The V-30 and V-31 are to Valencia what the M-30 is to Madrid. Just behind this ring, the water swept away everything on Tuesday October 29 in Horta Sud, where some 400,000 people live and survive today, over an area of 300 square kilometers, almost three times the size of the city. . from Valencia. Since that day, survivors have managed to get out and enter their villages through the mud or fetch water and food from other communes when necessary. All on foot or, the lucky ones, by bike. Urban centers are currently impassable and full of mud, with cars and belongings washed away by the floods. The only alternative they had was to walk, sometimes for hours, to get to their parents, sisters, friends or to look for basic necessities. Since Monday, Paiporta has had a shuttle service, which is already saturated. This Wednesday, the Ministry of Infrastructure announced another shuttle to Picanya and 16 additional new routes.
Before DANA, 100,000 vehicles traveled daily through Horta Sud, according to Infrastructure sources. Today there is virtually no way to travel outside of Valencia or between cities except by car or bicycle, in which you pedal for hours on roads and highways. The Cercanías is almost stopped (only lines C6 towards Castellón and C5 towards Caudiel are active). The Valencia metro, urban and interurban, is closed. Ministry sources estimate that the tram will open in a few days, and the metro in the northern zone, in a few weeks. Subway of flooded area ‘will take months’. The water also affected the MetroValència command center and it had to be improvised and distributed between two locations.
In addition to being very populated, Ground Zero is full of industrial areas. Even if we can’t work there because everything is full of mud, employees come every day to clean the warehouses. To this must be added hundreds of humanitarian cars, army trucks, supply vans and heavy machinery which must serve more than 60 municipalities affected by the floods. Trucks to or from Spain’s third city can only travel at night.
In Valencia, everyone knows to avoid at all costs the ring road, the V-30 and V-31 – which were cut off for two public holidays for rescue operations, but which are now open, with the “ recommendation” of the Generalitat Valenciana. not to take the car, which had no effect. This leads thousands of Valencians to resort to old roads or secondary roads to leave the city for the metropolitan area or to travel between cities.
The result, once again, is collapses, especially in the morning, on roads where it is impossible to turn around and where there are often no signs of police. Experts have detected that the “traffic jam” on the roads reaches Sagunto, in the north, and 30 kilometers from the capital in a few days, with drivers making incredible detours.
“Last Thursday, we took the car from Burjassot to go to Torrent and it took us five hours” for a journey that can be done in 30 minutes, says Sari, who has to make this journey every day. “We ended up taking roads and were able to get out to Alaquàs. From there, home. “I left work at four in the afternoon and came home at nine in the evening.”
“The transport system in the Valencia region has suffered a very significant impact. Work is underway to launch bus lines to facilitate mobility, but they should be given priority. However, the capacity that the bus can offer is lower than that of the metro or commuter train,” explains Tomás Ruiz, expert engineer in transport planning and professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.
Near flooded towns, the situation is even worse. In addition to the fact that they lost bridges (like Torrent, two of the five they owned), there are cut roads – some secondary, but others just as important – in Chiva, the one that connected Picanya to Alicante, the A-7 between Quart de Poblet and Torrent. There are officers at roundabouts or on yield roads, but there is little they can do other than sound sirens and go out in person to yell at motorists to get stuck cars to move out of an area. central corridor and that emergency convoys can circulate. In addition, there are traffic restrictions on seven other roads, where it is assumed that only residents (90% have lost their vehicles) or emergencies can pass. The reality is that thousands of vehicles pass through it every day. Volunteers and their family members who want to reach one of the flooded towns park their vehicles hundreds of meters away on the shoulders and arrive on foot. There are people who have decided to go and help on foot, crossing the medians and guardrails on the capital’s highways.
The Ministry of Infrastructure a week after the disaster, provided bus reinforcements which cover what were previously MetroValència routes. “We have created 12 lines,” they reported Tuesday, which “cover different sections of metro lines 1, 2, 3, 5 and 9.” This Wednesday, the department announced six additional lines, including a Valencia-Picanya shuttle.
It’s a step, but the frequency and routes don’t even remotely replace what the metro did before and provide almost no service to the flooded area. Also on Tuesday, municipal buses from Valencia began to arrive in the affected neighborhoods (La Torre and Forn d’Alcedo), which had been cut off since the flood. There, just a few steps from the capital, no special services or shuttles had been planned 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, provided that it has priority. It is also possible to use the vehicle fleets of companies from other urban areas or drivers. In the medium or even long term, it will be necessary to strengthen public transport throughout Horta Sud, because the car fleet has been greatly affected and many people will not be able to buy a car, even taking into account public aid”, concludes -he. .
