The presentation of the new campaign of the Confederació de Comerç d’Alacant, Castelló i València (Confecomerç CV) was held yesterday at the CEV headquarters, on Hernán Cortés street, one of the perpendiculars of the central Colón that has been the epicenter so much criticism from the opposition in the previous legislature. Hundreds of pedestrians, cyclists and drivers pass through these streets every day, all potential buyers.
With the entry of the new government of María José Catalá, now Colón will change, as announced this Wednesday by the councilors Jesús Carbonell and Paula Llobet, who have met this week with representatives of the Pla de Remei-Gran Vía Neighborhood Association to “seek solutions that, backed by safety audits, make it possible to reverse the road planning undertaken in this central street of the city during the first half of 2020”, explained the consistory.
The intention is not new, since in the electoral program of the PP in the city of Valencia there was already a proposal for the “reordering” of mobility and the public space of Calle Colón. In the text they spoke of doing it in a “consensual” way -and with a “quality project” in which neighbors, merchants and affected sectors participated-, and in which road safety and accessibility would prevail, since their criticism of the management of Joan Ribó and that of his Councilor for Mobility Giuseppe Grezzi was to have done it unilaterally.
In this scenario, the City Council has assured that Wednesday was the first of a series of meetings that they will hold with social agents to agree on the redesign of this area, although from the outset they propose among the priority actions the suppression of one of the two bus lanes -taxi and the rearrangement of private traffic towards the city center, with free access from Puerta del Mar.
Asked yesterday, the president of Confecomerç CV, Rafael Torres, pointed out that the new local government is being asked for both coordination between the different areas and a “sensible” traffic design in the center of the city. “When the center was closed with the sole perspective of damaging the car, it did not seem reasonable to us. Buses were diverted to Colón street, in a section when it later cuts off… It was a scalextric that was done in a sectarian way,” he said yesterday Torres, who hopes that Catalá and his government will talk “with everyone and that in the end a serious study of traffic in the city will be carried out.”
Torres will also ask that certain bus lines return to the center, as he explains that almost half of the historic center does not have an EMT stop within 400 meters. “What we want is to ensure accessibility, to be able to access the center comfortably, easily and cheaply”, explained the president of the Valencian merchants.
Behind the demands is the sector’s need to improve figures that, due to inflation and energy costs, are still not taking flight. The drop in domestic demand is being felt in consumption and the pull of tourism is transferred less to commerce than to restaurants, for example. In this sense, Confecomerç CV perceives that people are betting on enjoyable experiences, but although “it gives us the feeling that everything is going wonderfully well, the average ticket goes down and consumption will begin to be more noticeable in the second semester” , forecast. The sector is between 5% -6% growth compared to last year, but in an environment of inflation “it is meager growth. We are billing more but selling the same,” he concluded.
