Plans to bring back Vélez-Malaga tram service could be scrapped

Plans to bring the Vélez-Málaga tramway, the first of its kind in Andalucía, back into operation look set to be dropped.

The service operated between October 2006 and June 2012 and received 40 million euros of public money, financed by the Junta de Andalucía. The then Partido Popular(PP) mayor of Vélez-Málaga, Francisco Delgado, stopped it on the grounds that it was “an economic burden for the town hall”.

Since 2015, the successor PSOE political party has tried to reactivate the service and eventually obtained a grant of 4.1 million euros from EU funds to repair the infrastructure, which has been vandalised, including damage to the stops and tracks and theft of cables. But, after the recent local elections, the new PP municipal leaders and the independents are considering ditching those plans due to high costs.

This was confirmed to SUR on Wednesday by municipal sources, who pointed out that the town hall would need to invest 5.5 million euros in the project. Of the first grant of 4.1 million euros, the council would need to contribute 10%, but “in reality the amount would be much higher, since for every month that the works are delayed (since November 2022 when the legal deadline began to count) 5% of the total has to be subtracted”, the sources added.