The Metro Saga

Almost a year after it was closed, the Palma metro is set to re-open on Monday. Let's pray there isn't a huge storm on Tuesday, or maybe we should pray that there is in order to test that the subways are indeed no longer liable to flooding. The whole fiasco has resulted in an over-run on budget, to the tune of some 50%, albeit that repair costs account for a mere - a mere - 28 million euros, which presumably takes no account of lost revenue. The net is now being cast to try and trawl in those responsible in a probably vain attempt at recouping the repair costs.

The metro should have been a prestige development; it may still be. Some have sought to question the wisdom of there being a metro at all, but anyone who knows about the traffic in Palma will say that it is worth it. Moreover, it is a further stage in creating what might eventually be something of an integrated public transport system. The planned rail extension to Alcúdia combined with a metro in the capital would, for example, obviate the need for many car journeys, which can't be a bad thing. And public transport is cheap, perhaps too cheap. A journey on the metro will be less than a euro. Not normally one to take buses, I was staggered, when I did, to find that the bus between Alcúdia and Palma cost under five euros.

When the metro was closed indefinitely last September, there was a vox pop in one of the papers to gauge reaction. "Makes us seem Third World," was one such. Perhaps so, but public works in other places and other countries are not always things of total efficiency within budget - in Britain for instance. However, a metro system in a city by the sea with its natural underground water table and one prone to massive deluges of rain was always going to be a project that required expertise and a watertight (as it were) specification. The fact that, apparently, some of that spec was changed - the diameter of tubing, for example, was reduced, or so it was reported - may well have contributed to the problems caused by inundations and the inability of whatever pumping systems were in place to cope with them.

But what, I wonder, does it all say about the island's construction industry, the one that is so important to the local economy? Maybe it says very little, but seven temporary companies having been formed from 18 companies in order to carry out the project smacks of too many jobs for the boys. The now Minister of Transport has acknowledged this, though not in quite these words. Looking to extract some reparations from individuals is understandable if only as a form of compensation for lost prestige; the structuring of the project in the first place might be a wiser subject for investigation and for learning lessons rather than protracted court proceedings and lawyer job opportunities.

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