With the work to bury the A-5 already started and the first traffic cuts reported, the political truce signed a month ago by Óscar Puente, Minister of Transport, and the Mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida , was broken. the air. The meeting held this Tuesday within the framework of the Transport Consortium to achieve a “definitive” mobility plan between the Ministry of Transport, the Community of Madrid, Madrid City Hall and the councils of the A-5 corridor ended yesterday without consensus, beyond the fact that each administration will strengthen as much as possible the alternative means of public transport for which it is competent to try to mitigate the damage of a coverage that will take two years to complete and will affect a road by which passes every day 80,000 vehicles and more than 40 bus lines urban and interurban. “We will convene a next meeting, because we agree on everything, on the need and the capacity to strengthen, but the will to do it within the given time frame is lacking,” said Borja Carabante, delegate of the sector of the urban planning, at the end of the session, Environment and Mobility of Madrid City Hall.
For the municipal spokesperson, the meeting was “disappointing”. Above all, because of the “institutional disloyalty” of the Ministry of Transport, which disclosed its intentions a few hours before the meeting. The most surprising of all was “delay works until March» reinforce so that Adif can reinforce the Cercanías C-5 line.
“Regional trains will be reinforced from the first moment,” promised Álvaro Fernández Heredia, Secretary General of Sustainable Mobility of the Ministry of Transport, at the end of the meeting. His proposal includes an increase between 25% and 40% the capacity of Cercanías services, between 3,000 and 4,500 seats per hour in each direction, which involves reducing the frequency of trains from five to four minutes. However, they requested this postponement of the works to also include a third auxiliary road to cover the route between Móstoles-Atocha without passing through Fuenlabrada, which would further reduce the frequency to three minutes. For the Town Hall, “the ministry is looking for excuses to delay work on the A-5”. “The data they provided us indicates that they have a capacity of 47,700 additional places without carrying out the work,” he admits.
The reinforcement of Cercanías is not, however, the only train wreck against time between the ministry and the municipality. The free A-5 is still pending, although all municipalities have requested it, with the exception of Alcorcón, where the socialist Candelaria Testa governs. The ministry is “willing” to continue talking about making the A-5 free, but not about paying for it in full. According to him, it should be the promoter of the work, that is to say the municipal executive, which ensures the financing. “The Ministry is putting apologies for bad payer, “He wants to reach town halls with Radio 5,” Carabante stressed. “We want it to be treated in the same way as the others, in the same way as the municipalities in the province of Alicante, where the AP-7 is free and entirely paid for by the ministry.” In this regard, the Puente branch explained that it is a “pilot project”.
The only socialist mayor of the A-5 corridor also showed the (political) disagreement of the institutions. “We are heading straight towards chaos, because there is no mobility plan, it is improvisation and imposition,” he said. The mayor of Alcorcón declares, willing to contribute financially to support free R-5, that the municipality of the capital “thinks only of its neighbors”, and not of those of other municipalities.
Long distance
Their main complaint concerns the intercity bus lines, another hobbyhorse of the Ministry of Transport, which “are going to be spent in Cuatro Vientos and in my municipality of Puerta del Sur, which is technically unfeasible”. More precisely, he assures that “There are 26 lines that transport 100,000 people every day, half to Príncipe Pío and the rest in return. And these people do not return to Cuatro Vientos, nor to Renfe, nor to Metro. This is why he is asking for “a delay in the work, to create a serious and reasonable mobility plan together”.
In this regard, and in a more cordial tone, the regional government recalls that it is not the promoter of the work, but that it wishes all administrations to coordinate to minimize the inconvenience that this will cause to citizens. This is why they will evaluate all the “new proposals that have been put on the table”, including that of the entry route for intercity buses into the capital. But they will do it calmly, “not in haste”, and taking into account elements that “we did not know until now, such as the extent of the reinforcements that there would be in Cercanías”.
The start of the work
Furthermore, Madrid City Hall began this week the first modification of traffic on the Extremadura motorway (A-5) with an occupation of 300 meters of the outer lane of the northern road, as part of the construction works. burying the road. As reported by the delegate for urban planning, environment and mobility of Madrid City Hall, Borja Carabante, on his social networks, the objective of this occupation will be to be able to divert traffic towards the northern road coming out of Madrid. There will be a partial demolition of the sidewalk parallel to the road in the direction of the exit, and the alternative pedestrian route will be along Calle del Greco, one of the bus stops in this area will also be moved although he will stay on the same street. .
Although this is the first traffic disruption, the cuts and reduction in road capacity will occur in the second half of December. During the construction period, the council promised, the A-5 will maintain two operational lanes in each direction. Initially, the two lanes in each direction will be located on one side of the road while operators work on the other. Once finished, the same will be done on the opposite side.
