Stuck in a momentous traffic jam in the centre of Palma the other day en route to the foreigners’ office to get my new TIE resident card, the taxi driver was fuming. To try and ease the pressure building up in the cab I pointed out that I couldn’t see any hire cars - I should have kept my trap shut.
Having breached the subject previously with taxi drivers I strapped in for what I thought was coming but no. He was at great pains to point out that it is not tourists in hire cars, he blamed it on wealthy residents and the local “snobbish” mentality. He claimed that most of the people we were stuck behind came from families who used to travel in horse and carts, not the flash cars paid for by the benefits of tourism.
He went on, and I know this from my own experience, Palma’s Via Cintura ring road is gridlocked every morning and evening rush hour on every working day of the year and, as he stressed, they are not tourists driving to and from work, they are local residents.
He explained to me that unless the general mindset of driving is altered with more schemes such as car sharing, for example, not to mention more people using public transport, Mallorca’s traffic problems will never be solved. “It’s not a matter of restricting vehicles coming, it’s tackling car owners already on the island and their attitudes,” he said.