Tenerife to get new traffic control office

"Big Brother" is going to be watching your road movements from now on!

The Intercambiador (aka Tenerifean Transport Interchange, or bus and tram depot) in Santa Cruz de Tenerife is to get a new traffic control room within the next six months to monitor the Avenida Tres de Mayo and it's tunnel, as well as the south and north motorways (TF1 and TF5): the latter as far as the upcoming El Guincho tunnel in Garachico.

The purpose of this 2.4 million euro project, says this report in La Opinión, is so the authorities can control the traffic, determine where black spots are and always know the reasons for traffic congestion, where accidents are, etc.

Currently, the Santa Cruz traffic is watched from the traffic office at the town hall. You can watch it too, if you like, because here's the link to four live traffic cameras. It's riveting stuff, I tell you! Well, watching the cars go by is more interesting than translating the bit about the failure of agreement between the corporation and the town hall over who gets to do this exciting job! :)

There's also an interesting map of Tenerife you can download (PDF) here, which territoriosred list as a Plan of Tenerife's Roadways. However, please don't try to drive down the cyan blue ones, because those are barrancos (gorges) and, though the way down might be fast, it will be a tad steep and bumpy. :)

All joking aside, it's a pretty good, clean map, with all levels of roads, towns, villages and, even names of mountains marked on it that you might even like to print off. The pink flags on the main roads, purport to be kilometer markers.