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The new year has begun with talk of major projects intended not only to help create employment in the midst of the economic crisis but to take Tenerife's transport network a step further.  

The star is the new train projects to connect the capital, Santa Cruz, with both the south and north of the island. The idea is ambitious and possibly unnecessary. It also has environmentalists divided. On the one hand a railway network inevitably tears up more of the little remaining low land countryside. On the other, electric trains instead of polluting diesel road vehicles cannot be frowned upon. But the train to the north has already run into trouble for two basic reasons. One of those reasons is understandable. The planned line will mean ex-propriating hundreds of properties, forcing people to lose their homes for the sake of someone's idea of progress in an over-populated island. The other main reason revolves around the usual ritual of politicians wanting their share of the cake first and then having to protect their towns from what could become very unpopular developments. Having seen the improvised route the railways will take, various Nationalist Mayors, like those in La Victoria, want their own towns to have important railway terminals. At the same time, several, like the Mayor in Santa Úrsula are now pushing for the line to go underground as it passes through their district, having realised that the current route would mean he would have to tell 200 families to find themselves another home.

Appears in: Fortnightly edition 393 Tenerife News