My Palma ringroad horror

Unless my statistics are very out of date my impression is that the permanent population of Majorca is only just over 500'000 people of which perhaps 50% or more live in the Palma conurbation? Although in the months of July and August there are possibly up to another 500'000 tourists living on the island many of these tourists do not need to interact with Palma at all as they can reach their resorts from the airport without ever visiting Palma and it is only the English package tourists and English yachtists who favour the resorts to the East of the capital who even have to interact with Palma traffic? In one of your editorials this week you also say that if the government says a second ring road is needed then you suppose they must be right and that the alternative must surely be gridlock. Yet the only evidence you can offer for gridlock on the Via Cintura is a picture showing a jam that follows a crash that has caused a total blockage of the road.

Having travelled on the Via Cintura quite a lot at many times of day I have yet to see any kind of jam that resembles a serious traffic jam in London or to see the traffic on the main carriageway stop flowing. In fact the only problem I note at busier times is that there are queues at some of the exit slip roads because of inadequate junction arrangements with the traffic flow on the ordinary streets below.

By contrast as one who's family apartment is in Canyamel on the far side of the island I have noticed that one road on this island (the C712 from Palma to Manacor) has been in crying and criminal need of upgrading to a motorway standard for a very long time and in my opinion this has probably been more than justified by both the traffic flow levels and by the frequent horrific head on accidents since as far back as 1985 or at the very latest 1990.

This is especially bearing in mind that almost every more minor country lane between the smaller towns on the island (e.g. the Campos to Porreres road or the Felanitx to Campos road) has been upgraded to a 12 metre wide 130km/hour super expressway for at least the last 10 to 15 years.

Whilst I understand that it was the policy of the previous government not to build any new roads at all and to only build instantly useless railway extensions using the slow and original track paths of the 1900s what I cannot understand is why this government has decided to throw tens of millions of euros down the drain by now upgrading the Palma to Manacor road with an old 1950s style dual carriageway scheme that will lay the new carriageway exactly alongside the twists and turns and sweeps of a several hundred year old road route only originally designed for horses and karts travelling at no more than 10km an hour.

Yet it is perfectly obvious to all but a blind man that what the Palma-Manacor route actually needed was a proper motorway road that avoided all the existing villages but that went in more or less a straight line across the island and certainly not on a ridiculous circular course to the south as was I believe proposed back in the 1970s and 1980s.

I also remain baffled as to why a small city (Palma) with a modest sized population still apparently needs a second motorway standard ring road while a much more vital artery for all of the traffic to one of the island's two other main cities can make do with a Heath Robinson dual carriageway scheme apparently drafted by a drunk blindman on a very foggy Wednesday morning in November? However I have my suspicions about the reason for this extraordinarily bad decision making and they all centre very strong around the important tourist attractions on the existing Palma to Manacor single carriageway who stand to lose large amounts of business if a proper motorway was built. One can only presume that some of these businesses have very good friends in the present Balearic government.

I also understood when reading your paper last year that a proper Motorway was however proposed from Manacor to Inca? Seemingly a very curious decision as no tourists in the South East or East of the island or residents of Manacor need to go to Inca either very often or even if they do certainly not in a hurry. It is only usually the airport and Palma that people in the East and the South East need to access quickly and frequently. It is thus very hard to account for this extraordinary decision to repeat the mistakes of the turn of the century in train route building in motorway construction until one thinks about who is planning this road and how they will intend to use it.

Then all at once the answer dawns. The people planning the road are Balearic Government civil servants and their idea of using the road will be to make periodic day trips out from their office in Palma to see the progress of government projects first in Inca and then Manacor before possibly returning home to their country abode perhaps somewhere between Inca and Palma? So although Palma does not appear to me to ever have traffic jams that even begin to resemble London I suppose it must also have a second motorway second ring road so that when a member of the Balearic government or one of its civil servants needs to sprint from an engagement in Inca to one in say Andratx they can do so at 150 km an hour.

As a tourist I still worry about the end game plan of this government who seems to think they can continue to concrete over most of the remaining pleasant parts of the island to lure in an endlessly growing stream of tourists who they seem to think will still enjoy coming here even if those tourists suddenly realise they have come to what is now the Mediterranean island equivalent of Birmingham? The current government unfortunately still seems to think that better means much bigger and nosier rather than better managed higher quality or sustainable. What a pity that the people on this island who were born here and who live here all the year don't actually seem to appreciate what they have and instead want to turn it into the same concrete, urban retail park filled hell that we already suffer in much of the rest of mainland Europe.

Regards, Julian Shersby, Surrey