21/10/2013 00:00
TW
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Staff Reporter

PALMA
THE Balearic Government is studying the possibility of joining the town of Manacor to the airport via a new train line.
Reliable sources say that the basis on which the technicians at the Balearic Ministry of Mobility and Town Planning are working is that the start of the line would be a new stretch of line which would go from Manacor to the South and from there to the airport, from where it would link with Palma.

In this way, towns such as Felanitx, Campos, Santanyi, Ses Salines and Llucmajor would be able to recover their railway service after years of not having one.

The joining of Manacor with the airport by train will solve one of the eternal problems of all residents in the area, and beyond, which is how to get to the airport when they have to catch a plane.

At the moment, they have to get somebody to take them or spend vast amounts of money to leave their car in the airport car park.
In spite of the fact that the current objective of the Ministry, directed by Gabriel Vicens, is to extend the line from Mancor to Cala Rajada, they are already working on new lines and stretches of line to give a great boost to public rail transport, which also includes electric trains.

In fact, Minister Vicens said on a visit to Arta that, “just as there is a road map, there should be a train map”. The Minister visited the stations in the towns of Son Servera and Arta, together with their respective Mayors, Josep Barrientos and Rafael Gili, accompanied by the head of SFM (Majorca's railway service), Jaume Jaume, and the rest of his team.

The basic objective of the visit was to find out what sort of state the stations are in with a view to recovering the line. Vicens agreed that as much of the route of old line as possible would be reused, and also that the buildings on the old stations would be used. Asked whether he had a date when the trains would start running through Son Servera to Arta, Vicens declined to make any predictions. “We will go step by step so that everything is done properly and not the way the last Balearic Government did things”. On the other hand the Minister recognised that there will be “many problems” for the trains to run to Capdepera and Cala Rajada, because trains have never run there and so there is no old route to follow. The problem lies in the fact that there is “a lot of difference” in recovering a line and laying a new one. A major stumbling block is that the administration will have to make many compulsory purchases which will push the price up. There are also geographical problems.

With the old train lines there are no problems as all the land is public and there is practically no need to make any compulsory purchases. It is for this reason, and because of the Ministry's policy of train expansion that Vicens is demanding that all town plans “include land for trains”.