Uploaded on 2014-11-15 by ElianaBenjumeda

Madrid, Chamartin neighborhood, November 8.00 This picture has been taken at 8 in the morning in a weekday of November. This is an area of Madrid close to the North of the city, communicating with the highways that connect the residential suburbs and the business areas located also out of the metropolitan areas. Therefore, during early hours in the morning and in the afternoon, there is a heavy traffic from people that lives out from Madrid and work downtown and the opposite. In this picture, at 8.00 we can see that: - the traffic is heavy but organized - there are no traffic jams even on weekdays - there is a mixture of private cars, public buses,schools buses and taxis - there are not many citizens walking - there is a delivery van - we can also see that despite of the cold weather there is still a terrace bar open - there are not bicycles or motorbikes around So according to the picture, it seems that everything is in calm and running smoothly, but if we would monitor the same street intersection during the rest of the day, we could observe some issues that would require some actions from city authorities: - in less than 15 minutes after 8.00 traffic becomes extremely heavy from commuters going back and forth because access to the nearby highways get collapsed, for delivery vans and trucks and also for all the school traffic in the area. (Action required: improve highway access) - we would see a lot more bicycles and motorbikes and we could observe how circulation by bicycle is still quite dangerous in the city since the cars are not educated yet well to respect them. On the other side, signals have been written of the pavement to control the cars speed on the lines used by bicycles (it is not seen in the picture because there are cars on top of it) (Action required: improve vial education) - we would see many pedestrians, some of them kids going to school and some elderly because the neighborhood has become a bit expensive for young families that had to move to the suburbs and many residents are old people living there since long time ago. We could see that for this population, the time provided to cross the streets with the green light is short and it is difficult for them. (Action required: allowing more time for pedestrians green light) - we can also see that there are no many benches around for this elderly population or playgrounds for the kids. (Action required: studying the need to provide more benches and parks in the area) - we could see how many blind or visually disable population crosses through this street light since it is in the way to the largest blind institution in Madrid (ONCE). (Action required: allowing more time for crossing the street and eliminating obstacles in their way) - we could see many citizens walking out theirs dogs (Actions required: revising the availability of plastic waste bags in the nearby bins and the need of a dog park around) - we could also see that despite left turn is forbidden for cars in any direction of this intersection, many of them do it along the day, hampering the traffic of producing dangerous situations (Action required: police control or providing alternative routes to that turn) From my point of view, a picture is very illustrative and can highlight many insights but it can bring us to a wrong perspective if we not compare it with the evolution of that scenario along the rest of the day, the week, and the years. The area of the picture becomes almost empty on the weekends and even more during the month of August, for example. [1]: https://edxuploads.s3.amazonaws.com/14160539025252527.png