Girona has managed to decongest its historic center copying a trick of Barcelona: erase from Google Maps

Girona has made Google and Waze modify the routes that took cars, especially tourists, to cross the old town of their city known as Barri Vell.

This historical area has the Restricted circulationwith priority for pedestrians and limited access to residents and businesses. For Avoid excess traffic and preserve the pedestrian character of the center, the City Council asked the managers of those browsers to prioritize alternative tours and clearly mark the restrictions of access to the area.

Atasque between 2,000 years of history

Before, Google Maps and Waze guided To many drivers inside the Barri Vell to take shortcuts, especially tourists who trusted the GPS to move around the city. The problem is that, like most historical centers, this generated Unduse circulation in narrow and cobbled streets that are not designed for road traffic and hindered the circulation of neighbors.

Such and as they highlight in The newspaper, In Barri Vell the circulation is restricted and special authorization is required to access even for distribution and service vehicles that are subjected to an access time control to prioritize the pedestrian use of the monumental center with more than 2,000 years of history.

“We have been working to guarantee pacification at Barri Vell and the priority for pedestrians to be the seal of the city,” wrote Lluc Salellas, mayor of Girona In his X profile.

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The municipal idea for decongestion

The Gironés City Council sent letters to Google and Waze to request that Barri Vell be eliminated as a recommended route to avoid the passage of tourist cars in this area. This management took several months, but finally was effective and GPS applications stopped proposing the historic center as a shortcut for the internal displacements of the city.

In addition, the municipal team works so that the information shown in the browsers be as accurate as possibleclearly indicating the places where tourists They can park outside the historic center and preventing vehicles from being reserved where the spaces for loading and discharge are reserved. “We have made Google and Waze clearly mark that Barri Vell is an area with restricted circulation; and therefore, do not send tourists’ cars so easily,” explained Mayor Salellas to The newspaper.es.

Girona is not the only one that has “erased” Google

Girona It is not the only city that has asked Google to modify the information it gives to its users to redirect tourism flows and reorder the traffic of its streets.

Barcelona City Council applied a similar measure To decongest the accesses to Park Güell, one of its most visited tourist places, eliminating from Google Maps one of the bus lines that went up to the park. This action sought to avoid the saturation of tourists and prioritize the service for the use of their neighbors, freeing them from the saturation of thousands of tourists who visit Gaudí’s work every day.

In Holland, a small town managed to make fun of Google Maps To decongest its streets coordinating their neighbors to send false reports of cut streets.

That caused the GPS to redirect traffic to alternative routes by freeing its neighbors from excess traffic. In all cases, this coordinated strategy with GPS applications has managed to reduce mass tourism in the most sensitive areas of cities, demonstrating how technological ones can influence tourist flows.

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Image | Unspash (Brandon Gurney, Priscilla du Preez)