Friday, July 14, 2006
The Story of the Linx and the M-501
We all know that Spain is a Building Site. Everywhere you look there are cranes blocking the sky-line with their attendant lorries hurtling past rising plumes of dust all around them on their way to dump soil somewhere else. I used to have a rather nice view from my house in a little village of 2000 souls but all I can currently see are cranes, latest count 7, of various colours and sizes.
It was only five short years ago that I bought a house which I thought was in the country but it seems I was mistaken. What was country is rapidly becoming a town before my very eyes. Of course, things do change and as someone who doesn't come from these parts I should be prepared to accept these changes which some people may see as for the good of the majority but the thing that annoys me must of all is the bending of facts that politicians use to justify these changes, sorry, improvements.
I've recently discovered the reason for all this building activity in this quiet neck of the woods. The mad panic to convert empty fields into a vast assortment of what some people laughingly regard as housing is obviously due to the widening of the M-501, the "Carretera de los pantanos", that connects us to Madrid, into a two-lane Autovia. Wider roads, of course, mean faster commuting time and people buying cheaper housing and living further afield instead of in the capital. A few days ago Esperanza Aquirre, president of the Autonomous Region of Madrid, signed the go-ahead after 10 years of apparent controversy, despite calls from environmentalists to stop the work due to damage to the wildlife.
Obviously in desperation, environmentalists submitted, if that's the right word, droppings claimed to be from the rare Iberian Linx ( as reported in elmundo earlier in the year) found in the area of the work. This served to halt the final decision for a while but the juggernaut could not be stopped for long. The newspaper ABC covered the final news on 8th July with the story that the droppings had been identified by the "Estacion Biologica de Donana" as belonging to the "common cat".
The dispute has also revolved around the calculation of traffic volumes. Wild-spain has a short article relating to the damage to the environment giving a figure of 5000 vehicles per day rising to nearly 10000 at the weekend. This seems to me perfectly reasonable ( provided the calculation covers both directions in the total) as the road is often empty except when the "weekenders" arrive. Of course, the planners give a rather different figure - apparently 15000 vehicles use the road, daily, ( as quoted in ABC 8/7/06 ) which anyone with knowledge of the road will realise is utter nonsense. The data is important because anything over the magic number of 10000 will automatically mean the justification of an autovia.
How this data has been arrived at would be of interest. There does not exist, and never has, any fixed across-road cable to electronically measure traffic volumes - curiously one has recently been installed across the road just before the village of Santa Maria del Tietar, at the very edge of the Community of Madrid just as it enters Castilla-Leon. Neither have any cheap white-coated students with their notebooks and mechanical counters ever been in evidence. Sounds like more data in the sky-with-diamonds.
In fact, if one bothers to work it out 10000 cars a day ( and I assume that the calculation means in both directions, eg To Madrid 5000 vehicles per day ) works out to 1 car every 10 seconds during the day-time, say 0800-2200 with 1 car every 5 minutes during the night. Of course, these are only estimates based on my own usage of the road. If anyone wants me to sit out there with a counter I will be glad to do so.
To Madrid
2200-0800 = 600 minutes: 1 vehicle every 5 minutes = total of 120 vehicles
0800-2200 = 840 minutes: 5.5 vehicles every minute ( ie 1 vehicle every approx. 10 seconds) = total of 4620
Grand Total Direction To Madrid = 4740 vehicles
Quite obviously, 1 vehicle every 10 seconds in both directions would translate into a endless convoy of vehicles for 14 hours of the day and surprisingly would probably convert into a mayhem as people tried to overtake. If anyone cares to check the road, there is NO endless convoy in one direction, let alone in both directions.
To add a further macabre twist, accident figures have also been trawled out. Nothing like justifying the making of money by arguing that the savings of lives will result. (That somehow has a international ring to it ). Of course, these figures never quite agree. Elpais reported in July of last year that under the previous head of the community the plan was shelved, despite accident figures of 9 killed in 2003, 5 killed in 2004 while ABC quote 15 deaths in the last 3 years - 6 deaths from 56 accidents in 2005 alone. As 6 + 9 + 5 = 20, its obvious that even the papers can't agreed how many people have died on this road. ecologistasenaccion perhaps gets to the crux of the matter when it complains of the manipulation of accident data by the Community to justify the road widening. The example given is of an accident 500 metres from the M-501 being included in the accident figures for the M-501.
Currently the road is relatively empty ( except for the lorries moving soil around ) but of course it won't stay empty for long. There's money to be made and the developers have moved in. Forget the lack of infrastructure; that will have to wait and of course lack of investment in improving the water supply is the the main problem. But a lot of the impact will be felt in Castilla-Leon, so why should the president of Madrid community worry about it?
