Activities for marking the European Mobility Week have been taking place in Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia these days, but along comes defeating data about how people are practising the sustainable urban mobility in their everyday trips.
According to the latest data provided by JSP – Skopje, the capital’s public transportation during the first half of the year transported almost one million passengers less compared to the period from January to June 2020. During the first 6 months of this year, the public transportation in Skopje has transported 10,417,267 passengers, while during the same period last year, the public buses transported 11,387,134 passengers.
Meta.mk has already informed that the motorization rate in the capital is continuing to grow. As a result, the number of registered vehicles in the capital in 2020 has reached 155,195 vehicles i.e. 6,300 vehicles more compared to the previous year. In 2019, in the City of Skopje, 148,892 cars were registered. These numbers don’t include other motor vehicles such as trucks, buses, motorcycles, tractors, etc.
Nevertheless, the European Mobility Week started on the 16th of September, and this year’s theme is “Safe and Healthy with Sustainable Mobility.” The Mayor of Skopje, Petre Shilegov signed an application form for the European Mobility Week, stating that the City of Skopje has already built 110 km of bicycle trails in the capital and over 12,000 new bicycles and 600 new scooters were purchased by the citizens of the capital with the subsidies that the city authorities have been granting.
Still, at the moment there is no detailed information to what extent the citizens living in the capital have been using the bicycle as transportation means in their everyday travels and how many have been using public transportation or a car. No automatic measuring devices have been placed at bicycle trails in Skopje as on the streets of Skopje. Unlike the available data about the number of passengers using public transportation and the number of vehicles that are traversing the streets of Skopje every day, there is no detailed data about the number of cyclists in Skopje.
A study of Skopje’s traffic system was last made in 2010 and it shows that only 1,4% of the total number of travels in the capital were made with a bicycle.
