NGO Biciklo.me organized a public forum on transportation in the capital city during which representatives of political parties in forthcoming local elections presented their proposals for improving the situation in this area. Thereafter, a debate was held at which interested citizens could find out how the politicians see transport issues and what their election programs say about it.
Prior to the debate, Sonja Dragović from the NGO Biciklo.me presented the results of the research done within the project “Better traffic, a better city”.
According to the results of the survey, the citizens of Podgorica daily take relatively small distances: most of the respondents take distance up to 5 km in one direction. For 12.8%, this distance is less than 2 km, while for 42.9% it is between 2 and 5 km. In order to cross this distance, citizens are most often use a private car – 54.7% of them. 22.2% mostly go on foot, while 8% mostly relies on taxi services for their daily trips. 6.8% of the respondents travel by bicycle, while only 6% mostly use the city bus.
The largest part of the respondents, 45.4% of them, spends 30 minutes to one hour during the business day in traffic. Less than 30 minutes in traffic spend 28.8%, and more than one hour spend 25.8% of respondents. In addition to time, in urban transport citizens spend considerable amounts of money: 34.8% spend up to 30Eur for transport, 28.2% spend up to 50Eur, 26% between 50 and 100Eur, and even 11% spend more than 100Eur.
Among the surveyed citizens, support for transforming the centre of Podgorica into a zone closed for motor vehicles is significant – as many as 77.5% support the idea, while 22.5% oppose it.
As biggest infrastructure problems, the respondents noted that ther
e are not enough parking spaces for cars and that the existing infrastructure is not adequate for the existing amount of motorized traffic.
Biggest traffic problems in Podgorica, according to respondents are non-compliance with traffic regulations (76%), traffic congestion (65%), lack of parking for cars (53%) and poorly organized public transport (42%).
Following presentation of the survey results, Andrija Klikovac (DPS), Jadranka Vojinović and Filip Miloš (SDP), Branka Bošnjak (DF), Bogdan Božović (SNP), Marko Rakočević (SD) and Luka Rakčević (URA) presented their vision of traffic development and traffic infrastructure in the capital.
The “Accountability, Technology and Institutional Openness Network in South East Europe – ACTION SEE” project is implemented by Metamorphosis Foundation, Westminster Foundation for Democracy, CRTA – Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability, Citizens Association Why not?, Center for Democratic Transition, Open Data Kosovo (ODK) and Levizja Mjaft!