Laurence Dollimore
VISITORS to the Feria de Abril in Sevilla have vented their frustrations at this year’s travel chaos.
Video footage shared online shows snaking queues for buses and overwhelmed metro stations, while taxi services such as Uber and Cabify have been blasted for surging their prices.
One visitor claimed they were charged €150 for an 11-minute Uber ride to the festival ground, based in Los Remedios, in the south west of the city.
It comes as data from the Sevilla City Council shows daily attendance has increased by around 20,000 people compared to last year.
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That number is expected to soar today ahead of a local bank holiday on Wednesday.
“I paid €150 for an 11-minute ride from the centre of Sevilla to the Feria,” a young woman complained on a local radio station today.
She added: “This is not a dynamic rate, it is armed robbery.”
Other users claimed they were charged €72 for 16-minute journeys, or €100 euros from Sevilla Este to the city centre, reports Diario de Sevilla.
Local Jorge Lozano, who works in the centre of Seville, told the same paper that he finally decided to discard Uber and Cabify and travel in his own car, which he branded ‘a nightmare’.
He said: “Parking around the Feria is an impossible mission and traffic is a problem… A trip that I normally do in less than 10 minutes, on Monday at noon it took me 40 minutes to do.”
Meanwhile, metro and bus stops are jam-packed throughout the day.
The Metro de Sevilla company has admitted that the lines are “completely overwhelmed” and that the number of services are “insufficient” to handle the influx of passengers.
Tensions are running so high that police have been roped in to manage taxi ranks to avoid fights between customers and drivers.
