The Train Not Now Standing …

Amongst the various measures announced by the Spanish Government to save energy and oil in light of the little local difficulty in north Africa is one to incentivise the use of public transport. An incentive, that of a 5% discount on local train journeys, does not, unless I’m very much mistaken, apply in Mallorca, as this reduction applies to services operated by Renfe, and Renfe doesn’t run services in Mallorca.

Whatever incentive may or may not be flying around, therefore, would have to be one through SFM (Serveis Ferroviaris de Mallorca), the local operator. The problem is that SFM doesn’t always do the greatest of jobs in incentivising travellers, because of its proneness to breaks in service. For ten months, following an accident near to Sineu station, the line between Sineu and Manacor had been closed. It re-opened on Monday of this week. Up and running once more, there have, however, been delays in the service.

The unfortunate accident at Sineu just added to the woes that SFM has had to contend with, such as a train catching fire and an attempt at sabotage on the line near Inca. There have also been other delays to services, the consequence of the process of electrification, which is due to be mostly finished by the end of this month. This upgrading of the network, welcome though it may be, disguises, though, the dashed ambitions of the current regional government.

When Francesc Antich re-assumed the presidency in 2007, one of his Big Things was that his new administration would usher in “the age of the train”. With the words of Jimmy Savile not quite ringing in our ears, we waited on the platform of political promises for the arrival of trains to take us to Alcúdia and Cala Ratjada. And we’re still waiting.

The two main rail projects were to have been the extension of the line from Sa Pobla to Alcúdia and the re-creation of the old line from Manacor to Artà and on to Cala Ratjada. Both have been controversial; one (the Alcúdia extension) has failed to emerge, the other has been dogged by problems, so much so that the Balearic parliament has now censured the transport minister, Gabriel Vicens (PSM – Mallorcan socialists), and called for a legal and technical audit of works.

Yet the Artà line had benefited from having additional funding, money that was finally diverted from the Alcúdia line, after months of bickering between Vicens’s department and Alcúdia town hall as to the siting of the rail track and terminal had threatened a complete withdrawal of central government finance. The stand-off between the town hall and the department, regardless of any differing and legitimate logistical and environmental issues, was a nonsense of rivalry between Mallorca’s two nationalist parties – the now defunct UM of the town hall and the PSM of the transport ministry. The result? No railway.

In spite of the odd accident, fire, delays, undelivered new lines and political handbags, the rail service in Mallorca is not bad. Like buses, the service is inexpensive. But, also like buses, it only does so much. Governments, such as the Spanish one, may talk blithely of incentives to change transport habits, but behaviour will not change when the infrastructure, in terms of network coverage, is lacking. And in Mallorca, there is a real issue in respect of where you put this infrastructure, as evidenced by the farce over the siting of the Alcúdia extension.

Another hope of government is that the public will eschew King Car in favour of cycling. Fine, but as pointed out the other day, there are issues of safety as well as facility where biking is concerned. The wish to create a new cycle lane across the northern tourism zone is fair enough, but how can it be done? In parts of the road that would accommodate this new lane, which would need to be much wider than is currently the case in order to confer genuine safety, there simply isn’t the space.

Along one stretch, that from Puerto Alcúdia to Can Picafort, there has also been ambition for a tram service. And to one side of part of this stretch is a damn great, legally protected nature reserve. How could all the competing transport needs – cars, lorries, taxis, buses, bikes, trams, to say nothing of nutters on roller blades and tourist trikes – all be comfortably fitted in? They couldn’t be, unless there was a complete change in attitude among the main road users – drivers of cars and commercial vehicles.

Mallorca has one of the highest levels of car ownership per head of population anywhere in Europe. The car is king. For a very good reason. Public transport services only run, or run with anything like reasonable frequency, where demand makes economic sense, which excludes a great deal of the island.

In urban areas, such as that of the northern conurbation on the bay of Alcúdia, roads devoted to multi-use, as envisaged with the addition of trams and new cycle lanes, could only hope to work were there a system under which priority was given to everything – and everyone (pedestrians, therefore) – other than cars and lorries; a system akin to that which exists in parts of the Netherlands. But in a land in which patience is not the greatest of virtues, you would have to wonder if such a system could ever function. And the same mentality would be unlikely to result in a major uptake in public transport services, incentives or no incentives.

