Congress Agrees to Warnings of Santa Pola Black Spots

Thanks to lobbying by the Ciudadanos political group, the government has agreed to plans to eliminate infamous black spots on N-332 at Santa Pola.

National spokesperson for the group, Pepe Cano, presented the plans to the Commission on Road Safety and Sustainable Mobility to carry out works to improve road safety on the N-332 road in the Santa Pola area, after a number of incidents over recent years.

Pepe Cano confirmed that the plan for the improvements “has been supported by all groups, except the PP”, but warned that, “these projects have been pending implementation since 2006, twelve years already. Neither the PSOE nor the PP have done anything, one more example, very typical of bipartisanship, of not executing budgets although what is at stake is security.”

The local coordinator in Santa Pola, José Antonio Aibar, justified the urgency of intervening in this way, in which 4 fatalities have been registered since 2016, “the last one a 44-year-old biker last February and in 2016 a 17-year-old boy who was hit by a truck due to the lack of hard shoulder,” he reported. Specifically, at kilometre 88 of the N-332 there have been 24 incidents since 2009, three of which have taken place in the last nine months “without the competent authorities having reacted correctly despite the danger of that point”.

Cano has specified that the proposal includes the installation of vertical signage in the sections leading to kilometre 88 of the N-332 and extend it to the rest of the black points of the national roads in order to inform drivers to exercise caution in these areas. They also requested the immediate carrying out of conservation and maintenance works on the N-332 as it passes through Santa Pola in places such as the acceleration lane of Gran Alacant towards Alicante, the incorporation of Gran Alacant to Santa Pola and the underground passage of the entrance to Santa Pola, in order to improve road safety. “From Cs we are satisfied to have obtained a majority support. Now we hope that these necessary interventions will not be delayed anymore,” the deputy pointed out.

José Antonio Aibar also celebrated the great support obtained by the proposal and added that “something that draws much attention is that the PP does not support the improvement of the N-332, although it announced in 2017 that it would include the budgets of 2018 a plan to make improvements to the black spots, which finally has not happened”.