“Complicado y interrumpido” (complicated and disrupted) were the words of one television commentator this morning in describing traffic on the west side of San José.
In reality it affects the entire city as a whole.
This is the second morning of another 60 or so that will be the normal for drivers of the Circunvalación. It is also the second day when a tractor trailer, weaving through the narrow and congested streets of La Sabana Sur met up with power lines.
In this morning’s accident, the truck took down four utility posts and damaged three others, forcing the closure (for the good part of the day today) of the direct route called Calle Morenos, from the Circunvalación in Hatillo to La Sabana Sur to reconnect to the Circunvalación in Pavas.
With the “mess” in La Sabana Sur, the , the Policia de Transito (traffic police) is asking drivers from the east to use routes through San José centre to get to the west. The same applies for drivers from the west heading to the east.
This means that La Uruca will be even more congested that normal. Way more.
And if you add to this all of this that most drivers don’t know their way through the alternates routes and the many one way streets of San José streets or even know where they will end up.
Taking public transportation, like the bus, is not much of an alternative since the buses get stuck in the same congestion, made worse by illegal parking on both sides of most streets.
The train could be an ally in all of this, but…for instance, there are only three trains from the Pacific station (downtown San José) to Pavas/Belén, running only during morning and afternoon rush hours. And, the San José train does not meet up with the Heredia centre train. Many users of the Circunvalación come from Alajuela and Heredia. If the trains…
In conclusion, the reality today and for the next two months (or maybe more), life in San José has gotten more complicated. And disrupted.