This is a picture of a bit of road. Yes, yes - prize winning stuff. This portrait of a piece of the King's highway is just below the Mojácar fuente and is taken on the first bend going towards Turre. It's a highly travelled road, with the one-way traffic through the pueblo returning on this section, plus the through traffic going both ways. It's serpentine, narrow... and is heavily used by pedestrians who live in the barrio down below, or who are walking to and from the cemetery, preferably dressed in black. There's never been a side-walk here, but there used to be a kind of narrow way for walkers which, with the nice new metal traffic-guards, has now been made redundant.
Previously, you would merely fall to safety if a bus was coming up behind you or, at a pinch, you could tangle yourself with a cyclist panting up the rise in his purple acrylic outfit and silly hat. Now, to avoid the increasingly speedy and dense traffic, a pedestrian needs to be able to - hop - leap over the balustrade before dropping several metres to safety.
It's not that easy, says the town hall. The road belongs to the diputacíon - the county council. They won't consider a side-walk here (until somebody presumably kicks up a stink). However, the town could incorporate this stretch of road (it's within existing city limits) and create a pavement, probably at the cost of some minor expropriation.
Or, how about this. They could put up a 30kms speed sign...
2 comments:
I'm preparing the next edition of our Spanish monthly newspaper, El Indálico. One of our regular contributors, Martín Navarrete (who writes a daily piece for the national ABC newspaper) has hit on the very same subject.
Solution is obvious, Lenox. Just drive everywhere! Surely walking is obsolete in the eyes of our brave urban planners?
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