MALLORCA TODAY - Major new road works in Palma

On Monday, work will start on a project that will cost over 6 million euros to improve traffic circulation from the Via Cintura at the exit for Manacor in Palma. This exit, with its roundabout, in the vicinity of the IKEA store and the Llevant industrial estate, is a real bottleneck that causes lengthy and regular jams. The work will not cause any immediate diversion of traffic, but this will occur later on.

Damned If You Do ... : Road works

"Damned if you do and damned if you don't." An expression widely attributed to Bart Simpson, whose familial association seems apt if you side with the critics of the Homer Simpson approach to road works and traffic systems in Mallorca. As Homer once said: "If they think I'm going to stop at that stop sign, they're sadly mistaken".

Homer, some might suggest, appears to be in control of re-modelling the main road through Can Picafort. How to build a road with no actual road. But he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. It wasn't in fact Bart who first coined the expression. It was apparently an American preacher by the name of Lorenzo Dow. There are a fair number of Lorenzos knocking around in Can Pic, damning this and damning that, the main road in particular. "Dow!", or is it "Doh!"? exclaim the Lorenzos in exasperation.

This main road, the Carretera Artà, has long been a joy of an unstable surface, crossings designed to have in mind the propelling of inattentive tourist pedestrians into orbit, and insane side roads some of which you can enter or exit, some of which you can't. Much like other main roads on the island therefore. Far from unreasonably, the highways department wants to improve it. Something not meeting with everyone's approval.

The road works are having a negative impact on bars and other businesses. They are making difficult the movement of residents. Thus go the criticisms. They do rather neglect the fact that building what in effect is a whole new road system, and one that is necessary, does require a bit of disruption, even if it does also mean that you can't quite figure out how you are meant to navigate what is currently the non-road.

Why the fuss? It's not as though as any drivers used to travelling along the whole stretch of road between Puerto Alcúdia and Can Pic these past few years won't have already experienced exactly the same issues since the plan to re-model the whole stretch was started back in 2006. The fuss smacks of criticising anything that can be criticised. The fussers are probably the same ones who have been demanding improvements. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Part of the reason for the fuss is the timing. Just as there is a start to the official tourism season (1 May), so also there is a start to the let's-snarl-everything-up-by-doing-some-building-work season. Usually the first of February. Why so late, enquire the fussers. Budgets normally. Or maybe the chaps just prefer to hang around drinking beers, in a Homer style, until the Mr. Burns's from highways appear.

What Can Pic will end up with is a system like that which has come into being in Alcúdia and Playa de Muro. Apart from a better road surface, this will mean more roundabouts. Part of the justification for the re-modelling of the main road has been improved traffic circulation. It's spin of course, because circulation in summer is as bad as it ever was, but at least pedestrians run less risk of being mown down than previously. Well, this is the theory behind all the crossing-points. The practice is rather different, tourists traversing the road wherever is convenient, lightly-held lilos in hand which are caught on sudden gusts and plant themselves across windscreens. But at least you can't blame the highways people for trying. Except if you're in Can Picafort and you're a Lorenzo.

The new roundabouts will have the added advantage of giving Trafico greater work opportunities. Currently, they have limited numbers of roundabouts in Can Pic at which to stand about looking ominous or sheltering under trees when it gets too hot. Once the new road is finished, they'll be spoilt for choice.

And the finished road will add to the general appearance of Can Pic, just as the re-developed carretera did to Playa de Muro. When its stretch was completed in May 2009, various dignitaries turned up and one, Francina Armengol, the president of the Council of Mallorca, announced that it (the road) was "magnificent and emblematic". Emblematic of what exactly? Tarmac?

Ah, but what we all failed to appreciate was that this was part of a different strand of tourism. Road tourism. Come to Mallorca and admire our roads. Marvel at how level they are (until a good deluge of rain or two breaks them up again). See how many crossing-points you can ignore. Be inspired by the white lines and markings that fade rapidly and have to be repainted each year (normally in June just to aid more the traffic circulation). Yes, this is it. Road tourism, a whole new type of tourism promotion. Brought to you by Homer Simpson.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Laid Out For All To See

Road works. Roads work. When there are road works, do roads work? On and off, according to the stop and go. There is a view that all public work is compressed into the weeks before the season starts. This is a view based on the idea that to do such work earlier would impress too few people; because there are too few people around. So, this view continues, do it all in March and April and there will be folk about who can admire the effort being made. This is probably garbage, but not without some substance. Why, for example, is the road in Playa de Muro being laid now? Again. Over the bridge. How often does one stretch of road need to be laid and then relaid. Several times, it would seem.

As the season hoves into view, traffic gets heavier, ever more cyclists are veering all over the place, foot-based tourists are wandering in the middle of the road, dogs and cats get in on the act and, to cap it all, there are ruddy great tarmac-laying machines massively lumbering along the local roads. This is not a criticism of road works per se; indeed, I am all in favour. Just - why do they happen now? And please don't give me the road-laying-needs-heat argument, because I don't buy it, especially given that some road laying does occur in colder winter weather. I have long thought that Mallorca is inherently non-productive in just about everything it does, so add in road works and all the rest and the resultant delays and that non-productivity is increased severalfold.

