The buses of the Municipal Transport Company of Valencia returned to the city center this Tuesday, on a first day in which they are circulating “without notable alterations”, as reported by the council. The Councilor for Mobility, Jesús Carbonell, explained that the EMT has designed an operation, which will continue over the next few days, “to inform both drivers and users of public transport in detail” about that return.
In total, seven lines have returned to the center since the first hour and have returned to their points of origin “normally”; The schedules have been met “from the first hour and all the new itineraries have been traveled just as they have been redesigned.”
On Colón Street, which adds one more lane to private vehicle traffic, during the morning EMT buses and cars “have coexisted normally” and “without notable alterations,” the council notes.
At 5:47 a.m. the first bus of the new lines returning to the Plaza del Ayuntamiento entered San Vicente Street, a 70 from Alboraya, with seven travelers on board. The other lines that pass through the center are 4, 11, 31, 32 and 16 and 26 in Poeta Querol.
From early in the morning until the evening, nearly 40 chief inspectors, coordinators and officers will be in charge of direct assistance, and at street level, to all the buses that arrive at the center. Likewise, they will inform about new routes and assist passengers who do not yet have complete information.
According to the mayor, the inspectors have reported that the day “is developing normally” and “no incidents have been observed and especially without the traffic jams that have been occurring in recent years.” In addition, the EMT has deployed a total of 50 informants both on the buses and at street level “to immediately resolve any questions that passengers may have or complete in detail the information they require.”
For Carbonell, “with this measure we have managed to get traffic back to the city center, since it was a demand of citizens in recent years and a promise of the PP for this legislature.”
The fundamental objectives of the reorganization of the EMT lines are the direct connection with the Plaza del Ayuntamiento, the expansion of the service to the Central Market and the recovery of old relations with the entire historic center, according to the council.
Along with the expansion of the area of ??influence of the public company, transfers and travel times are reduced, and the routes that are “differentiated” and “complemented” with those of Metrovalencia are “rebalanced.”
Regarding “punctual” detours that can be enabled if crowds of people occur, Carbonell has assured that “the same mechanism that has been used in the EMT since time immemorial” will be used. “Street closures in the city of Valencia are quite frequent and whenever some exceptional circumstances occur, the EMT diverts its itineraries and users are informed through the networks, also at the stops themselves,” he defended. and added that the same will be done “when there is some type of agglomeration.”
In recent days, line C1, which had already been running along San Vicente Street, has had to be diverted due to the existence of events of this type.
However, the opposition in the council has criticized the return of buses to the center. “Today is a sad day for València and its inhabitants. Eight years after Compromís began the pedestrianization of the Plaza del Ayuntamiento on the last Sundays of the month, which were the first step for the entire recovery of public space and enhancement of our squares, the Popular Party returns València to the past,” lamented the spokesperson for Compromís per València, Papi Robles, who reproaches the mayor, María José Catalá, for what she describes as a “tremendous step backwards.”
“Against all sense, against the wishes of the citizens and with the temerity to ignore the professionals behind the wheel, Catalá reintroduces indiscriminate traffic in the city center, cutting pedestrian spaces and also endangering the physical integrity of people, as the EMT Works Committee does not stop denouncing,” criticized Robles, who has accused the first mayor of acting “like a kamikaze but with the lives of others.”
For her part, the socialist spokesperson in the council, Sandra Gómez, has denounced the “unusual spectacle” that Catalá is offering “with the inauguration of a lane for cars in the 21st century and right at the gates of Valencia hosting the Capital. European Green”.
“It is a setback and a step back in a city model that was committed to pedestrianization, safe public space and road safety. We are in the 21st century and it saddens me to see how we have a mayor whose political priority is to dismantle a lane of public transport to open it to cars and pollution,” he assured.
According to Gómez, all the measures that Catalá has adopted on mobility in the city “have shown that the priority of the new government is for the car to once again occupy all the neighborhoods and reduce space for pedestrians.”