Whatever central government might think, whatever the regional government might think (or have thought), Mallorca is not about to experience the age of the train anytime soon. Or the age of the bicycle.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Unsustainable: Transport infrastructure in Puerto Pollensa

The company that had been contracted to draw up a plan for so-called “sustainable transport” in Puerto Pollensa has had its contract rescinded. The town hall’s decision to take the contract away will doubtless have been greeted by some cheering and the raising of glasses in the “moll”, in particular by those who had raised concerns as to how appropriate the awarding of the contract had been in the first place.

The context of the contract and now its withdrawal was the abandonment in autumn 2008 of the botched project to pedestrianize a length of Puerto Pollensa’s coast road and the town hall’s subsequent desire to conduct a more all-embracing study of transport infrastructure in the resort.

In Pollensa there is a party, the Alternativa, which makes a thorough nuisance of itself in challenging the town hall, especially with regard to developments in the port. Quite rightly so. In April it was the Alternativa, aka Pepe Garcia, that questioned the process of the award of the contract.

Three companies were invited to pitch, none of them, according to Garcia, with seemingly any previous experience in the particular area of transport. The company which got the contract, but has now lost it, was Podarcis. The Alternativa was quick to point to the links between this company and the nephew of Francisca Ramón. Who she? The town hall’s delegate in Puerto Pollensa.

Podarcis, to be fair to it, was looking to do the right things. One of the main reasons for the collapse of the 2008 pedestrianization was an absence of consultation. On its blog, Podarcis, referring to the final signing of the contract at the end of June, said that it would create a website which would inform residents about the plan and invite exchange of opinions related to it.

Though it may not have conducted a previous study of the exact type required for Puerto Pollensa, Podarcis can boast a fairly impressive list of infrastructure projects. It would be wrong to suggest that it didn’t have credibility; it did. But the association with Ramón was always likely to make life difficult. It is perhaps convenient for all concerned, other than Podarcis, that the contract has been removed on account of what are considered to be “deficiencies” as highlighted by a technical review of the plan.

The very need for a plan, however, seemed slightly strange. Though it clearly had the pedestrianization in mind, and this will now once more be placed on the back-burner, the question arises as to why such a plan was not conducted a few years ago before the new by-pass road that cuts through the Ullal, Gotmar and Pinaret urbanizations was built.

The by-pass and the pedestrianization are one of the same thing in terms of the original plan for both that was drawn up as long ago as 1967. So long as pedestrianization is not effected, the by-pass remains if not a white elephant then under-used. Forward thinking, that the new plan for sustainable transport now envisages, was previously lacking at a time when it should have been performed. A justification for the by-pass and pedestrianization that the mayor offered was that these were planned for – 40 years before. Plans can be altered. It was no justification at all, especially as a different plan – to potentially close the entire coast road between Alcúdia and Puerto Pollensa (one being eyed up by the environmentalists and the Costas) – would put the whole scheme for transport in the resort up in the air.

The one thing in the latest plan’s favour is that, one would hope at any rate, it would represent rather more joined-up thinking than the piecemeal style of infrastructure development of the ill-conceived pedestrianization project of 2008 and yet another plan – that of linking pedestrianization to further construction in Ullal (the latter pretty much approved by the Council of Mallorca under its land reclassification remit).

That the technical review has pointed to a lack of clearly defined solutions that the sustainable transport plan would have produced probably scuppers any developments until at least after the coming local elections, though there is, lurking in the background, the possibility for drawing on central government finance under the Plan E scheme for projects as yet undefined.

But more than anything, the story of Puerto Pollensa and its transport, over and above local political rivalries and suggestions of nepotism, is one of multi-agency lack of co-ordination. The town hall, the Council of Mallorca, the Costas, to say nothing, in all likelihood, of the transport ministry at regional government level as well as central government’s development ministry should all be involved in homing in on a definitive plan together, through proper consultation, with local businesses and residents. This, though, is the problem. There are just too many agencies, too many agendas. Sustainable? It can’t hope to be.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

You know how it is. You’ll be steadfastly and righteously observing the speed limit, and some twat appears in your rear mirror expressing paroxysms and gesticulating ferociously with an aggravated hand, or even both hands where the less diligent are concerned. Ever since they made the gloriously difficult-to-overtake-on new road layout through Puerto Alcúdia and Playa de Muro, the motoring psychotic and impatient have had to improvise methods of speeding themselves along without demolishing their cars and themselves on the inconveniently close-together central concrete islands. The favourite is to nip onto the parallel side road and race at great velocity to the next exit, cornering back onto the main road with a manoeuvre of which Jenson Button (aka Chris Martin of Coldplay) would be proud. And this in order to steal one place as part of qualifying for the grid. 50 kilometres per hour, an affront to motoring civil liberties, but a limit designed to protect erring tourists from being launched into the air and then making a wheel-on appearance in Muro hospital as part of an episode of “Sun, Sea and A&E”, attached to a life-support machine and with a weeping spouse clawing at the lilo they had intended for the beach. 

