the already prepared project was recently rejected, because the project proposed to “narrow” the lanes of Goštauto Street to the Lithuanian standard (the number of lanes would remain the same, so it would not have affected car traffic ). The municipality will have to pay all of our money to the design company to redo the project, the project solutions will probably be much more expensive, the asphalting will also be more expensive, the cycles of pedestrian crossings will be longer. Currently, the sides of the road are dusty and you can see that no one is driving on them. So, if we already pave such a width and pay huge additional money for the installation of bicycle paths, maybe it should be used wisely, for example, by installing an additional parking lane there? And if we are already building only 4 lanes, then are we building them properly and saving on embankment repairs?
In my environment, few people supported the humanization of Šimašius, where traffic lanes and parking spaces were taken away from people, but everyone supports the construction (and repaving) of streets according to Lithuanian, not Soviet, STRs. We had a mayor who made decisions based on the number of Instagram likes, now we have a mayor who is throwing money at additional asphalt that doesn’t do the city any good.
Want to report news or express your opinion? We invite you to write by e-mail. by mail [email protected]
Tags: expressed opinion maintenance streets Vilnius collecting tickets aimlessly pointing money