Anyway, moan over. As for all those cyclists, of which there are seemingly thousands at the moment, where do they go? I am back in that territory widely and incorrectly known as cyclists contribute nothing to the local bars and restaurants and only buy bananas, Ritter Sport and water from the nearest Eroski. This is simply not so. I have mentioned this before, but it is worth repeating. Boy, Restaurant Boy, Playa de Muro, half past five in the afternoon. Packed. Jam-packed. How many? 60? 70? 80? Nearly all cyclists. Drinking, mainly large glasses of Weizen, and eating. Eating the great lumps of meat that Boy serves up. (And that is great as in size and quality.) The reason why there are so many? The restaurant works closely with Max Hürzeler. I've said this all before, but its repetition is needed to counter this utterly fallacious view of cycling tourists. They don't spend. You'd better believe that they do.


Time share, sorry holiday club, touts. Anyone know exactly what's happening? This was a big story last year, with complaints posted to me as well as to "The Bulletin". The office that was their base has been for rent, and there is no sign - as yet - of our favourite street vendors.


Someone asked something surprising of me yesterday. Actually, the someone was Marshall at the karts in Bellevue. Had I changed my look? That was the question. I confess to having been taken aback, not that I was affronted, just that I had never considered that I had a look. Anyway, this is by way of warning you that whatever this look might be will be on display in the island's leading daily this Friday. Long have I eschewed revealing the true me via this blog - no vanity here - only for "The Bulletin" to come along and break the visual silence.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - "Radio", The Corrs (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS8w0hNpJ2w). Today's title - this comes from a song by the group whose name came from William Burroughs.

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)

Should I Stay Or Should I Go?

At times of recession, it is reassuring to know that certain sectors of employment appear to be not just buoyant but are also enjoying some growth. I read somewhere that Mallorca could offer the world its expertise in tourism and thus make this an export business. That sounds too much like hard work for most Mallorcans. Far better that they stick to something that they are just as expert at but which requires virtually no effort. I am thinking of the current growth in ... road works' stop-and-go-sign men. Of course, the number of stop-and-go-sign men is directly proportional to the number of road works, and I am glad to say that, despite economic woes, the normal Mallorcan winter of holes, mechanical diggers and tarmac is unaffected, thus giving rise to the employment of the stop-and-go-sign men. I am wondering, though - how does one become a stop-and-go-sign man? Is there a course? A City and Guilds or something? A mite tedious I will grant you, but so long as the weather's reasonable or you can keep yourself well wrapped up, it seems like a pretty decent way of spending a winter. Here comes a car, I know, let's get the stop sign out and then wait for half and hour and see what sort of a queue can form.

Not too far from me, one can admire the art, or is it science, of the stop-and-go-sign man. Near to the entrance to the reception to Albufera, they are building a roundabout; yet another roundabout. For an island that, until fairly recently, could boast but one roundabout (in Palma), there has been a roundabout annexation of lebensraum proportions. Has the environmental group GOB ever complained about the number of roundabouts? Not as far as I am aware, and yet the landscape has been transformed by them. The Carretera Artà that runs through Puerto Alcúdia and Playa de Muro is now a circle of roundabouts - largish ones, smallish ones, ones with sculptures on, ones that are only painted onto the surface of the road and are therefore ignored. All manner of roundabout existence is to be found on this road, and yet more appear. A question is whether there is to also be an increase in the employment of Trafico cops. The more roundabouts there are, the more police they need to stand by them.


And another form of employment that's bearing up under the strain of economic hard times is that of the winter beach cleaning corps. My ancient Mallorcan neighbours may consider the beach back of us "un desastre" (as I explained the other day), but it has since been cleared of much of its rubbish - all part of the 600,000 euros that is spent on keeping the beaches of Mallorca and the Balearics clean (or reasonably clean) over the winter months. This beach cleaning is not something as crude as a whacking great bulldozer scooping up sand, bamboo and seaweed. No. They treat the beaches more delicately. I was watching the chaps the other day. They were using what was the equivalent of a rake. I'm not kidding. A rake. The beach between Alcúdia and Can Picafort stretches for what - ten, eleven kilometres? And they're using a rake. No bloody wonder it costs 600 grand.


Meanwhile ... You might think that the heavy snows in the UK offer an excuse to utilities not working correctly, and you would - up to a point - be correct. There is no excuse here. Calm weather, nothing unusual. Seven in the evening. No water. This is not unusual. And no, this is not a case of oh this is Spain. What this is, is crap. This is incompetent. And of course, as it is after two in the afternoon, there is no-one manning the phones at the water company, which is FUSOSA. Well, make a note. This is the emergency mobile, which is only obtainable an answer machine at one of the main numbers. You will need it if you live in Playa de Muro - 676 454 423. Muppets.


QUIZ
Yesterday's title - The Who (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyv_65o1HDY). Today - from The Who to ...?

(PLEASE REPLY TO andrew@thealcudiaguide.com AND NOT VIA THE COMMENTS THINGY HERE.)