One of the main access routes to Park Güell has just opened a couple of sections of its new and very curious reversible escalators. The new infrastructure will surely unleash more than one somewhat comical situation this summer. The civic agents recently deployed to the site will be able to sort out the first confusion, but once the City Council removes them in August...
We are on Calle Baixada de la Glòria, on the very steep road that connects Avenida Vallcarca with Calle Mare de Déu del Coll and the Gaudi park visited by more than 4.4 million people every year.
And quite a few residents of the Vallcarca neighborhood are already wondering these days if they will be the ones who enjoy the new infrastructure the most or if perhaps it will be the thousands of tourists who pass through here every day who will take the most advantage of the brand new municipal service.
Here, on every landing in the Baixada de la Glòria, one finds a souvenir shop or a grocery store packed with cans of soft drinks and very cold bottles of water. The debate is not trivial at all. In these neighborhoods, improving the quality of life of residents can also contribute to further fueling the feared tourist overcrowding?
In any case, the renovation of these stairs that had been limping for some time is an essential work for the neighborhood. The Baixada de la Glòria could very well be called the Pujada de l'Infern.
Every time the now renovated old mechanical steps broke down, a very common circumstance in recent times, many people changed their plans. Not everyone can make it to the end of this hill, much less if they are carrying, for example, a couple of shopping bags.
In fact, the City Council, as it has been doing during the nearly two years that we have been working on it, will continue to pay the taxi fare to residents registered in the area until this June, when the central section, which remains to be brand new, comes into operation. , which includes Verdi and Sostres streets.
Yes, reversible. There will be the joke. Because in principle these stairs work in ascending mode, like the others did, but they can also do so in descending mode.
The deputy mayor for Urban Planning and also the councilor responsible for the Gràcia district, the socialist Laia Bonet, pointed out that the City Council was willing to install two stairs per section, but that they took up too much space. So they opted for the reversible model.
So if a user wants to go down them, they have to press the red button, wait for the mechanism to make the steps a complete revolution, not step on the shiny red line that they will see at their feet until it turns green, and in the meantime trust that until then no one will try to climb the stairs, because if the stairs detect that someone wants to climb they will not turn the matter around. In the end everything will depend on good understanding between those at both ends of the device.
These days the civic agents deployed are restoring order, telling the groups of tourists to wait a moment so that the neighbor in question can get off. But people are already wondering what the hell will happen when they are gone.
“Because we will learn how the new system works,” say the neighbors in a small group. “But tourists usually come only once each, so they will never learn how all this works. “They need civic agents to tell them what to do.” “You'll see how in the end the kids will laugh making trouble and traffic jams.”
Deputy Mayor Bonet details that the City Council's final investment will be around five million euros, because the City Council is also renovating the road, so that it has a single platform, renewing the sewer and also installing benches and planters, so that the street becomes less wild
“This work is included in the Comprehensive Maintenance Plan (PMI) that is part of the Endreça plan in order to renew a quarter of the city's escalators. “We will replace up to 24 units during this term.”
A few hours after the premiere, a neighbor posted a video on social networks where the information panel of the new infrastructure on Baixada de la Glòria street details that at least one of the new sections is already damaged.
