Fifty emergency drivers for the EMT and promotion of cycling: Catalá’s plan to unclog Valencia

The city of Valencia is evaluating “all options and ideas” to face the mobility chaos that clogs the city every day during peak hours as a result of the impact of flooding in the metropolitan area. The absence of the subwaywhich can take a month to recover service and is provided with bus shuttles, and the partial reactivation of the service announced Renfe suburban trains also with 112 buses is pushing the capacity of absorption of traffic on the approaches to the capital and saturating convoys of the Municipal Transport Company (EMT), since users of the metropolitan area access the urban public transport network to move around the city. For this reason, the City Council has approved the “urgent” hiring of 50 new drivers for the municipal company and is putting pressure on the companies awarded the new buses to advance the arrival of those with greater capacity. In addition, it will increase the number of new public bicycles on the streets by 300 and will ask the Ministry of Transport to coordinate the access points for the 100 buses that will replace the Cercanías buses.

This was announced by the mayor of the city, María José Cataláafter holding a meeting this Tuesday with the Councilor for Mobility and Security, Jesus Carbonelland the managing director of the EMT, Manuel Martinez. The municipal manager sees a six month period in which mobility will be “a challenge” for Valencia. In fact, the effect on the city is on several levels: dozens of kilometers of delays at the entrances, saturation on the EMT buses (which on many occasions have to hang up the sign completely, which affects the provision of the service). ) and the need to normalize the lines that reach the affected districts.

Added to this is the arrival of bus shuttles from the municipalities that have been left without Cercanías and metro service. “We have to redefine where those buses are going to run”stated Catalá, who believes that they should do it at different points “so as not to collapse the accesses and so that they are effective.”

With regard to the 50 new hires of EMT drivers, the formula chosen has been twofold: one emergency stock and through direct replacement contracts of future retirements. Furthermore, Catalá has pointed out that the City Council, thanks to the investment master plan approved by the EMT, which contemplates a multi-year investment of more than 171 million euros, is putting pressure on the successful bidder companies to have new buses with more capacity available as soon as possible. Furthermore, in the affected districts Due to the floods (la Torre, Forn d’Alcedo and Castellar-Oliveral), the operation of line 9 of the EMT that connects the three centers with the center of Valencia has already been fully recovered.

The mayor has also announced a reinforcement of the contract of Valenbisi “so that between now and January, the company will progressively install 20 more stations with capacity for 14 bicycles, which will mean reinforcing the city’s mobility by 300 more rental bikes.” The City Council makes a appeal to young people to take up the bike and, in this way, older people and people with reduced mobility can access the public bus.

Another measure that Catalá has announced is the making available to the municipal mayors of the 700 bicycles that have been seized the Local Police, those that are in good condition for use. “We want to improve the access roads to the city from the districts by encouraging the use of bicycles,” he highlighted. To this end, the municipal mayors may establish a loan or assignment system of the seized bikes for families who need them and for people affected by DANA who have lost their vehicles.