Page 13 - Demo

November 2025 | Gazette Life | 13Playa Honda (although some appear not to have survived the move). This park is another ambitious project that has recently been completed at a cost of over %u20ac3 million. Constructed on reclaimed waste land between the football pitch and the airport, behind Calle M%u00e1stil, the park represents several volcanic craters, containing a children%u2019s play areas, an adult fitness zone, a skate park, kiosks and other leisure areas. At the northern end, the %u201cwind trees%u201d %u2013 large structures with scores of small green windmills shimmer and whir in the breeze. The park is undeniably impressive, but on two morning visits we barely saw anyone actually using it. Traffic flowPlaya Honda%u2019s beaches and attractive seafront promenade are another attraction, although the prohibition of cyclists from the prom has been controversial ever since it was imposed during the pandemic. But the town%u2019s biggest attractions for islanders remain the Deiland shopping Centre and the industrial zone on the other side of the LZ-2 main road.Opened in 1998, Deiland attracts several hundred cars every day, and most of them come from the direction of Arrecife. The resulting congestion on the notorious Playa Honda double roundabout led to the construction of an underpass that filtered this traffic off through another underpass. Recently completed, the underpass seems to be doing its job well, and pedestrians and cyclists have much more space to access the industrial zone. However, since the opening of the underpass, traffic returning from Deiland to Puerto del Carmen and the south of the island has had to use Calle Chimidas, a narrow residential street with several zebra crossing, crossroads and a 20 kph speed limit. Christmas could highlight the dangers and shortcomings of this solution. Even then, the underpass is regarded as only a temporary solution. The Canarian Government now has plans for a much larger project which will shift the main road connecting the airport with Arrecife north of the existing industrial zone.This solution was chosen despite widespread support for a more expensive project that would relocate traffic on the existing LZ-2 underground.The works at the Plaza Santa Elena.The plan for the new main road.