AN anti-dual carriageway lobby, Autovía NO will hold a massed demonstration on Saturday, 29 November, to protest against regional government proposals to build a highway between Inca and Manacor. The starting point will be the Plaza des fossar in Sineu as of 5pm. Miquel Gelabert, Joana Maria Galmés and Carlos Serrano, representing the organisation, reported yesterday that during the demonstration, a proclamation will be read out denouncing the planned dual carriageway, and forecasting the potential havoc it could wreak. elabert confirmed that although the occasion will principally be one of protest, festive activity in the form of song and dance will also be marking the event. Laid out for public viewing will be documentation showing details of the road already in existence between Inca and Manacor, as well as the dual carriageway proposals which are awaiting formal approval. Explanation will be given of the possible damaging effects the proposed new highway could inflict. Autovía NO will give information about the timetables of the trains running to Sineu. A group of protest supporters will march out of Costitx on foot to Sineu. According to Galmés, now is the moment to mobilise action against the dual carriageway plans because the Council of Majorca are scheduled to approve the project on 1 December. He asserted that the lobby had presented a list of around 2'500 signatures, condemning the highway plans, to the Council of Majorca, to which no reply had been received. The forecast has been made on likely attendance figures for 29 November.
END TO THE HIGHWAY OF DEATH
ROAD widening plans that the Council of Majorca are setting in motion along the Palma to Manacor highway, will affect some 500 adjacent farm and country estate owners. Antoni Pascual, Public Works councillor was speaking yesterday at a project presentation.
The plan proposes the construction of doubling the road lanes on the existing C-715, which will mean an investment of 90 million euros. The completed scheme will allow for all the heavy traffic that uses the roadway, between 20'000 and 25'000 vehicles on a daily basis to be safely absorbed, specified the councillor. Another objective of this major project is to reduce the number of accidents that occur regularly on this so-called Highway of Death. We will aim to make the route as safe as possible he insisted. Pascual pointed out that the road-widening project was a commitment and star agenda item of the previous Socialist government, which due to a variety of circumstances, were unable to get it started. For our new government, the route remains the same, as does the cost, and it will affect the same landowners, he specified. The construction work will be carried out over a distance of 38 kilometres and will be divided up into two phases. The first will be financed by central government and will include the stretch running between Palma as far as Montuïri, through Algaïda. The second phase will commence at Montuïri and will extend right into Manacor. Five roundabouts and three link roads have been mapped along the course of the widened route, together with access roads to the farms and estates that border the highway. The leader of the Council of Majorca, Maria Antonia Munar, asserted that the party of which she is president, Union Majorca, had made it clear at the start of the new government's term of office that the road-widening project was a must in terms of solving the island's infrastructure problems. Pascual made reference to 22'300 claims collected from the anti-dual carriageway lobby which is expecting to stage a massive demonstration against the planned Inca to Manacor dual carriageway in a little over a week's time.
The lobby's negative rhetoric is misplaced, claimed the councillor. We will, however study the individual complaints, and if possible, reply to each of them.