Not Going Underground

To great fanfare the Palma metro system opened almost a year ago. It opened and then it, if not promptly but after a period of a few months, closed. And it is still closed. When a local paper did a vox pop among the local populace, one comment was that it made the island look as if it was Third World. This may be a bit extreme, but it is an utter shambles, and an expensive one at that.

In August last year, there were the first heavy rains of the summer. The metro flooded. The following month, there were more rains. The metro flooded. This time it was closed indefinitely. The hope had been to re-open it in April, but this is looking increasingly unlikely. The initial investigations after the summer floods found various design flaws, which came as no surprise. Build something underground, something that is close to the sea with the inevitable issue of water table that this brings, and one might have thought that the right design and pumping system would have been a pre-requisite. Not so, it would seem. It is not as if Majorca does not get rain, and rain in great torrents. One finding of the investigations was that the specification of the pipes was changed from ones that might just have coped better with preventing inundation.

Now it would appear that there are question marks over other aspects of the metro, such as some of the electrics. They are, in effect, having to rip it all up and start again. Lord alone knows how much this is costing.

Laughable though it all is, there are the serious matters of disruption, money and an almost total absence of responsibility. The current political establishment blames the previous one of having rushed the opening before the local elections in May last year.

Third World, shambles, however you want to describe it, the reputation of Palma and the island has taken a knock. What should be a civil engineering achievement has become a farce. The Jam once sang about going underground. Not at the moment you won't.

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