The pioneering shuttle service launched by the Orihuela town hall Coastal Councillor in July at Playa Barranco Rubio has been hailed a great success by the town hall.
According to reports from the company in charge of providing the service, an average of 80 trips have been made per day, allowing approximately 15,000 people to enjoy easy access to the beach.
Of course, much like most town halls over inflate “people” by counting them every time they attend somewhere as a unique individual, that figure of 15,000 people is on the assumption every passenger only travels to the beach on one single occasion, never to return, or the actual figure of the number of people to have used the service would be considerably smaller, say if one person uses it every day for a week, for example, that is one person, not 7.
None the less, the Councillor for the Coast, Manuel Mestre, has highlighted the success of this initiative and has underlined the importance of offering alternatives that facilitate access to the beaches, especially during the high season: “The shuttle service at Barranco Rubio Beach in Orihuela Costa has allowed many people with mobility difficulties to overcome the stretch between the beach and the upper area of Campoamor. Given the success of the service, we will consider maintaining this service for next year in the high season.”
If you have only just heard about the service and we have tempted you to try it, the bad news is the shuttle ended on August 13, just before the peak of the season, although it has been in operation for a month, four hours a day, using a seven-seater minivan to transport users.
Given the figures quoted though, we must join in with the applauds of the success, as if the service operated for 30 days, 80 trips per day, carrying 7 people, 30x80x7=16,800, and so in light of the figures provided, it looks like every single one of those 80 trips per day, or 20 per hour, one every 3 minutes, saw the vehicle full.
Disclaimer: It is not clear if they class a “trip” as one direction or both, and so the figures would have to be adjusted accordingly, as we would not want to mislead anyone with fake claims.
If you are a money-orientated sort of person, then you will want to know that the service cost 24,000 euro. That is 1,60 per person carried. Not too bad, on the face of it, although when we consider that is 800 euro per day, with 80 trips, that is 10 euro per trip. To put that into context, according to the prices given by the regulated taxi service in Orihuela, each trip costs about the same as going from the Orihuela Costa to Bigastro, or Los tres puentes, and more than Hurchillo, and using an online taxi rate calculator, the equivalent of a 6 kilometre journey, paying the initial fee, the distance, and the time, and so, booking a new taxi every six kilometres would take you 480 kilometres in total per day, or easily to Madrid, and much further if you remove the initial fee you have to pay for each taxi journey.
Using the same taxi fare calculator, if we assume the distance is 3 kilometres, which it is not, the price would be 5,80 euro. So, 80 trips per day is 464 euro, and over 30 days 13,920 euro. Perhaps using local taxis would have been much cheaper and would have helped those individual local workers more.
