The Arrecife City Council plans to "raise the price of the ordinary bus ticket by twenty cents", which will go from costing 1.20 euros to 1.40 euros. This modification of the rate will be taken to the Plenary "in February and would be applied in March". In addition, new bonuses will be proposed for the different passes. Thus, according to the Councilor for Mobility, Inodelvia Torres, "minors under 30 years of age will be subsidized for the first time, since until now they had no reduction; companions of people with disabilities; and the age of the group of older people" who can benefit from discounts will be lowered. The general pass would remain unchanged.
Torres has pointed out that with these measures, the increase "will only affect those people who use the bus occasionally" and that the objective is "that anyone who really uses public transport has the right to benefit from these bonuses". These modifications to the rates will be included "in the fiscal ordinance".
At the same time, work is being done on incorporating new lines into the bus service. "We are in a period of transition", the councilor said on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero, detailing that a "study was commissioned to experts in mobility at the national level". Among the lines that will be added is the one that passes through Blas Cabrera street, "once the works that are being carried out are finished".
"Agreement with intercity buses"
"We cannot reach all the points we would like with the staff and resources we have", the councilor pointed out, insisting in this sense that "the existing staff cannot be expanded". For that reason, what they will do is reorganize the lines. "We have no choice but to eliminate and have common sense about which are the stops that are relatively close to all the points in the neighborhood", she clarified. For example, at the time "line 4 was eliminated, but in this case the stops are covered by line 3".
In addition, they are analyzing the possibility of "reaching an agreement so that the intercity buses are the ones that pass through the Vía Medular and that in the section of El Cable and the Altavista industrial estate they are the ones that pass through there". In this way, more "agility" could be given and very long journeys could be avoided. "In the Mobility Conference, a person said that there were buses that took you on a tour of the entire city", Torres recalls.
The shuttle bus will remain free "for at least a year"
On the other hand, the City Council has decided to "extend, for at least one more year", the free shuttle bus that runs along the Avenida Marítima since last Christmas. "To be effective it has to be, at least initially, free", argued the Councilor for Mobility. In fact, she intends that this aspect "be included in the ordinance as well".
Regarding the reception that this service is having, from January 5 to 25 it has been used by a total of 1,765 travelers, according to data provided by the City Council. The use has varied depending on the days. Thus, for example, the 'peaks' of use were reached on the 25th and 18th, with 261 and 244 travelers respectively. At the opposite extreme, the day with the least movement was January 9, when only 38 people got on the shuttle. This service operates from Monday to Saturday.
Inodelvia Torres has stressed that there is a "report from the income department that supports that this shuttle is free". In this way, she wanted to make clear the "legality" of this measure, explaining that "there are many people who doubt" it.
The objective of this shuttle, which was launched during Christmas, is to "promote the city's commerce, have the possibility that people leave their vehicle and be able to use it to move around Avenida".
