Storms and mobiles

Yesterday it rained very hard and there were floods in ground floors, basements and the whole works. In Barcelona too, and that is despite the luck we have with the fifteen tanks that collect rainwater, six of which filled up almost to the top. The metro was hit hard, so that in the afternoon, hours later, there were still sections without service.

And so we are: we go from not seeing water and having to walk on sticky sidewalks to jumping over puddles. Since we have to get used to it, it would be good if the authorities did not rely solely on mobile communication.

I wanted to take the L4 metro line at Girona and it wasn't until I was at the payment turnstiles that I knew it was partially cut off. Is it so hard to put up a sign on the street? A couple of hours later I wanted to take the L3 line at Lesseps. The same: when I had already gone down all the stairs from the entrance, I found a gate that prevented entry to the station. With the Railways in Gràcia I reached Plaça Catalunya, with the intention of taking the red line. No warning anywhere that the service was interrupted. The small square under the plaza was flooded and not even a sad bag of sawdust could be seen, only those yellow signs they put out when they mop the floor, warning us to be careful. Thank you very much.

An administration cannot limit itself to communicating by mobile phone. There is more to life than the virtual one. The real one, for example. Passengers need someone to talk to them: a person, a sign, an electronic display. The loudspeakers on the platforms are fine, but inside the carriages you can barely hear anything of what they say. And I don't understand how the train drivers don't inform the passengers about what is happening and whether it will take a while. An informed user is a calmer user. And they don't feel left to their own devices.