“Eliminating the Bilbao bus stop from the campus could perhaps bring more problems than leaving it at the station” | SER Vitoria

The new and first vice-rector of the Álava campus of the UPV-EHU, Manoli Igartua, ensures that the university looks for sustainable mobility, but is committed to maintaining the Bilbao-Vitoria line bus stop on campus.

Eliminating this stop, he claims, could increase the number of trips by private vehicle, so it would harm the objective of reducing polluting emissions. Furthermore, he doubts that Vitoria’s bus and tram system can absorb the number of students who come to the Alava campus from Bizkaia at the same time.

In reference to the possibility of reinforcements in these transports at peak times, the Vice Chancellor explains that in this case the implementation of combined tickets so that the transfers do not involve a high cost for the students and consider, on the other hand, that if the alternative bus line + public transport also involves a high investment of time, perhaps this could have a negative impact on the number of license plates: “If it costs you an hour and a half and a lot of money to get to the Vitoria campus, it may not be your first option,” he says.

Regarding the pending works of the campus: the extension of the Las Nieves Classroom, the reform of Education and Sports or the creation of a laboratory-workshop for the Automotive degree, he hopes that -at least- some of these infrastructures can succeed from 2023, which is when the new university plan will come into force that should begin to negotiate at the end of 2022.

Before that date he wants to know the concerns and intentions of the different faculties regarding, among others, the implementation of new dual degrees. The vice-rector assures that carrying out a new degree takes time and that is why it is important to start that process as soon as possible.

He does not want to anticipate the pronouncement of each faculty but anticipates that in Pharmacy, where she has been dean in recent years, “there are dualizable degrees, that is, they would be good candidates for dual training.”

Igartua comes to campus with the challenge of promoting the sense of belonging to the UPV-EHU brand and invites students to participate in the bodies where they have representation and not to do so, as sometimes happens – he says – through banners and protests.

And about the pandemic, for now only two classrooms had to be closed by positives and according to the trackers, contagions occur outside the university environment.

To the university routine, the Covid-19 has brought to stay, according to Manoli Igartua, the Online training and the combined mobilities: mobility programs between universities (Erasmus and others) that are now articulated in part in physical stays in the chosen countries and in other part in virtual teaching.

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