Ben Magec-Ecologistas en Acción has assured this Thursday that the train in the south of Tenerife to try to solve the collapse of vehicles on the island’s roads is an economic “nonsense” and an environmental “destruction”.
The train of the south of Tenerife, a “great economic investment” unaffordable for now
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In a statement, the organization indicates that not only will space be occupied with the projected 80-kilometer railway, but it will also “devour” territory to build the entire network of infrastructures necessary to connect the seven stops with the population centers of its route.
The construction of this “megaproject” of 1,600 million euros that would be obtained from the insular administration, the central government and European funds, and its annual maintenance, will deplete public coffers at a historical moment of pressing needs such as health, dependency and education, adds Ben Magec.
In addition, he continues, there has been no social participation or studies of insular mobility that justify such nonsense.
Ben Magec – Ecologistas en Acción comments that, in Gran Canaria, the Research Team in Economics of Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (EITT) of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria published the study in September 2021 Socioeconomic Evaluation of the Gran Canaria Train. Said study concluded that “the train to the south of Gran Canaria is not profitable either socially or financially”, quotes Ben Magec
In 1998, the Sener study, commissioned by the Cabildo de Tenerife, stated that, if the number of vehicles continued to increase in the south of Tenerife, the roads would collapse in 2018, says the organization ecologies. For 24 years since the publication of the study, adds the environmental group, a large number of roads have been built that have not solved the problem and “in fact have increased it.”
Both in Tenerife and Gran Canaria there are around 800 vehicles per thousand inhabitants, which means being in the sixth position in the world of places with more cars per resident, adds the organization. Therefore, he defends that it is not necessary to further expand the highways “nor build megaprojects that would consume territory and monopolize public budgets, if all administrations turned to solve this collapse through a determined investment in public transport.”
The solution proposed by this organization is to invest in shuttle buses with public-private participation aimed at moving workers at low cost, buses on demand to solve the mobility of municipalities far from the capitals and the designation of exclusive sections for give priority to the bus with the bus lane and the bus/vao lane.
Finally, Ben Magec – Ecologists in Action plans to add to the above the obligation of more cycling and pedestrian paths, as well as aid for the purchase of bicycles to promote healthy mobility.
