The imminent traffic cuts at the entrance to Madrid on the A-5, planned for the month of December as part of the burying of this road, threaten to collapse the majority of public transport in the southwest corridor if the few reinforcement plans are maintained. planned. A study by the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility estimates that the 50% reduction in car lanes will cause a transfer of thousands of travelers to, mainly, the Metro and also buses.
The study estimates that the works on the A-5 will mean that some 62,300 private vehicle trips registered each day will be transferred to public transport, as a consequence of the reduction in the road’s capacity and also due to the increase in associated journey times. to the traffic jams that will be generated.
According to these calculations, 39% of the eliminated trips will replace the car with the Madrid Metro, while urban and interurban buses will pick up 37% of them. The suburban lines that will receive the most passengers will be mainly number 10 (11,900 trips), followed by number 5 (9,300), circular (8,500) and Metrosur (4,600). As for the interurban lines, the most affected lines will be 563, 574, 561B and 567.
The current increase in the service planned by the Community of Madrid for Metro and intercity buses would not be sufficient to absorb all this demand, since the unilateral plan presented by the City Council in agreement with the Ayuso Government, included a maximum reinforcement of up to 9% (two trains on line 10 and one on line 5). As for the interurban lines, no reinforcements are planned, although most of the lines that until now reach the center of Madrid will unload their passengers at Cuatro Vientos, for which conditioning works are necessary that the City Council should carry out. These travelers could take the suburban (line 10) or the Cercanías C-5 there.
The Cercanías will absorb 24% of trips by private vehicle that will move to public transport, according to the same study cited and that the Ministry has prepared to assess the necessary increase in its service through the C-5. In this case, that would be the most affected line although part of the car trips would also end up in the rest of the network due to transfers in Atocha. The Ministry led by Óscar Puente is studying reinforcing the C5 Cercanías line during the works, with an increase of between 25% and 40% of the service.
The report to which Somos Madrid has had access has been prepared for INECO, consists of 57 pages and was written during the month of October, working with the nearly 750,000 daily trips in the southwest corridor. The analysis makes its main calculations based on mobility studies with Bigdata technologies prepared by the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, which provide abundant information on the mobility patterns of the population.
This analysis estimates that travel times due to the increase in congestion on the A-5 will increase by at least 10 minutes on average per trip, which will also be transferred to urban or interurban buses that make this route, since the For the moment, the City Council rules out maintaining the existing bus lane in the area so as not to harm the traffic of private vehicles. The towns with the most origins of trips by private vehicle that switch to public transport are Madrid itself (22,400), Alcorcón (8,400) and Móstoles (4,500).
The effect on the freeness of R-5
One of the demands of the Madrid City Council to minimize the impact of the works is that the Ministry opens the R-5 free of charge to all vehicles. The radial, which had to be rescued years ago due to its economic unviability, could especially benefit those who come from surrounding towns, due to its ability to distribute traffic over the M-40 or M-45.
This same Wednesday, the municipal Mobility delegate, Borja Carabante, repeated the request: “We are seeing that it is a very good alternative, according to the technical studies carried out by the Madrid City Council – which we are going to share with the technical services of the Ministry – because It can take an important part of those vehicles that cannot access via the A-5,” he explained.
However, the other technical studies managed by the Ministry of Transportation show less optimistic data. Specifically, the analysis to which this newspaper had access estimates that the drop in private vehicle traffic would be only 6% if the R-5 toll is liberalized. However, Puente’s team assured a few days ago that it was considering this possibility “if an agreement is adopted between all administrations.”
The Ministry’s analysis also calculates what would happen if the A-5 were suddenly cut off due to some specific need, a fact that it considers “not to be ruled out,” the text states. In this scenario, the number of trips by private vehicle that would change to public transport would increase to 108,000, with a distribution in percentages similar to that of the previous scenario described.
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