Free-D

So, the elections have passed us by and with his predicted increased mandate and the Socialists wringing their hands, the mayor must be like a kid in a sweetshop. Look, I know I may be accused of cynicism or sour grapes or a combination of both, but it strikes me that the number one priority for any mayor, but ours in particular, is to keep a certain section of the community busy – build build build. But what happens, I wonder, when there is nothing left to build, well I suppose you tear down what you built first and start the process all over again. After all, I can never imagine a mayor coming to office and saying, We like things just the way they are… let’s use the money to eradicate poverty and make sure everyone has a great standard of living….. Hardly a likely policy. We want progress! The latest scheme in Salamanca is the Tram. I can see it’s appeal: something inherently nostalgic but with green credentials. The answer to our traffic problems. Why, we would be like Amsterdam… only without the canals (don’t hold your breath, we might see them making a return to Salamanca’s urban planning policy some day soon). Then, there’s the small matter of 68 million euros – well probably 168 million by the time it’s build but what’s a few million between friends – you’ve got spend the money somewhere, and if you don’t spend it on urban planning and construction, some of your friends might be out of a job, which would not be a good idea if you want to win the next elections…

Roundabouts

Every morning I drive into work and come to a grinding somewhere midway between Navahonda and LeClerc. I never remember there being traffic jams there… until the urban planners decided to ease traffic congestion by introducing the Spanish to the intricacies of the roundabout. It’s a well known fact that has been the bane of British road planning: the proportion of cars on the road grows exponentially in direct relation to the amount of roads you build. In other words, building new roads invariably exasperates the problem. Money and property development is pushing us towards the outer fringes when there are hardly any buses let alone trams to take us into town.

But for those inside the city walls, a tram wouldn’t be such a bad idea but for the fact that the city is probably the only one of its kind where most of the population can reach the centre by foot and still arrive faster than by car, so it hardly seems worth the expense. There used to be a lot of resistance to leaving the car parked at home and in the old days we still drove from bar to bar on a Saturday night, which seems ridiculous now.  But if there’s one mode of transport that’s cheap and ideally suited to Salamanca - both its layout and its climate, it has to be the good old bike. There’s still some strange stigma attached to the two-wheeler. I can remember even when Indurain was flavour of the month, with his umpteenth Tour de France, when people in their droves went out and bought bicycles , it was only to hang them on their walls until a country outing at the weekend. Now if our new mayor really wanted to start a revolution, a network of cycle lanes around the whole of the city would certainly get my vote… but hey, the tram is so much more glamorous.