The V-30 and V-31 are to Valencia what the M-30 is to Madrid. Just behind that ring, the water took everything away on Tuesday, October 29, in l’Horta Sud, where some 400,000 people live, and now survive, in an area of 300 square kilometers, almost three times the size of the city of Valencia. Since that day, the survivors have managed to leave and enter their villages through mud or to go collect water and food from other municipalities when necessary. All on foot or, the luckiest, by bike. The urban centers are currently impassable and full of mud, with cars and belongings swept away by the flood. The only alternative they have had has been to walk, sometimes for hours, to get to their parents’, sisters’, friends’ houses or to look for basic supplies. Since Monday, Paiporta has a shuttle service, already overflowing. This Wednesday, the Department of Infrastructure has announced another shuttle to Picanya and another 16 new routes.
Before DANA, 100,000 vehicles circulated daily through Horta Sud, according to Infrastructure sources. Now there is practically no way to move outside of Valencia or between towns if not by car or bike, in which you pedal for hours on roads and highways. The Cercanías is almost stopped (only lines C6 to Castellón and C5 to Caudiel are active). The Valencia metro, which is urban and interurban, is closed. Sources from the Ministry estimate that the tram will open in days, the metro in the northern area, in weeks. The subway of the flooded area “will take months.” The water also affected the MetroValència command center and they had to improvise it and distribute it between two locations.
In addition to being highly populated, ground zero is full of industrial estates. Although you cannot work there because everything is full of mud, the employees come every day to clean the warehouses. To this we must add hundreds of aid cars, Army trucks, supply vans or heavy machinery that must serve more than 60 municipalities affected by the floods. Trucks destined for or originating in Spain’s third city can only circulate at night.
In Valencia everyone knows that the ring road, the V-30 and V-31 must be avoided at all costs – which was cut off for two holidays for rescue tasks, but which is now open, with the “recommendation” of the Generalitat Valenciana of not taking the car, something that has had no effect. This causes thousands of Valencians to resort to old roads or secondary roads to leave the city towards the metropolitan area or to move between towns.
The result, again, is collapse, especially in the mornings, on roads where you cannot turn around and often there is no sign of police officers. Experts have detected that the “clog” on the roads reaches Sagunto, in the north, and 30 kilometers from the capital within days, with drivers making incredible detours.
“Last Thursday we took the car in Burjassot to go to Torrent and it took us five hours” for a trip that can be made in 30 minutes, says Sari, who has to make that trip every day. “We ended up taking roads and were able to go out to Alaquàs. From there, home. “I left work at four in the afternoon and arrived home at nine at night.”
“The transportation system in the Valencia area has suffered a very large impact. Work is being done to launch bus lines to facilitate mobility, but they would need to have priority. Even so, the capacity that the bus can offer is less than the metro or the commuter train,” explains Tomás Ruiz, an expert engineer in transport planning and professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
Near flooded towns it is even worse. In addition to the fact that they have lost bridges (like Torrent, two of the five it had), there are roads cut off – some secondary, but others also important – in Chiva, the one that linked Picanya with Alicante, the A-7 between Quart de Poblet and Torrent . There are some officers at roundabouts or roads giving way, but they can’t do much more than sound the sirens and go out in person to shout at the drivers so that the stuck cars leave a central corridor and the emergency convoys can circulate. In addition, there are traffic restrictions on seven more roads, where it is assumed that only residents (90% have lost their vehicles) or emergencies could pass. The reality is that thousands of vehicles pass by every day. Volunteers and family members who want to reach one of the flooded towns park their vehicles hundreds of meters away on shoulders and arrive on foot. There are people who have decided to go to help on foot, crossing medians and guardrails on highways from the capital.
The Department of Infrastructure has put, a week after the catastrophe, bus reinforcements that cover what were previously MetroValència routes. “We created 12 lines,” they reported on Tuesday, which “cover different sections of metro lines 1, 2, 3, 5 and 9.” This Wednesday, the department announced six more lines, including a Valencia-Picanya shuttle.
It is a step, but the frequency and the routes do not even remotely replace what the metro did before and do not provide almost any service to the flooded area. Also on Tuesday, the municipal buses of Valencia began to arrive to the affected districts (La Torre and Forn d’Alcedo), which had been cut off since the flood. There, just a bridge away from the capital, no special services or shuttles had been provided before.
Professor Ruiz believes that long-term solutions will also have to be found, due to the almost total destruction of the vehicle fleet in the area, and the effects of the devastation: “In the short term the bus can help, as long as it is given priority. It is also possible to use the vehicle fleets of companies in other urban areas or drivers. In the medium, even long term, it will be necessary to reinforce public transport throughout Horta Sud, because the vehicle fleet has been greatly affected and many people will not be able to buy a car, even taking into account public aid,” he concludes.
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