Shuttle service to Portitxol and Granadella to return at the beginning of August
The service provider must pay a minimum fee of 5,000 euros and it is hoped that the service will come into operation at the beginning of August.
Archive Foto: Passengers boarding the train a few years ago.
Friday 8th July 2022 – Mike Smith
Source: Xàbia AL DÍA
Xàbia Council has finally called the public tender for the contracting of the shuttle service for bathers and tourists to the Granadella and Portitxol coves, a service that will be provided with a tourist train (Granadella) and a minibus (Portitxol ) as an alternative to using the car to reach these two popular beaches.
The specifications of the contract have been posted this Friday on the Contracting Platform and include a special administrative authorization by which the contractor who provides with the service must pay a minimum of 5,000 euros, which he will obtain through a passenger charge. There will be a maximum price of 3 euros, to which discounts must be applied for children under 12 years of age whilst people over 65 and children up to 3 years of age will travel free. In the same way the provider can propose the creation of different season tickets.
According to the information available, the service to Portitxol will be provided from Calle Trípoli, next to Supermercado Saladar supermarket with a 20-seater minibus for the shuttle service Cala del Portitxol itself and will return on a single route without stops to the start, a journey distance of about 4 kilometers.
In the case of the Granadella, the train will be taken at the usual place of other years; the Urbanization La Guardia where a stop was installed a few years ago. The return journey will be along a 5.7-kilometre route.
The service will be provided “from June 23 to September 10” although, obviously, it will not come into force until at least the beginning of August, since companies have a deadline of July 23rd to present their offers.
Timetable
As for the departure times, the specifications of the contract include an initial plan that marks the first trip to Portitxol at 9.00am and at 9.25am in the case of the train to Granadella. The last trips will be at 19.20am and 19.45am. There is no service, due to the driver’s rest, between 1.00pm and 4.00pm.
However, the specifications themselves already indicate that the schedules may “be modified at the request of the parties when there are sufficient reasons to justify their variation, such as the intensity of traffic in certain periods, the combination with other public transport services, the agglomeration of users, etc”.
Scheduled for one year, the documents include that the contract will be extendable for another 365 days, so that the next year, if it will come into force on the day provided in the documents, June 23rd.
20.000 users in 2018
In 2018, the Department of Tourism provided the number of users that the Granadella train service carried, reporting that 20,000 people used it in the 50 days it was running.
In this way, if the maximum price of the specifications were applied (3 euros), it turns out that the service could generate 60,000 euros, an amount that coincides with what it cost the council to contract it, a cost that is now transferred to the employer, who must pay a fee to provide the service.
