SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 25 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The vice president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Enrique Arriaga, announced this Friday that in the month of December the corporation is going to launch a tender, valued at 88 million, to acquire 248 buses, of which 171 will be hybrids.
In response to a question from the Nationalist Group in plenary, he commented that it is the “greatest effort” in the history of the corporation in public transport and the new vehicles will be available in 2024 and 2025.
Thanks to the introduction of hybrid buses and the elimination of older, more polluting ones, there will be savings of 1.5 million liters of fuel per year and CO2 emissions into the atmosphere will be greatly reduced.
Regarding the free buses and tram as of January 1, he commented that the Cabildo has increased the budget for next year, although it has demanded that the central government “really finance” the service –on Wednesday it meets in Madrid with the Minister of Transport, Raquel Sánchez, together with the rest of the councils and the Government of the Canary Islands–.
Along these lines, he snapped at Félix Fariña (CC-PNC) that “they sold themselves very cheap” in the negotiation on the PGE “because they did not do the calculations correctly” since the 80 million from the central government are not enough.
He has pointed out that “the people of Tenerife are going to pay for the miscalculation”, while accusing CC of “looking for headlines” and of not historically worrying about public transport given that in 2012 fares increased, between 2012 and 2014 no purchase was made not a bus and later the fleet was renewed with more than 40% under a ‘renting’ regime, buses that have to be returned before 2026. “What a little gift they left us,” he added.
Despite everything, he has defended the current government’s commitment to public transport with a 45% increase in the budget in three years to reach 108 million.
Fariña (CC-PNC) has commented that his group is “concerned” that the Cabildo only sees “problems” with free transport at a time when “people are staying at the stops” because there are no enough offer.
For this reason, he has demanded “will” from the government team to seek solutions and that he forgets to give “hits.”
