A BEVY of Costa del Sol mayors and business leaders have expressed their outrage over the central government’s ‘lack of will’ to build a coastal train.
In a recent meeting, the central government stated that a Costa del Sol coastal train ‘will take decades’ before walking it back to ‘10 to 15 years’.
Rather than prioritising the construction of this new train, the government has now suggested short term solutions – like lowering highway tolls and continuing to use metropolitan and urban transport systems.
The Ayuntamientos of Mijas and Fuengirola find these proposals ‘unacceptable’ and ‘outrageous’ respectively.
Mijas officials say that lowering road tolls will not help the transport problems as roads are already congested with traffic that acts as an economic and social issue – in fact lowering tolls will most likely lead to more vehicles and exacerbate this issue.
These points are echoed by Ana Mula, the mayor of Fuengirola, who says that the ‘government is not acknowledging problems on the coast’.
She is angered by the way the government ‘is celebrating a meeting that has amounted to nothing.’
The government’s lack of urgency and ‘will’ regarding improving transport across the Costa del Sol has prompted many more officials to speak out as they state that there have been no moves to improve the area’s transport system in the last seven years.
‘When there is political will and budgetary allowance, timelines for necessary and urgent projects are shortened’, says Estepona mayor, Jose Maria Garcia Urbano.
In line with this, the mayor of Torremolinos, Margarita del Cid, has spoken up about how the government’s negligence of transport issues on the Costa del Sol have caused frustrations.
Emphasising the points of these mayors, the Malaga’s PP coordinator, Cristobal Ortega, has now called for the resignation of the government’s sub-delegate in Malaga as they have failed to introduce urgent measures across the region.
A PP spokesperson in Marbella has further highlighted the area’s anger by criticizing the long 10 to 15 year timelines for the coastal train project and calling for a serious, coordinated plan.
As anger towards the government’s approach grows, the president of the Malaga Rotary Clubs Platform has advocated for ‘alternatives through private investment and public concessions to shorten the timelines’ for the railway project.
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‘Decades away’ sounds reasonable. Because in Spain no big project is finished without participation of EU funds. But when it comes to a Costa del Sol train project, all EU funds are empty. Due to economic recession Germany will no more be the biggest donor of EU funds. As Ukraine as a new EU memberstate will absorbe all EU funds as the main receiver, Spain will change from being a receiver to become a donor. Result: there will be no EU money to pay for a Costa del Sol train.