 

Apparently, things have got so good in Spain that annually fewer than 2000 people now lose their lives in accidents on main roads. The news is less good when it comes to towns and those side roads. An encounter with a bus or a souped-up mobility scooter can be fatal, so the traffic authorities are contemplating introducing a thirty kilometre speed limit in towns. Tee-hee, that should cause some fine sport. You know that place in Holland where they’ve done away with all restrictions, and motorists, pedestrians and cyclists just get on with it. They should do that here – in Alcúdia, for example. What fun that would be. Though my Dutch moles tell me that the Dutch driver can be a bit of an animal, there is aggression and then there is sheer lunacy. The Dutch are not known for their lunacy. Pragmatic, one can see them adhering politely to the non-restriction principle. “After you, Arje.” “No, after you, Joost.” And the traffic just grinds to a halt as caravans of schoolchildren on bikes collide with some old folk crossing the road.

 

No, such a civilised solution wouldn’t have a chance where the mad of Mallorca are concerned. So, they have to try and impose ever-decreasing speed limits. They, the authorities, should come and hang around those side roads for a day or two. What with the irate overtakers (or should that be under-takers) opting for the side roads as a means of getting ahead of plodders such as myself with the cruise control on the limit and with coaches hammering past houses and divesting parked cars of their wing mirrors, those authorities would soon realise the forlorn nature of their plan. Which is probably why they’ll introduce it.

We Are The Robots

The Calle Bot in Puerto Pollensa. So bad they named it after someone’s arse. But that was then. Back then when a local road was still an ankle- and axel-breaking adventure, when it was pitted and potted, cratered and crumbling, not so much a road as the aftermath of a cluster-bomb attack, a lunar landscape to be tackled preferably by amphibious landing craft, especially when it had rained and the craters would become sealets of untranquillity dived into by several tons of truck and engulfing the unwary passer-by in a tsunami of water, sand and shit. Oh my Bot of long ago.

 

Here was the finest example of non-road, a thorough thoroughfare misrepresentation, a whole collection of holes. Magnificently decrepit, it was perfect in its symbolism of an imperfectly functioning system that was once what we knew to be Mallorca. Not anymore. Firstly they tarmacked it over, took away the traps, the obstacles, made it smooth, a soulless short cut-through past the Pollensa Park where previously had been the joy ride of joyous swerving past collapsed whatever passed for the surface. Yet they still maintained a two-way street where barely one street could be accommodated. All those failed manoeuvres past the parked delivery lorries in the hope of a pull-in point, only to find none and to be confronted by the leviathan of a coach and a terminally impatient driver waving with the back of his hand as though he was swatting away a fly. And to your rear an hombre de furgoneta blanca, himself backed up by a growing jam of vehicles. Oh my Bot of less long ago, a van driver hooting up the backside.

 

But now they have made it one way. The bottom has fallen out of Calle Bot. When two-way at least it was still a case of number two’s. Now but one in Bot. They should re-name it.

 

 

Nadal’s chest

The muscle is back, and is displaying more muscle than normal. Rafael Nadal is to appear in a new promotional campaign aboard a yacht, the wind blowing his hair and his “torso desnudo”, it says provocatively in a “Diario” report. That doesn’t mean he’s got his kit off, but has forgotten to button up his shirt. To coincide with the World Travel Market in November, the new, windswept Rafa will further be the face and now also the chest of Balearics promotion. By the time they get to the third promotional campaign (this new one will be the second), perhaps he’ll be in speedos. Something for somebody to enjoy no doubt. What effect all this Nadal-ing has on the masses coming to the islands one doesn’t really know. It would still surely make more sense to have promotions for the individual islands. The Balearics just do not hack it as a “brand”. Any brand should be supported by the right advertising. Get him to advertise Mallorca and leave it at that, kit diminuto or otherwise.

