The escalators of the Santos ravine, both those that are at the height of the Serrador bridge and those that are on Asuntistas avenue (in front of Viera y Clavijo), will work again, or at least that is the intention of the Department of Public Services with the award of a contract to repair them, start them up and prevent them from stopping again with the installation of a video surveillance system, not only to prevent vandalism from damaging them again, but also to allow them to be put into operation remotely if necessary.
The councilor responsible for the area, Carlos Tarife, advances that, with this contract, “in the next three or four months these escalators will be operational again”, although he clarifies that they will begin to function “when we have the cameras in place”. And it is that most of the stops that occurred on the stairs were due to the fact that the vandals activated the emergency brake for fun, forcing the municipal workers to move to check what was happening. “We need these stairs to have active cameras to detect if it is a joke or a real accident, and see if they can be activated remotely or send someone to see what really happened,” explains Tarife.
The minor contract for which this update will be carried out amounts to almost 40,000 euros and will consist, first, of evaluating the needs to start up the stairs, and then proceeding to carry out work to implement a new remote management system and camera surveillance on the escalators located on the Galcerán bridge and on Asuntistas avenue, as well as the corresponding maintenance service for a period of eight months.
What this new system allows is that there is no need to go to reactivate the stairs in person. If the stoppage is due to the braking button being activated, it can be started again from a distance without the need to move an operator. Even so, the contract establishes the dispatch of competent personnel within a maximum period of 12 hours, as well as the provision of service 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In an emergency, personnel will be dispatched immediately.
Already in 2017, an attempt was made to start up these devices, which were inaugurated in 2010, together with the opening of the road in the Santos ravine, and which, since then, have practically not worked. Five years ago, the company responsible for the maintenance of elevators would be in charge of starting them up, although again vandalism did its thing. Now, the company to which the offer has been requested is the one responsible for the maintenance of public lighting, Imesapi, “given that it is necessary to give agility to the new installation of the aforementioned system and make it compatible with the existing ones”, they explain from Public Services, whose technicians understand that the activation of the escalators exceeds the contract that Imesapi already has.
