Today 365 days in Madrid We want to tell you a story, which has as an excuse a place, but not so much a place that we recommend you visit, it is rather an example of how the people of Madrid claim their right to improve our city and work to recover it.

There is a pedestrian tunnel under Doctor Esquerdo Street that was once closed by the Madrid City Council. This tunnel leaves Pilar Millán Astray Street and leads directly to Paseo de John Lennon del Rome Park. Currently, that tunnel remains closed and is used as a municipal warehouse.

However, today we have been able to see it open thanks to the efforts of the Montserrat Cyclists Group. This group promotes a BikeBus, a proposal to carry out school trips from the homes of the participants (children and accompanying adults) to their schools in a group and safe way. It is organized and accompanied by adults (fathers and mothers, grandparents or others). It has a series of stops where participants are picked up.

It is an initiative that is already working successfully in several European and Spanish cities.

A way to demand another mobility for the city and in which the little ones are involved in the fact that the bicycle can be used for their daily trips. The Montserrat school is associated with the European program to improve accessibility to schools: The European project STARS (Accreditation and Recognition of Sustainable Travel for Schools).

It has a common objective: to increase the number of students who use bicycles to go to or return from school among those who until now have been taken by car.

The tunnel has only been open today and next Friday morning but it has been very interesting to see how the BiciBús used it with a large group of parents and children, but the best of all was seeing how many people used it, moved by the Curious to see the open tunnel. Although there were also other people who could have passed by with their bikes and yet did not do so, most likely due to lack of knowledge.

The demand for mobility other than motor vehicles is patent, and latent, as we have seen every time a new space opens up, as happened in the Madrid River, full of users on bike and on foot from the first day.

We leave you some photos from this morning. A joy to see how another different city can be made, more sustainable and more cycling.

A abrazo.