"The new bollards that will be planted to stop cars cutting through the middle of the superblocks won’t stop that menace of the Mediterranean, the motor scooter rider"
"In Barcelona two out of three streets will be easy to cross, but make a mistake when crossing the third"
I think this is a worthy experiment, but I wouldn't roll it out across the city without knowing whether it will work.
Because to me, the existing blocks simply look too massive to become a truly pedestrian neighborhood, I also would look for ways to cut paths through some of the blocks.
There are plenty of scooters in Barcelona but honestly I've never noticed generally worse behaviour from them than anyone else, except maybe starting off from lights early, but it seems everyone is guilty of that here.
Aside from that however, as a cyclist from the UK, I've been very pleasantly surprised by the lack of aggressive driving since I've been living here. I very very rarely feel threatened by other road users on my bike, except by Bicing (city-wide bike rental/'sharing' scheme) users, and I think that's just because Bicing is used by people that don't cycle regularly so aren't very experienced.
Also there are already an increasing number of semi-pedestrianised streets in the centre of town and they work fine, cars, scooters and bikes go down them too but very slowly and usually only if they really need to because there are faster routes if you're through traffic.
"The new bollards that will be planted to stop cars cutting through the middle of the superblocks won’t stop that menace of the Mediterranean, the motor scooter rider"
"In Barcelona two out of three streets will be easy to cross, but make a mistake when crossing the third"
I think this is a worthy experiment, but I wouldn't roll it out across the city without knowing whether it will work.
Because to me, the existing blocks simply look too massive to become a truly pedestrian neighborhood, I also would look for ways to cut paths through some of the blocks.