PASSENGERS on the Alicante-Torrevieja bus route have complained of long queues, late buses and full coaches on a route that operator Avanza has insisted is running well.
Users of the line from Alicante through Torrevieja to Pilar de la Horadada say they must book ahead, because when a bus fills up priority goes to people who have already reserved or bought a ticket, according to local newspaper Información.
Those who try to use discounted travel cards directly may have to wait until it is checked whether any seats remain.
Even people with a ticket can be left behind, because Avanza does not send an extra bus when one fills up, and they must wait for the next departure, a situation that has repeated itself constantly this summer.
The bus is essential for many, with no railway along the south coast between Alicante and Pilar de la Horadada.
Yet passengers have spent months complaining of long queues, closed ticket offices at Alicante bus station and delays that build up along the journey.
Some buses stop at intermediate places such as Santa Pola and Guardamar del Segura while others on the same route drive straight past, and the service is in fact made up of several overlapping lines and variants, which makes itineraries and frequencies hard to follow.
But Avanza, which runs the route for the Valencian regional government (the Generalitat), said the service is performing at an ‘optimal’ level.
It said it offers more than 24 departures a day in each direction between Torrevieja and Alicante, above the minimum the Generalitat requires, although there are times of extremely high demand, at certain moments of the year or day, when buses fill up.
It blamed part of the delays and irregular frequencies on congestion on the N-332 between Alicante and Pilar de la Horadada, and said it applies flexible measures to limit the effect on passengers.
Información reported that the road carries up to 50,000 vehicles a day on average in summer, with regular tailbacks at the Rocio del Mar roundabout between Orihuela and Torrevieja, the Torrevieja bypass and the Gran Alacant area.
Adding to the uncertainty, a contracts appeals tribunal annulled the Generalitat’s direct award of the route to Avanza in August, meaning the contract had been handed over without a public tender.
The tribunal upheld an appeal by the passenger transport management association GTV, ruling that the Generalitat had not sufficiently justified the emergency it cited to skip a competitive process and that the procedure must restart.
The conditions passengers describe relate to the service before the ruling, which ran under a provisional contract while the Generalitat prepared a permanent solution.
Avanza, though, said passengers notice no difference between the annulled award and the current one.
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