Much more than full at the meeting with the residents of Eixample called by the Generalitat and Barcelona City Council to explain the 58 months of works ahead that the district will undergo due to the connection works of the two railway networks in the metropolitan area. The room has become very small, so much so that on January 8, as if it were a pop star, there will be a second concert. The fullness, it could be said, was proportional to the sum of neighborhood concerns, the main one, the best known, being the impact on the Joan Miró park, where more than a hundred trees will be sacrificed to open a ‘scalextric’ of trucks that will take out of the subsoil the lands that the tunnel boring machine will devour. But those will not be the only works.
Within the limits of Eixample, the extension of L8, which in Gràcia will link at an interchange with the Vallès line, the works will be visible on the surface in the park, on the side of Gran Via, between Plaza de Espanya and Llançà , at the confluence of Consell de Cent with Urgell (the green axis has just been released, it will already be under construction), at the corner of Urgell with Rossselló, where there will be a new stop and, finally, in Urgell with Buenos Aires (other more stops ).
The concerns
The works will not be permanent for almost five years, but citizens will remember them on more than one occasion. At the information assembly, merchants who will suffer from the fences in front of their businesses have already expressed their concern. So have those who are concerned about the noise and pollution impact on the nearest schools. Those who fear vibrations from the passage of the tunnel boring machine have been promised that they will not even notice when it passes under their houses. It has also been promised that the departure of trucks (dozens each day) will be during working hours, that is, never at night.
No one, curiously, has asked about the impact on private traffic, which in certain times there will be. Urgell will lose two lanes when necessary and the road tunnel under Plaza de Espanya will be out of service at other times.
The works
Work will begin in January. Not the thickest ones. The diversion of underground services will eat up part of the calendar. The main witness that the works are progressing will be, perhaps, those mountains of earth up to five meters high that will pile up in one twentieth of Joan Miró’s park. Not in vain, the tunnel boring machine will travel four kilometers in length to open a passage 10 meters in diameter. As you pass, you will find the stations previously excavated from the surface. One day, all this will serve to make a big jump in the numbers of public transport users, or, put the other way around, it will be one less excuse to take the car. The neighbors don’t dispute that. They discuss how.
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A good part of the interventions during the question time have been to reproach the administration for having ruled out using the Montjuïc Fairgrounds, without trees and without neighbors, to carry out part of the works. The extra cost of 16 million euros of that option, plus the resounding opposition of those responsible for the Fira, has tipped the balance. To the neighbors it seemed like little excuse if one takes into account that the starting budget for the work is already 300 million euros.
The other districts
There is much talk that the Sagrada Família has been under construction for more than a century. The same could be said about Eixample. Always unfinished. The absolute fullness in the room reserved for the event, however, is something unusual, as if there were a collective awareness that this time the works are capital letters. In that sense, what has been said, and has gone unnoticed, by the main speaker on behalf of the Generalitat, the engineer Pedro Malavia (without accent on the ‘i’, which would be the repera) has been striking. From his point of view, the most profound impact on the surface may not be that of Joan Miró, but that of Gal·laPlacídia. At half past six in the afternoon on December 21, at the Gràcia district headquarters, the residents of that area are summoned to be informed of what awaits them. Half of Gal·laPlacídia must be opened as if it were an open-air quarry. A new large station must be built that, at the same level, allows people to get off one railway line and get on the other. Why not continue by train with the same carriage? Because the track widths are different. This meeting, like the one planned in Sants-Montjuïc on January 9, will be a test of citizen concern.