A sensation “bittersweet”. This is how the residents of Serrano de Santa Cruz street define their state of mind after the meeting they held yesterday with the area of Mobility of the City Council capital to address his request that the buses don’t happen again this way after asphalt works that are taking place.
At that meeting, they were told that when these works are finished, five of the six lines of buses that have been passing through their street for 15 years will stop doing so, but line 014, the most important, with the largest vehicles, will continue to pass. since they cannot continue leaving other parts of the city without this line, which during these weeks have been affected.
For the residents, this announcement is not what they expected, and unless, according to what the technicians from the Mobility Area told them, whose manager Evelyn Alonso was present at the meeting, it will not be until December when the solution proposed by the Consistory, that the buses go up Ramón y Cajal, since it is necessary to face a construction project that will involve an investment of 75,000 euros.
According to the residents, “we have been told that of the 185 buses that pass daily, only 014 will pass, which represents 45%, but that is 100 buses a day, and that is still a lot.” From the Santa Cruz City Council it is explained that there are six lines that circulate on the street (014, 026, 228, 901, 971 and 972), right now all of them are diverted, affecting some 1,300 users. Thus, what is proposed is that when the work is finished, all of them will continue with the current detours due to the work, except 014, which will return to Serrano street, since half of those users use this line and it is not possible to maintain this condition for longer.
The proposal is that before the end of the year the City Council will invest 75,000 euros in conditioning the first two sections of Ramón y Cajal to make them go up for buses.
In that same work, a new bus stop will be installed on the side of the Military Square on the Ramón y Cajal side, and a traffic light at the Ramón y Cajal and Iriarte intersection. Once this is finished, the six lines will definitely stop passing through Serrano and will begin to do so entirely through Ramón y Cajal.
The District Councilor, Alfonso Cabello, also present at the meeting, wanted to highlight what this reorganization will mean for the trade in the area, since at the bus stop that is going to be built next to the Military Square, they will stop those six lines, which will mean a significant traffic of users passing through the area, which will undoubtedly have an impact on the surrounding businesses.
For the residents of Calle Serrano, who saw it as a provisional solution when the tram line was built, it became definitive, this commitment is not enough. They insist that they do not want any bus to return to Serrano street, and they do not understand why the current detour of all bus lines is not maintained.
Faced with this situation, they assure that they will not falter in their protests. They insist that if necessary, they will ask the residents to come out and occupy the sidewalks of Serrano Street because, they remember, with that alone, the passage of the buses will be impossible since they do not have space to turn. For now, the banners remain: “No more buses for Serrano.”
