The vice president of the Cabildo of Tenerife, Lope Afonso, insisted this Friday that mitigating mobility problems in Tenerife “can occur in the short term” with certain measures and if the capacities and daily activities of companies and universities are “ordered”, for example. example.
Lope Afonso’s statements came after the island council presented the progress of the Sustainable Mobility Plan to try to put an end to queues on the island, which was one of the electoral promises of the president, Rosa Dávila ( CC) of the last electoral campaign prior to the regional elections of May 28.
Dávila promised to end traffic jams in the first 90 days of his term, although in August he stated that I couldn’t find a solution in that period of time. and? his words were taken out of context. Until now, the only measure taken to alleviate traffic was limiting the circulation of waste trucks in the TF-5 and in TF-1.
In the press conference this Friday, the president of the Tenerife Cabildo pointed out that the solutions to the queues involve not only issues related to works and infrastructure, but also decisions of a political nature aimed at discouraging the use of private vehicles.
Among the proposed measures, he has mentioned the possibility of giving more capacity to public transport and has said that the new tram, which improves capacity, frequency and schedules in the metropolitan area, will help this.
He has also expressed that there will be reinforcements of buses, the launch of shuttles to the university and other measures related to small works, changes in signage, the work of the Padre Anchieta roundabout or the accesses in Guamasa.
“It is not only the commitment to more public transport but the imperative need to change habits and for there to be a more rational modal distribution. A new mobility model that requires fewer movements,” the island president reflected. These decisions, she added, entail “the relief of the situation of collapse of transportation that the island is experiencing.”
“There must be a change in habits and if not it will be difficult for there to be a change,” the president appealed. For her part, Lope Afonso has asserted that the island has needed the sustainable mobility plan “for a long time,” “an old aspiration that, due to different vicissitudes, is now seeing the light.”
For Afonso, city councils must be involved to solve internal mobility problems and adopt “brave” measures such as restricting parking in certain areas and involving social agents to establish a different organization in the production of their daily activities “and better organize everyone’s capabilities to contribute to reducing the problem.”
Also, the technician of the Cabildo Fernando Davara has intervened, who has recalled that every day there are 3.5 million trips and that 80% are made by private vehicle, as the 22,000 students go to the university every day, he said.
The plan is a “strategic” document that acts on the planning and details which infrastructures must be developed in a multimodal and sustainable mobility framework.
“We must work to ensure that travel is carried out in the most efficient way. There are cases in which the private vehicle is not the best decision but we use it anyway,” reflected the technician, who added that the objective is for the plan to also be a practical and management document that contains all the action measures that must have the development of that model.
Davara has recognized that despite the fact that the commitment to public transport through Titsa is “powerful”, this modal distribution does not improve, which makes it difficult, in his opinion, to achieve the political commitments of decarbonization acquired with the Union. European.
He has also indicated that 1.3 million trips are made within the metropolitan area while 800,000 trips correspond to the south, while the rest is distributed “more or less in the rest of the island.”
For Davara, “not everything passes through long-range island corridors but it is also important to pay attention to short routes” since many times people do not need to travel beyond 5-7 kilometers. “90% of trips are less than 7 kilometers,” stated the technician.