Of course, no-where in any article is the cost of the road-widing given or who is going to pay for it. At a time when the city of Madrid itself is being pulled apart in every direction, with road and metro schemes that are rumoured to be taking the next 30 years to pay off - and thats only the estimate - its seems a little absurb to be widening a little road in the country.
It was only five short years ago that I bought a house which I thought was in the country but it seems I was mistaken. What was country is rapidly becoming a town before my very eyes. Of course, things do change and as someone who doesn't come from these parts I should be prepared to accept these changes which some people may see as for the good of the majority but the thing that annoys me must of all is the bending of facts that politicians use to justify these changes, sorry, improvements.
I've recently discovered the reason for all this building activity in this quiet neck of the woods. The mad panic to convert empty fields into a vast assortment of what some people laughingly regard as housing is obviously due to the widening of the M-501, the "Carretera de los pantanos", that connects us to Madrid, into a two-lane Autovia. Wider roads, of course, mean faster commuting time and people buying cheaper housing and living further afield instead of in the capital. A few days ago Esperanza Aquirre, president of the Autonomous Region of Madrid, signed the go-ahead after 10 years of apparent controversy, despite calls from environmentalists to stop the work due to damage to the wildlife.
Obviously in desperation, environmentalists submitted, if that's the right word, droppings claimed to be from the rare Iberian Linx ( as reported in elmundo earlier in the year) found in the area of the work. This served to halt the final decision for a while but the juggernaut could not be stopped for long. The newspaper ABC covered the final news on 8th July with the story that the droppings had been identified by the "Estacion Biologica de Donana" as belonging to the "common cat".
The dispute has also revolved around the calculation of traffic volumes. Wild-spain has a short article relating to the damage to the environment giving a figure of 5000 vehicles per day rising to nearly 10000 at the weekend. This seems to me perfectly reasonable ( provided the calculation covers both directions in the total) as the road is often empty except when the "weekenders" arrive. Of course, the planners give a rather different figure - apparently 15000 vehicles use the road, daily, ( as quoted in ABC 8/7/06 ) which anyone with knowledge of the road will realise is utter nonsense. The data is important because anything over the magic number of 10000 will automatically mean the justification of an autovia.
How this data has been arrived at would be of interest. There does not exist, and never has, any fixed across-road cable to electronically measure traffic volumes - curiously one has recently been installed across the road just before the village of Santa Maria del Tietar, at the very edge of the Community of Madrid just as it enters Castilla-Leon. Neither have any cheap white-coated students with their notebooks and mechanical counters ever been in evidence. Sounds like more data in the sky-with-diamonds.
In fact, if one bothers to work it out 10000 cars a day ( and I assume that the calculation means in both directions, eg To Madrid 5000 vehicles per day ) works out to 1 car every 10 seconds during the day-time, say 0800-2200 with 1 car every 5 minutes during the night. Of course, these are only estimates based on my own usage of the road. If anyone wants me to sit out there with a counter I will be glad to do so.
To Madrid
2200-0800 = 600 minutes: 1 vehicle every 5 minutes = total of 120 vehicles
0800-2200 = 840 minutes: 5.5 vehicles every minute ( ie 1 vehicle every approx. 10 seconds) = total of 4620
Grand Total Direction To Madrid = 4740 vehicles
Quite obviously, 1 vehicle every 10 seconds in both directions would translate into a endless convoy of vehicles for 14 hours of the day and surprisingly would probably convert into a mayhem as people tried to overtake. If anyone cares to check the road, there is NO endless convoy in one direction, let alone in both directions.
To add a further macabre twist, accident figures have also been trawled out. Nothing like justifying the making of money by arguing that the savings of lives will result. (That somehow has a international ring to it ). Of course, these figures never quite agree. Elpais reported in July of last year that under the previous head of the community the plan was shelved, despite accident figures of 9 killed in 2003, 5 killed in 2004 while ABC quote 15 deaths in the last 3 years - 6 deaths from 56 accidents in 2005 alone. As 6 + 9 + 5 = 20, its obvious that even the papers can't agreed how many people have died on this road. ecologistasenaccion perhaps gets to the crux of the matter when it complains of the manipulation of accident data by the Community to justify the road widening. The example given is of an accident 500 metres from the M-501 being included in the accident figures for the M-501.
Currently the road is relatively empty ( except for the lorries moving soil around ) but of course it won't stay empty for long. There's money to be made and the developers have moved in. Forget the lack of infrastructure; that will have to wait and of course lack of investment in improving the water supply is the the main problem. But a lot of the impact will be felt in Castilla-Leon, so why should the president of Madrid community worry about it?
Of course, no-where in any article is the cost of the road-widing given or who is going to pay for it. At a time when the city of Madrid itself is being pulled apart in every direction, with road and metro schemes that are rumoured to be taking the next 30 years to pay off - and thats only the estimate - its seems a little absurb to be widening a little road in the country.
// posted by daniel @ 9:30 am 
