In the latest feature from our ‘At What Cost’ series, we look at how a lack of transport infrastructure and investment is condemning millions to a life of inequality and hardship.
In fairness, this is the only dual carriageway we have on the entire peninsula, so it’s basically the main artery road not only for people, but for goods (which also goes back to some of the issues with the railways). This definitely is not an area with a massive amount of unneeded road building - it’s more the case that bottlenecks like the one described are left to fester for 30 years before someone convinces the government to allocate some funding for it. That said, the roads we have are fine for the local population density - there isn’t a lot of people here most of the year and traffic flows just fine. If we could… you know, get rid of all the tourists that more than doubles the region’s population during the summer, it would be a long time before any further road changes would be needed.
On the plus side, those same tourists also stop the region growing: they bought 40% of the houses so they can use them for 2 weeks a year or rent them out to other tourists. An awful lot of problems would go away if tourism came to an end as an industry. People insist we need it for the local economy, but I think it actually stifles the region’s potential. Tourism just traps people in insecure low-paid work in hospitality and in ridiculously expensive housing. I feel like tourism is another symptom of the growth and consumption based society: the whole concept that you absolutely need to basically go and “consume” some other place for a couple weeks a year, regardless of the impact it has on the local services, infrastructure, and people, seems inherently exploitative and ultimately not sustainable. But of course, we can’t do anything about it because it’s “stopping people from doing things they enjoy” or whatever.
In fairness, this is the only dual carriageway we have on the entire peninsula, so it’s basically the main artery road not only for people, but for goods (which also goes back to some of the issues with the railways). This definitely is not an area with a massive amount of unneeded road building - it’s more the case that bottlenecks like the one described are left to fester for 30 years before someone convinces the government to allocate some funding for it. That said, the roads we have are fine for the local population density - there isn’t a lot of people here most of the year and traffic flows just fine. If we could… you know, get rid of all the tourists that more than doubles the region’s population during the summer, it would be a long time before any further road changes would be needed.
On the plus side, those same tourists also stop the region growing: they bought 40% of the houses so they can use them for 2 weeks a year or rent them out to other tourists. An awful lot of problems would go away if tourism came to an end as an industry. People insist we need it for the local economy, but I think it actually stifles the region’s potential. Tourism just traps people in insecure low-paid work in hospitality and in ridiculously expensive housing. I feel like tourism is another symptom of the growth and consumption based society: the whole concept that you absolutely need to basically go and “consume” some other place for a couple weeks a year, regardless of the impact it has on the local services, infrastructure, and people, seems inherently exploitative and ultimately not sustainable. But of course, we can’t do anything about it because it’s “stopping people from doing things they enjoy” or whatever.