Taxi!

Public transport. Better public transport is needed for tourists travelling in the Alcúdia-Pollensa area; that, at any rate, is the desire of hotel chiefs in the north, according to “Euro Weekly”. This would also, so these same hotel chiefs believe, attract more visitors to the north. Really? How many more visitors would come to, say, Playa de Muro on top of those who represented 100% hotel occupancy for a time during the past summer? Is public transport, or the lack thereof, a deal-maker or deal-breaker when it comes to deciding on a holiday? I doubt it somewhat. More likely is the expectation that there will be buses but there will also be a squeeze, in which case no one is going to be too upset as the expectation will be met.

Better or more public transport will make little difference to the numbers of visitors, but there may well be a case for saying that it could help those visitors to move around more. I say could because for a fair proportion it probably wouldn’t make the slightest bit of difference; indeed there is a fair argument for saying that some of the larded obese to be found waddling around in summer would benefit from the absence of any form of transport except a push-bike. But be that as it may.

Where do people go though? On a typical hot summer’s day in Puerto Alcúdia for instance, people are going nowhere except to the beach, and even for those in the more far-flung all-inclusives or Bellevue the walk is not exactly onerous, and if you want, you can get a boat much of the way from Bellevue in any case. The only days when there is any change to this pattern is on market days when, yes, there is a good argument for there being more buses. Otherwise, the greatest demand is in the evenings, and here there is a need, especially later on. Want a bus after 11 o’clock from the port? Forget it. Want a taxi? Try finding one. There are only so many taxis, which is why, on market days, Alcúdia Taxis have to call in the cavalry from Playa de Muro to assist (the Playa de Muro taxi drivers are not meant to pick up outside of their own territory).

The projected extension to the train line as far as Alcúdia and the proposed trams going from the terminus may be of benefit, but the one really useful addition to the public transport network would be a good train service to the airport. So useful that it will probably never be done.

And on the airport, also in “EW”, it is now the twelfth busiest in Europe. 22 million people used the airport last year, the paper says. That’s last year as in 2007. Hmm, whatever. Being at number 12 in the charts may not sound like much to brag about, but if you consider that Palma does not handle transatlantic and long-haul traffic, then it is fairly astonishing.


QUIZ
Yesterday – Sly And The Family Stone. Today’s title – remember the American comedy series? Who wrote the theme tune? And what is the connection between Taxi and the blog entry for 13 December, “Girls On Film”?

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