Marbella traffic grinds to a halt
Access to the centre of Marbella from the arch to the Avenida Severo Ochoa was transformed last Monday into a mousetrap from which there was no escape without a great deal of patience, for it took nearly 40 minutes of stop-start driving to traverse the space between the Fuente de los Tres Barcos roundabout and the Avenida Ricardo Soriano. The reason: re-surfacing work that was being undertaken at rush hour at the junction of Severo Ochoa with the Avenida Nabeul, resulting in one of the lanes being closed.
At midday, the queues of vehicles stretched back as far as the aforementioned roundabout, much to the surprise of drivers who assumed that an accident was the reason behind the slow traffic.
The motive behind the hold up in traffic was not only due to the re-surfacing work, but also the fact that possible alternative routes were closed for other work or cleaning.
The situation was not helped by the presence of a truck from the lighting company Ximénez which began to put up the poles and cables for the Christmas lights along Severo Ochoa, Ramón y Cajal and Ricardo Soriano, obstructing one of the lanes of traffic.
“Nobody can put up with this, it is not logical to do this type of work in the middle of rush hour,” said Carla Demetrio on her way to work and stuck in the heart of the traffic jam. Ana Lampre, who spent an 45 minutes longer than normal getting to the car park in Avenida del Mar, was also not happy: “I understand that work has to be done if we want the town to look good, but what is not normal is closing various streets and then closing off lanes on top of that.”source surinenglish