As I Cross The Empty Road

All the fuss about the pedestrianisation, that has now been abandoned in Puerto Pollensa, has obscured hard questioning as to the logic of the town's bypass. The two surely always went hand in hand, or road in road if you prefer. The closure of the frontline - completely and not just a bit or at different times - would have led to the use of the bypass which must surely have been the intention. No pedestrianisation and no-one much uses the bypass. I do, as it is easier, but there again it is easier because there's hardly any traffic on it. It is also perhaps overlooked that the new road through Gotmar and Pinaret was an extension of that which heads off to Formentor, another stretch of road that is used so little that its justification is rather hard to make. I stumbled across a site called skyscrapercity.com the other day. On this there is a forum with a two-year-old thread about unused and empty highways. The original poster (and it's in Castilian) described the road - that to Formentor - as the "most idiotic" of Mallorca's bypasses. There are also rather splendid photos of the unused road at sunset and of the Canadair sculpture on the Eroski roundabout, so here is the link - http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=561019.

Despite the fuss that the pedestrianisation caused, there was always some sense in pushing traffic away from the clogged-up frontline. Vehicles can move much more easily, and its use simply is not as inconvenient as some have sought to make out, unless of course you happen to have it in your backyard. The Gotmar radicals have rather had their thunder stolen by the reversal of the pedestrianisation decision, but it hasn't stopped them now protesting about trucks and coaches disturbing the leafy and expensive tranquility of the urbanisation. In part, I guess, their complaint is about the use of the road up to the Habitat roundabout, though this is not exactly a new phenomenon. But as a means of getting to Pollensa town it may still mean going out of the way, but it is a damn sight less dodgy than using the ludicrous old road from the bay into Pollensa, a road that is that narrow and lined with drops and walls that it is downright dangerous. And it is that word "old" that is the key. Much of the island's infrastructure and certainly the movement around its towns had to be upgraded. It is part of a sensibly working economy that there is a sound transport infrastructure. The economy may not always be sensible, as I noted yesterday, but new roads, trains and the rest had to be built and have to be considered. This may all deprive the island of a long-ago romanticism, but there again most people no longer use a horse and bloody cart. Despite the rather absurd invocation of an edict from Franco's time as the basis for building the Puerto Pollensa bypass and closing the frontline, there was no little foresight in that original plan; it should have been effected years ago.

However, there is a degree of "idiocy" if major road developments result in their being under-used. The lack of consultation and PR as to the new roads and also the pedestrianisation have doomed these roads to be the white elephants they currently are, as has the absence of a genuine plan for Puerto Pollensa that would have integrated different concerns and needs. They have cost money and yet the return on the investment is currently hugely questionable. The new roads are not about to go away, but there ought to be a pretty serious discussion as to why they were built without a definite and agreed-upon plan to make their existence viable.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Don't Give Up", Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiCRZLr9oRw). Today's title - this is pretty obscure; it's from a song by an American husband-and-wife outfit with a "family" name. It's also very, very good, as are they.

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