The Councilor for Territory Planning and director of the La Laguna Town Planning Department, Santiago Pérez, affirmed yesterday that “the Government of the Canary Islands has committed to setting up an information office for citizens” on the project to widen the highway of the North between Guamasa and Guajara, known as a variant of the TF-5, so that those who “may feel affected can have the information and assert their rights.”
In this sense, he explained that “an extension of the deadline for allegations” of the project, on public display now, has been requested so that citizens “can make allegations, and for that time and information is required.” An extension that foresees that the Executive will accept. Regarding the office, Pérez indicated that “the idea is to set it up immediately, but when will the Government have to respond”, and he was willing to provide “some element of advice and human resources” from the Management.
The councilor recalled that the City Council has already presented its allegations, among which, as it advanced in the last municipal plenary session, the Government has been asked that “properties with historical value that do not appear in the insular catalog or in the current one of the PGO of La Laguna, which is expanding, be taken into account”, in the commitment of the local government “for the preservation of our heritage, in this case linked to traditional popular architecture”.
In addition, regarding the houses affected by the future road and its burial, estimated at around 50, the councilor pointed out that in another of the allegations it is requested that “when the houses that are going to be affected are already identified, that there will be that they try to be the minimum, identify which ones are of first necessity and if the expropriation mechanism should be activated, which not only consists of compensation for the real value of the real estate, but also that they have an alternative as soon as possible”.
During his argument, Santiago Pérez defended that the burying of the TF-5 variant guarantees the future growth of La Laguna to the south, which is the commitment of the current local government, and not to the north, “towards the Vega, which is what CC has sought twice over 20 years,” he denounced. .
Likewise, the mayor indicated that with the burying it is possible to “minimally affect the agricultural land and the houses, which would go from being potentially affected 300 to only 50”, and allows that, “when The lagoon grows, the north-south connection roads for the integration of the city can be developed without obstacles”, not becoming a “new dam” that divides the city, as the TF-5 currently is. In addition, it would allow aspiring for that section of the TF-5 to become a boulevard “that allows unifying the current city”.
Likewise, Pérez stressed that “the variant has its own charter, as an autonomous road, from the 2002 island plan”, for which he emphasized that “those who are saying that it is the first phase of the exterior highway, lie.”
“This road was tried to become the first phase of the external road, to solve by the logic of faits accomplis, those of CC with the territorial plan of the road system of the metropolitan area of 2006. And today CC says that supporting the variant is support the foreign route, and that is false”, he insisted.
The mayor recalled the motions approved by the plenary session in February 2020 and June 2021 and “which set the position of the Government”, and in which “the repeal of the foreign route and the suppression of the continuation of the patrol route from Las Canteras to Los Rodeos, and the variant of the TF-5 was claimed”.
Santiago Pérez valued that the debate on the variant is not so much “an issue of island mobility, but of the future of the city” and maintained that “Tenerife has a problem of road saturation that was planned for more than 20 years” and that it is not it will be solved “by building one behind other new infrastructures”, for which he stated that collective transport is “crucial”.
“And many of us think that it should not be based on a means as expensive as the tram or the railway, but that the creation of bus lanes exclusively served by our buses is much more affordable and just as practical,” he said.
