The works start with fencing, signs and some partial demolitions of sidewalks in points with little conflict for traffic.
at idle This is how the first works of the new mobility plan of the Murcia City Council began this Wednesday. In the absence of specifying when the execution works of the intermodal nodes of Floridablanca and Plaza Circular can begin, yesterday the winners of five of the seven lots of the construction contract for the new bus and bike lanes that will mesh the town center and expand the connection to various districts.
The start of the works had practically no impact on city traffic, thanks, in large part, to the fact that they began with low-intensity tasks and in very delimited and low-conflict areas. There was even a point at which the operators did not even see each other in the morning. It remains to be seen how the city will breathe when the cuts start in its main arteries. And it is that the only area in which there were partial traffic cuts early yesterday was in one of the service roads of General Primo de Rivera avenue, the closest to the Old Jail building.
At around 8:30 a.m., the necessary machinery began to arrive at this point to start the work. The movement did not begin, however, until 9 in the morning -after rush hour-, when the first area of action began to be fenced off, safeguarding a wide area of passage on the adjoining sidewalk. Right there, in a corner, he usually plants his terrace Domingo, from the Pardo bar-restaurant. It was just at that moment that the person in charge of the establishment realized that, perhaps, he will have to cancel a large part of the reservations for outdoor tables that he had for Christmas lunches and dinners. “We have not been adequately informed and now I cannot begin to withdraw anything,” he added, while a neighbor looked puzzled at the informative poster placed on her doorstep.
In fact, it is enough to ask at street level to realize that a good part of the population of the capital is still not clear about what the work started yesterday consists of. “I understand that they are going to change some cobblestones and I have read on a poster that this can last about 15 days,” said Félix, manager of an electrical appliance store in the area, explaining that it was this Monday when “they went from the City Hall to leave us some brochures explanatory”. “To me, if they leave the entrance open for customers to enter and to unload the merchandise, more so on the dates to come, it seems fine to me, if it is about works for the benefit of the citizenry,” he concluded.
It was in Ronda de Levante and Primo de Rivera where the operators made the most progress, when they began to use heavy machinery
Javier, a resident of the area, stated that he hopes that these projects “represent a real improvement in the mobility of the city, especially in points with as much traffic as this one.” However, without first-hand knowledge of the proposal, he fears that the loss of parking spaces in the area will make life a little more difficult for residents. «A bike lane is good for us around here, because the scooters circulate on the sidewalks like crazy! Nothing happens if they take a little space from the car, “defended Antonio López, a pensioner residing in the neighborhood.
Many residents are still unclear about the actions that are going to be carried out in their neighborhood, despite the municipal information
Although the morning work in Primo de Rivera was limited to delimiting a first work area of a few tens of meters, in the afternoon they began to partially demolish curbs and part of the sidewalks. The same tasks were carried out early in the morning in Ronda de Levante, at the height of the bus stop located in front of the entrance to Juan de Borbón avenue, where the noise generated by the hydraulic hammer could already be heard on Wednesday. “With the time we have -8 months-, if we don’t start now, we won’t get there”, indicated one of the workers on this project. At this point, the parking strip was clear for at least a hundred meters, thanks to the posting of ‘no parking’ signs in force from this Wednesday.
PP: “It has been designed in a hasty, improvised and unrigorous way”
The spokesperson of the Popular Municipal Group, Rebeca Pérez, accompanied by councilors and popular representatives in the municipal boards, read a manifesto in the Circular square to denounce that the works that began yesterday “have been designed in a hasty and improvised way, with little thought, null reflection and little technical rigor ». “The only thing we had asked this mayor is that, since he is going to close the city until the summer, that he not do it at Christmas, which is when businesses bill 30% of the year,” he defended, for his part, Jerónimo Jóver, from the Close My Neighborhood Platform. Jover also accused La Glorieta of “obscurantism” by not providing a calendar of works. “We do not know when they will start in El Carmen, but we will take some action,” he concluded.
The same did not happen in the Infante, in the work area of Pío Baroja avenue, one in which circulation was expected to be affected from day one. The signage placed there did not, however, prevent parking until today, so it was still occupied by dozens of vehicles. “Today they only touch on previous works and tomorrow, we’ll see, because you have to leave a 48-hour margin for the neighbors to see the signs,” explained the surveyors, who were already yesterday morning making measurements on this road. The feeling in the neighborhood was not, however, that a remodeling of this magnitude had already begun.
In districts, at a different pace
The other two points were located in districts where, in theory, the work should have started yesterday morning. One was the environment of the Virgen de La Arrixaca hospital, where a pile of plastic dividers piled up in the roundabout at the entrance to the health center and two workers who were having lunch on the sidewalk next to their refrigerator barely attested to this circumstance. With regard to the works in the area of the Alcantarilla highway, it was not possible to find any kind of movement at mid-morning in relation to the execution of this contract lot, despite the fact that it was to start in the vicinity of Viveros The General. “I am here for the AVE works,” explained a worker dressed in his phosphorescent vest.
The La Fica car park, an alternative for hospital workers
The dissuasive parking planned in the avenue of the Murciana Region, in the surroundings of La Fica. This is the main parking alternative, still undated, that the City Council has offered to the staff of the Reina Sofía Hospital, given the loss of places in the area around the health center, as a result of the mobility plan works. This was reported to LA VERDAD by sources from the hospital personnel board after the meeting they held on Tuesday, together with the manager of the center, with councilor Carmen Fructuoso.
Given this proposal, the workers’ representatives requested the implementation of a shuttle bus that allows the transfer of employees to their workplace or, at least, a line bus that covers the route directly. This request was also linked to the reluctance that walking to the place chosen to install the car park can generate in many colleagues, especially at night. Likewise, they raised whether these new places will be enough in festive periods, in which the parking will be used by attendees of various events. They stressed the need, on the other hand, for schedules and frequencies adapted to the different shifts.
The staff meeting also expressed doubts about whether it will be safe to disembark patients on an island that will force them to cross the new bus lanes to get to the hospital and they applauded the possibility of transiting these in Enrique Llanes to access the ER and the parking lot. hospital public.
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