All Summer Long

The Balearic Government’s environment minister has reversed the previous decision that permitted, for this season only, building works during part of the tourist season, namely up till the middle of June and throughout October. This reconsideration comes after concerns expressed by hoteliers and by tour operators, and indeed a hint as to legal action. These concerns centred, unsurprisingly, on the likelihood of tourists going elsewhere; there will have presumably been tourists who have already been affected, and the chances are that some might even have pursued the tour operators for some compensation if they had a disturbed stay.

The normal situation is that all building works in tourism areas are suspended during the official season – 1 May till end October – but this year, in recognition of difficulties faced by the construction industry, it had been agreed to relax this suspension. It was a relaxation that was always likely to cause a problem, and I would guess that the works in the heart of Puerto Pollensa and slap bang next to Hotel Daina might have been one of those that had been brought to the minister’s attention. The reports on this from “The Diario” actually refer to work “durante el verano”, which could be construed as meaning the whole summer. I’m not sure that this was ever envisaged, but perhaps it was, and so therefore not just into June and in October. Whatever the period of “relaxation”, the unrest that it has caused could have been predicted, which does make one wonder why the decision was taken in the first place. The now new problem may be what builders do with workers they had employed.

Back to the roads. All the new crossing-points and the new roundabout along the carretera in Playa de Muro make driving very stop-start, and you can not only sense but also witness the impatience rising among drivers, especially as the heat of the afternoon takes its toll; another crossing, another load of tourists with lilos and baby buggies to allow across. It’s hardly the tourists’ fault. Except. So I stopped and waited while this lady made up her mind to cross or not, and when she did, she did so very slowly because she was in the middle of texting. There you have it, let me just hold this traffic up a bit while I compose “c u later”. If it’s an offence for drivers to text while driving, maybe the same should apply to pedestrians when crossing a road. Indeed, I was thinking, while going along the now not-pedestrianised coast road in Puerto Pollensa, that perhaps they got that all wrong, and maybe they should have made it a non-pedestrianised zone. No pedestrians. None of them. Verboten. That’d learn ’em. Go do your texting somewhere else.

Oh, and the great frozen haddock mystery. A cool bag, well wrapped and put in the suitcase. Just hope it doesn’t un-freeze. The great smell of fish all holiday if not all summer long.

I Am The Magnificent

There was a sort of official opening a couple of days ago. The mayor of Muro and some worthies from the Mallorca Council stood on the bridge over the untroubled water of the canal in Playa de Muro and posed for the camera, announcing – in the words of the Council’s president – that the works that have created the newly laid-out stretch of road that runs the five kilometres between Can Picafort and the fish-hook, some say pointed thing, roundabout are “magnificent and emblematic” (taken in translation from “The Diario”). Fine words indeed – for a bit of road. The crowning glory of the five kilometres of Muro tarmac is the bridge itself, now with pavements to both sides and a not unattractive metal barrier on one side. It’s all been done, so says the report, with the safety of different users in mind, be they on foot, in car and probably also on trike, in road-going train, on roller blades or in baby buggies as a roller-blading mother pushes them across the bridge and down the road. I’d like to believe that there will indeed be an avoidance of accidents, an aim of the road and bridge.

The problems with the new bridge are that the road has effectively been narrowed, that people cross over it, not at a crossing-point, but from the path from the sea to the entrance to Albufera, and that the not unattractive metal barrier has a gap in it where a tree remains – what chance some likely drunk lad fancying a bit of a dive into the canal on his staggering walk back to the hotel one night? The concrete barrier on the other side of the road is really something of a hazard; it requires not a great deal of imagination to foresee a vehicle coming into heavy contact with it. Of course, the design of the road and of the bridge is such that, so long as drivers and others use it sensibly and so long as drivers do not speed, there should be no accidents. “Sensibly.” Not a word one hears too often in connection with road use of any form. I wonder if the starting-point for such design should be irrational behaviour rather than rational. Take for example the cyclist who suddenly emerged onto the bridge and made a car swerve and almost go head-on the other day. Where was the rationality with that cyclist? I have previously mentioned the fact that pedestrians are obscured by hedges, cars and trees at some of the crossing-points.

I once referred to the bridge road as being “nuts”. At least there is now a pavement where there used not to be one; it is less nuts than it was. But it is still nuts in that it doesn’t take full account of the nutcases. I hope I’m wrong.