SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, Monday April 12 2010
PHOTO: Cabildo economy minister Carlos Alonso (third from left) marking a minute's silence for Polish president Lech Kaczynski and other government officials killed in the weekend's Smolensk plane crash on Monday.
TENERIFE'S government demanded central state funding for its planned railway on Monday as the scheme came under renewed fire.
by JAMES TWEEDIE
Tenerife Cabildo vice-president and economy and competitiveness minister Carlos Alonso announced that his nationalist Canarian Coalition (CC) party had presented a motion calling on the Socialist Party (PSOE) federal government to set aside money from its Plan Extraordinario de Infraestructuras (PEI) for the northern branch of the Anillo Ferroviario rail ring.
The document charged that central government funding of rail schemes in the Canaries had been “historically non-existent,” although it conceded that Madrid had part-financed the recently-completed Santa Cruz-La Laguna Tranvia tram network.
Speaking at his weekly press conference an hour later, PSOE regional parliamentary spokesman Santiago Pérez described the motion as “more propaganda” from the CC and insisted that the government had honoured its funding commitments to the region.
Mr Alonso responded to criticism of the project from United Left (IU) Tenerife spokesman Ramón Trujillo, who argued last week that rather than enhancing the public transport system, the railway would compete with existing bus routes while some 84 per cent of journeys would still be made by car.
Mr Alonso insisted that the the scheme would not pit trains against buses, and that the two transport modes would form an integrated system along with private taxis.
Mr Trujillo wrote that the €1.24 billion rail ring was a white elephant, which would cost more than three times as much as improving the bus service and creating dedicated bus lanes.
He pointed out the railway will have higher operating costs than buses, which make a loss of 55 cents per passenger journey – more than half the fare on metropolitan routes.
Meanwhile, Mr Trujillo said, the number of cars on the island had risen by 276,000 in the decade from 1997 to 2007 – from 630 per thousand inhabitants to 804, compared with the national average of 648.
He accused local, island and regional governments of acting against their own guidelines in building more roads and car parks and thus encouraging people to drive to work, often from one municipality to another.
Two railway lines are initially planned to run from the capital Santa Cruz along the north and south coasts of the island.
The southern line will continue up the shorter west coast to Fonsalía in Guia de Isora. The northern route will only reach as far as Los Realejos, but the Cabildo hopes to extend it to Icod de Los Vinos and on to Adeje, thus completing the anillo or ring.
Construction of the network could employ up to 4,000 workers, but the completed railway would need only 200 permanent staff.
However, the plan remains unpopular in many quarters. Residents and environmentalists have voiced concerns that the railway's construction will require the expropriation and demolition of many homes and will encroach upon the habitats of endangered species.
The Cabildo has sought to play down these fears, insisting that much of the railway will follow the routes of existing motorways or tunnel beneath the landscape.