Thursday, January 09, 2014

That didn’t last long

The reopening of the CV-95 into Orihuela lasted for one month. The route is now closed again and will remain closed until October.

Shopkeepers in Orihuela have suffered a serious decline in business since the road was closed. They say that, rather than take an alternative route into the city, shoppers have opted to go elsewhere. 

Building the line for the high speed train between Alicante and Murcia has caused enormous problems for Orihuela with no benefit whatsoever because, as far as I can gather, the train will not stop in the city.

In fact most people I have spoke to cannot see the point in having a high speed link between the two cities given the distance between them. The current lime between Alicante and Murcia by train is about 1 hour 20 minutes, how much saving will the high speed train make on that?

The original plan was to create a Mediterranean corridor which would stretch from the French border to Portugal. The next section would take the train from Murcia to Cartagena and then onwards to Almeria. Although some work has been done on the section to Almeria, work stopped awhile ago and there are no indications of when it might resume.  On that basis we cannot pin too many hopes on the link between Murcia and Cartagena being started anytime soon.

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