On average, Santa Cruz produces more than 700,000 car trips per day, of which a third are inside the municipality, and the rest, in and out. Among those who move within the capital, the majority spend their travel time, 95%, looking for parking. And it is that Santa Cruz estimates the parking deficit at about 18,000, as the former socialist mayor, Patricia Hernández, pointed out yesterday in the municipal plenary session.
In it, he requested the appearance of the Town Planning Councilor, Guillermo Díaz Guerra, to report on parking planning in the city. The mayor pointed out that at this time the Management has addressed the City Council to communicate two possible alternatives for underground parking, which would add 1,440 more spaces to the city. It is an underground car park with three floors in Paseo de las Tinajas, at the end of La Rambla, in which some 230 spaces per floor could be built, and a second in Méndez Núñez, between the old Cine Rex and Calle San Martín, another one, also with three floors, with 240 places on each one. While the one planned in San Isidro, with another 285 places per floor, is still pending a response from the rest of the administrations. This was explained by Díaz Guerra, who qualified that “the construction of underground car parks is possible throughout the city, another thing is the cost of these car parks. There are others who will have to decide if it is done through a public works concession or its construction is assumed directly by the City Council.
And it is that, as Patricia Hernández recalled, “the question is why what has been planned has not been done. I am talking about the underground car parks in La Salud, in Duggi, in Salamanca, in Juan XXIII… The diagnosis of where they are needed is repeated, so what is needed is to do what is already planned”.
The Place du Orche, in doubt
Hernández also revealed the existence of an Urban Planning report contrary to the construction of the square at the intersection of Robayna with Méndez Núñez, in what is known as the Orche area, if the surface parking areas that the work will eliminate are not replaced. , which are about 60. “In that area there is also planned an underground car park, the question is why it is not done?”, said the also Socialist deputy.
For his part, Díaz Guerra corroborated this information by pointing out that “as long as the PP is in the government team, it will not have our support if the parking spaces that are eliminated are not replaced,” he said. In addition, he added that, if the car park were built, “there would be room for 60 spaces per floor, that is, there will be a total of about 180”. This project was approved at the Governing Board on February 13.
At this point, the councilor Dámaso Arteaga, responsible for the Infrastructure area, in charge of executing this project, intervened to defend that “the cost of these constructions must be valued and see if it compensates, because, in the case of which we are talking , the value of a parking space is going to cost more than a flat in the center of Santa Cruz”.
For his part, the first deputy mayor also insisted that this decision must be made by the City Council and that, in any case, “the future involves the elimination of surface car parks, to be replaced by underground or high-rise parking spaces”. Díaz Guerra insisted that an updated PGO is not necessary to make underground car parks, because they can be done throughout the city, while it is necessary for high-rise car parks, “but for that we are going to modify the ordinance of provisional uses so that allow them,” he said.
