Tenerife Cabildo's pretty road signs - a mad waste of money

[Janet]

Many will by now have noticed that new road signs have been appearing, particularly around motorway junctions. The new signs are large squares of around three metres with large photos showing the attraction most associated with the place name – e.g. cliffs on the signs saying Los Gigantes. Others in different parts show the auditorium, pilot whales, the Drago tree, or Teide itself.

These new signs are part of the Tenerife Cabildo's Plan E, a response, says the Cabildo, to demands from tourists and businesses for better information provision and directions for visitors, and transforming Tenerife into the first Spanish destination with such tourist-related roadsigns. Well, yes, that was indeed needed, but some will be appalled that the signs, some 650 or so for 300 tourist attractions, will cost around €1,000,000.

The final cost for the project, indeed, will be nearer €1,500,000, to be funded equally by the Cabildo and the Canarian Government, and many will surely ask whether there wasn't a better use for such a huge sum of money. Education, health, infrastructure are all being hit by cut after cut, public sector workers are being laid off by the thousand, and yet we have gone from inadequate signage to huge pictorial imagery, from one extreme to the other. Do tourists really need to see the image of the place they are already heading for?

Some will be equally appalled that this plan is also being devolved onto the municipalities, Ayuntamientos are already in receipt of a manual containing instructions on how to match the official installation and design. The first local authorities to proceed with the project are Arona, Adeje, Puerto de la Cruz, Santiago del Teide and San Miguel de Abona. Where the money is to come from is anyone's guess, and I would have thought Arona, at least, would be better employed spending that money in complying with the recent Court judgment to pay the lifeguards to make its beaches safe, rather than putting up signs to beaches where no lifeguards are in place.

Utter madness. JA

[Myrtle Hogan-Lance]

Amen

[Michael]

What a load of old bollocks. 

[El Profesor]

They are eyesores .... unbelievably tacky crap ..... and they have cost 2300€ EACH

[cinnamon]

said it before... stupid waste of funds!

[Janet]

It doesn't get any better. After inspecting the installations of the signs today, the Cabildo is not happy with a considerable number of them, particularly in south Tenerife. They are said to be poorly placed and could confuse drivers. There are also, it appears, issues which have not been clarified with some of the pictorial images themselves. The works were supposed to be finished by the end of this month and so were already behind schedule, and the rectifications that will now have to take place will cause even further delays. JA

[Perikles]

After inspecting the installations of the signs today, the Cabildo is not happy with a considerable number of them, particularly in south Tenerife.

What a surprise. At 2300 euros each, the contract must have been awarded either to a relative of somebody in the Cabildo or a Scottish alcoholic.

[Nova]

Those picture signs are just plain dangerous on the motorway.  The last thing drivers should be doing when driving at 120kph is trying to figure out whether those are whales or rocks    What a huge flaming waste of money when there are people here with no income at all    Especially if they've just ripped pictures off Google without getting copyright permission and now have to spend half as much again replacing the bloody things.  What was that expression about a kiss in a brothel? 

[El Profesor]

..............  issues which have not been clarified with some of the pictorial images themselves ..........

love the one of the indiscernible grey lumps floating in the out of focus choppy sea. 

[Janet]

I nearly had an accident three times on the motorway while figuring out ... I think ... that they're pilot whales!