Creative solutions to complex problems. Those living around Park Güell, who frequently use the bus line 116, have been suffering the consequences of living next to a great tourism icon for years. Every time they wanted to get on the bus, they saw that the bus was full of tourists. It didn’t matter if the City Council strengthened the frequencies or put more buses into circulation; Finding space on board was often an impossible task.

Until now. After trying different solutions, the Catalan City Council seems to have finally found a way to solve the problem: Deleting the bus from the map… Or in other words, deleting it from Google Maps. “We laugh, but it’s effective,” neighbors admit.

A crowded bus. Bus 116 is a complex route. The fact that the bus passes through an area with hills and narrow streets along its route prevents the use of large capacity vehicles. If this cocktail itself is not complex enough, another challenge is added: along the 116 route, it passes near Park Güell, one of the symbols of Barcelona and a mandatory stop for hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. Approximately 4.2 million visitors came to the venue in 2022 alone; It was an avalanche of visitors from all over the world; this figure was a far cry from the nine million before the pandemic.

The proximity of route 116 has led many visitors to take buses to Park Güell. They did it easy. All they had to do was search on Google to discover the line. The problem is that the bus in question was not created as a tourist service, but as a bus that would meet the needs of local residents. Conclusion? Buses and queues were filled with tourists coming to visit the park and neighbors going shopping.

neighbor complaints. This saturation of tourists meant that nearby residents who used the neighborhood bus to get around Barcelona and get to work or school were quick to complain. As the neighborhood association explained to elDiario.es, which revealed the case, the bus crashes were frequent and repeated throughout the year. Especially on weekends, when the frequencies are adjusted. “It was more normal to stay out than to go in,” explains Cesca Sánchez from the Park Güell, La Salut and Sanllehy Neighborhood Association.

Search for solution. Barcelona City Council took up the challenge and looked for ways to solve the bus collapse. Its technicians opted for the obvious solution, which consisted of increasing service frequency and strengthening the number of vehicles covering the itinerary; but it didn’t help much.

While the bus continued to fill up due to the intense influx of tourists, local residents continued to encounter problems when they wanted to board. After all, as a neighborhood bus, the wagon was only slightly larger than a minibus and could carry about twenty people.

From street to office. The problem was so serious that the crash of bus 116 reached the City Council offices, where they assumed service needed to be improved. Councilor Albert Batlle, responsible for Safety and Coexistence, openly admitted this during a committee: “It is clear that the 116 is saturated, even though it is the neighborhood bus with the largest number of vehicles.”

Delete the bus from the map. If increasing frequency and deploying more buses isn’t beneficial… Why not just remove the service directly from the map? Such an idea must have been floated in the City Council, which took a step that was as strange as it was effective: it deleted the 116 bus from Google Maps’ suggested routes, making it practically an almost invisible service. For the tourists who continue to flock to Park Güell. There is no reference to this line on the official website of the park or on special websites for tourism.

No Google Maps, no tourists. Although the solution is not very orthodox, it seems to work. At least that’s what Park Güell residents say, having seen how the service has improved overnight. “At first we laughed, it seemed ridiculous to us, but since the measure is effective, we hallucinate,” admits Sánchez. And this is not the only one. A similar impression is conveyed by the driver who traveled with a dozen passengers yesterday and saw how the neighborhood saved his bus. “It was disappearing from Google and changing radically” d.

Image | M. Peinado (Flickr)

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