The Tenerife construction employer, Fepeco, accuses the Canarian Coalition (CC) and Podemos of “betraying” the island for having expressed both formations their rejection of the TF-5 variant in the last plenary session of the La Laguna City Council. And even more, it blames both parties for “the queues” on the roads of Tenerife, a problem that has dragged the island since even before the birth of Podemos.
Sí Podemos rejects the “excessive” investment in the train in the south of Tenerife and calls for a mobility plan for the island
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The origin of the anger of the employers of the builders is that the lagoon plenary session this Wednesday approved a motion of Citizens, amended by United You Can (which is part of the local government) and supported by CC, in which the stoppage is urged of the variant of the TF-5 as it passes through the municipality and the Bus-HOV lane system is proposed as an alternative.
The president of the employers’ association, Óscar Izquierdo, has lashed out in a statement directly against CC and Podemos “for their repeated noism to any work that could eliminate traffic jams and speed up traffic”. According to him, “they are punishing, without scruples, the citizens of Tenerife, to eternal road congestion.”
Izquierdo affirms that “they only think, want and need to govern, because they have many salarymenwho are those who live solely from politics, because outside of it they have no job, no benefit”.
In addition, he accuses CC of having left Tenerife “dismembered, immobilized, stuck and collapsed on the road” after governing Tenerife and the Canary Islands for three decades. “They didn’t know, they didn’t want to or they didn’t know how to deal with the problem of road mobility on the island. Historic failure, which has cost the people of Tenerife their health, time and money”, she summarizes.
And he adds that the coincidence of votes with Podemos regarding the variant of the TF-5 refers, according to him, to the “ideological and strategic drift” in which both formations are immersed, as if giving the green light to the construction of a new road as the only solution to the traffic jams was an ideological question.
The president of Fepeco believes that the La Laguna variant “is a key work to unburden the TF-5”, and describes it as a “viable, courageous and sustainable option” and assures that it is “technically guaranteed” and in “an advanced state of administrative compliance”.
In addition, he assures that the work “does not generate a wide environmental impact”, as its detractors allege, “because the defense of the territory has been taken care of and pampered to the maximum”; and adds that “it does not affect land areas of high agricultural value either, because most of its route is in a tunnel”.
More roads and trains
As for Podemos’s commitment to move towards “sustainable mobility models”, Izquierdo judges it as “a true insult to intelligence”, when on the other hand “they flatly refuse” the southern train. This project, with an estimated cost of more than 2,100 million euros, has been parked in the Cabildo de Tenerife and rejected by that training due to its high economic and land cost, and waiting for an insular sustainable mobility plan for Tenerife, in which the “road peculiarities and specific problems are analyzed in order to subsequently invest the necessary resources to solve it efficiently and sustainably , without having to invest in large infrastructures or in more asphalt”.
The president of the builders, however, defends that the solution lies in building railway infrastructure on the island and more roads, such as the variant of the TF-5, which, he says, “will serve to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by contributing to the dissipation of queues and increasing road agility”.
Izquierdo believes that CC and Podemos “have lacked institutional responsibility” because during the period of allegations to the project, the City Council of La Laguna only presented one, which was also accepted.
