Rufino García is one of the experts who has gone through the Mobility, Transportation and Decarbonization cycle, which organizes the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country of Tenerife–Based in La Laguna–, in collaboration with the Betancourt y Molina Canary Islands Cultural Engineering and Architecture Foundation. To give a comparative vision of the demographic growth in the Islands, García cited the case of Mallorca, which, with a rate of 244 residents per square kilometer, has been debating this issue for a long time, and recalled that Japan, considered one of the most It has 334 towns in the world. «Yes, we also take into account that 45% of the territory is protected and, if we make these same accounts on 55% of useful land, the population density is close to 1,000 inhabitants per square kilometer in the Canary Islands, “he said. “We have to stop to think and reflect in order to plan, program and execute with objective criteria not only the island we want, but the one we can,” he concluded.
Regarding mobility infrastructures, the also director of the cycle recalled that the Plan of Ordination of Tenerife (PIOT), approved more than 10 years ago, proposes a structured and hierarchical road network in three levels. The high-capacity entry-level network, which we know as the Insular Ring, “is the network that must guarantee intercity travel.” “However, this ring remains unclosed and, consequently, it is not in a position to assume the functions assigned to it by the Plan,” García clarified.
“In Tenerife there are 1,500 kilometers of roads and more than half a million vehicles”
As detailed by the Roads, Channels and Ports engineer, to close the Insular Ring they are still pending to execute the bypass of the Metropolitan Area, the Los Realejos-Icod section and, in the South, the variant of the tourist city, while the section Santiago del Teide-El Tanque is running. In addition, he explained that the route from La Florida, in La Guancha, to El Tanque «cannot be considered a high-capacity road, because it only has two lanes and the same occurs from the Erques ravine, in Adeje, to Santiago del Teide, and the branch of Fonsalía ».
García, who chairs the Betancourt y Molina Canarian Cultural and Engineering Foundation, explained that the PIOT also provides for second-level regional networks, which, in general, correspond to the old roads of the island in the middle, and many others again traced that they have never seen the Light. «For example, the road networks planned to link the coastal nuclei that have arisen between the current highways and the coast. As in the case of the strategic road that should link the port, the airport and the Guaza area, in the South of Tenerife, “he said.
“Mobility will not improve if the indiscriminate use of the private car continues”
The model that PIOT planned also raised many other questions to improve mobility. «Then the recipe was made. The problem is that the prescription never made it to the pharmacy. That is to say, it did not happen of the drawer of somebody ». For García, one of the many problems of mobility on the island is that «there is a lack of a single authority that coherently manages mobility at the island level, because, if you want to organize it and a mayor says that he lets everyone park in the street and on the sidewalks, there is no way to achieve it. On this matter, he affirmed that parking management is one of the basic tools to face the problem.
Another of the experts who has participated in the Mobility, Transportation and Decarbonization cycle is Fernando Davara Méndez, also a Civil Engineer for Roads, Canals and Ports. In his opinion, the mobility of Tenerife “It will not improve until the indiscriminate use of the private vehicle is restricted, because making more roads and improving public transport will not prevent people from taking the car”. In Davara’s view, the central problem is “dependence on the car.” “We have a culture in favor of the private vehicle and people choose, even under equal conditions, private transport. “In addition, despite the economic effort made by the administrations in public transport, only with that it is not possible for public transport to be competitive with the private vehicle.”
The reality of mobility on the island «leads us to a decrease in the quality of life and anyone can appreciate it and, this is how we perceive it when we travel and compare ourselves with other cities that have been working for a long time in favor of a more sustainable mobility: Barcelona , Pontevedra, Vitoria, San Sebastián, Córdoba, Malaga, Las Palmas … and so do the tourists who visit us, “he said. Davara noted that Tenerife’s population in the 1980s was 700,000 and now one million. And it will continue to grow. If the progression continues, it will exceed 1,170,000 inhabitants in 2024, which means that there will be 2,300,000 motorized trips every day, 27% more than we have now ». According to their data, a third of the trips throughout the island occur in the metropolitan area and Santa Cruz was the third most congested city in Spain.
