Walter Finch
LA LINEA is demanding a shuttle bus to connect the town to the nearby train station in San Roque after previously insisting on having a stop included in the proposed costa train line.
Known as the San Roque-La Linea train station, its distance from the border town has rendered the second half of the name true on paper only.
The La Linea town hall will present a motion at the upcoming plenary session asking the Campo de Gibraltar Transport Consortium to arrange a bus running from the bus station to the train station timed to coincide with the movements of the trains – usually four a day.
Officials of the struggling border town will request a study on the cost, financing and coordination for the shuttle bus within a maximum period of three months.
To go along with the shuttle bus service, La Linea will also ask for the development of an mobile phone app that tells users of train times and the correlating times of shuttle buses from or to La Línea, also indicating how many seats are free on the bus.
Proposals to run a shuttle bus date as far back as 2019 but as of yet have never been put in place despite ‘promises made’ in the Campo de Gibraltar Metropolitan Transport Plan in 2023.
The goal is to make it easier for the residents to use the railway services and ‘avoid the current situation of having a station that only bears the name of La Línea only without providing any benefit to the citizens of this municipality.’
Opened in 1997, the station is inconveniently located from both San Roque and especially La Linea.
From near the Gibraltar border the station is around a 30 minute drive in a car. While there are buses that go there, they drop passengers off 1.6 kilometres away.
The approximately four daily trains call in at Ronda in an hour and a quarter, Sevilla in four or five hour hours and Madrid in five hours and a quarter.
