Belgrade: Is there a solution for traffic jams?

Traffic in Belgrade. Everywhere you turn - crowds and collapse. Some will blame the road works or the weather conditions, but the answer to the question "why is it so difficult to move around Belgrade?" is a bit more complicated.  

With almost 1,7 million inhabitants, the Belgrade region is one of the 20 largest cities in Europe. According to the latest Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP), which was written based on data from 2015, Belgrade residents make an average of 1,9 trips per day. Almost half of these movements are made by public transport, while the other two quarters are made by private car and on foot. 

The percentage of movement by other modes, e.g. by bicycle or scooter, is negligible, in the order of about 1%. 

Public transport users mainly rely on the bus network, while passenger rail systems, such as trams and two urban railway lines, are responsible for transporting a small part of the total number of movements (about 3%). Belgrade is thus one of the few European metropolises that does not have a large share of high-capacity rail systems, i.e. they can transport tens of thousands of people from one end of the city to another.

Cycling paths

In addition to these shortcomings in public transportation, Belgrade has only about 100 km of bicycle paths, which is many times less than European cities of similar size. For example, Vienna as a city of similar size has over 1600 km of bicycle paths, while Helsinki has over 1300 km, and those paths cover the entire city. By comparison, even the much smaller Ljubljana has a cycling network of over 300 km, and like other European capitals, continues to develop that infrastructure further. 

In addition to the lack of appropriate infrastructure for bicycle traffic, there is also the problem of parking, which affects not only car drivers, but also other road users, primarily pedestrians. 

As a result of all these and many other factors, we have traffic jams and the main consequence is that all road users are dissatisfied with the functioning of the system. 

What Belgrade can learn from Helsinki

For comparison, let's take Helsinki, the capital of Finland. Helsinki as a metropolis is similar in size to Belgrade, with approximately 1,5 million inhabitants. From that aspect, it belongs to a similar category of European metropolises, which are not as big as Paris or Berlin, and yet not as small as Ljubljana or Bratislava. 

Of course, when it comes to the topic of traffic, the main differences between Belgrade and Helsinki are in topography and climate. The highest point of Helsinki is an artificial hill only about 90 meters high, and flat surfaces are generally easier to organize traffic. However, what Belgrade "loses" in terms of topography and hilly terrain, it compensates with its continental climate and the length of the day, because for a large part of the year in Helsinki the average temperature is lower and the day is shorter.  

The average resident of Helsinki makes more movements per day than the average resident of Belgrade, with 3,5 trips per person per day, while the average individual trip lasts 24 minutes. Compared to Belgrade, in Helsinki almost 10% of all movements are made by bicycle. Also, public transport is often in the world's top of the best systems, both from the perspective of users and from the perspective of impact on society and the environment.  

Metro as a turning point

A historical turning point in the development of Helsinki is the construction of the metro line from the city center to the east, which was opened in 1982. That same metro was extended to the western part of the region, with 8 new stations opened in 2017 in the first phase, and with another 5 new stations opened in the second phase, in 2022.

In addition to the metro, public transport includes buses and trams, but also a large number of urban railway lines, which serve a large number of radial movements from the periphery of the region. There is also a ferry line to the island of Suomenlinna, while a new orbital light rail line is opening soon. 

The development of the city is not only based on the development of rail systems and bicycle-pedestrian infrastructure, but is also closely related to spatial planning. New construction is most often located around rail transport stations, with increased population density and various services, from kindergartens and schools to health and cultural institutions. This allows the population not only access to diverse content, but also preserves the city's green areas, which have multiple purposes. 

In the last few years, following the world trends, Helsinki has more and more new modes of transportation on its streets. Since 2016, there has been a city bike rental system, while since 2019, electric scooters, electric bicycles, but also other forms of micromobility, such as electric unicycles and skateboards, can be seen on the streets of Helsinki. In addition to these types of micromobility, there are more options for renting vehicles for shorter periods of time, and more options for taxis and similar services.  

Overall, Helsinki is a good example of a multimodal city - meaning a city where the resident has a wide choice of modes of movement, while those modes are allocated adequate space so that they can provide a predictably high level of service. 

In other words, the average resident of Helsinki is not forced to drive a car or use the bus all the time, but can choose and combine different modes of transportation according to their needs at a given moment. This not only leads to the possibility to do more movement in one day, but also has a number of other positive consequences on physical and mental health - from the fact that the trips themselves are safer, less stressful, but also have a number of positive effects on the long-term, such as which is obesity, diabetes, heart disease, respiratory disease, dementia and depression. 

Main lesson

The main lesson of Helsinki for Belgrade is that a strategic perspective is needed on the development of the city and the transport system. Such a strategic perspective requires long-term thinking. 

For example, the planning of the east and west metro lines in Helsinki took decades, and not always under ideal economic conditions in Finland. Also, a strategic perspective requires an understanding of the differences between costs and investments. Although infrastructural change, especially for rail traffic such as the metro, requires millions of investments, when that amount is looked at at the level of 50 or even 100 years that it can serve, it can be concluded that it is a smart investment, because it brings with it enormous benefits over the years. 

Those benefits are not only in shortening travel time or increasing comfort during travel, but there are also benefits from changing the entire mobility system, which come from improving the physical and mental health of residents.  

According to the set strategy, the city of Helsinki strives to become carbon neutral by 2030, and even negative after 2040, which means that the carbon footprint generated within the city limits must be less than the city can "capture". 

In order to achieve these goals, Helsinki plans further development of pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, infrastructure for rail transport, but also restrictive measures for the use of cars, in the form of a parking strategy and the abolition of street lanes for cars. These changes open the door to a wider change of urban space, such as increasing green areas, and further preserving the general social well-being in Finland. 

Such goals, strategies, plans and initiatives are not unattainable even in Belgrade. Infrastructural change, hand in hand with the development of institutions that can plan a multimodal city, can lead to the fact that traffic in Belgrade is no longer associated with congestion and collapses - but to be part of a sustainable city with healthy and happy residents.

The text is taken from the site Climate 101.

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