The construction of a third lane in each direction along the entire southern highway, between Santa Cruz and Playa de Las Américas, is closer since yesterday. The Ministry of Public Works has put out to tender, worth 1,955,632 euros, the drafting of the project to widen the TF-1, with one more road in both directions, between the municipalities of Güímar and Granadilla de Abona, at the height of San Isidro. The project to end traffic jams must define an action that will affect 13 junctions, 12 bridges, 11 underpasses and the Güímar tunnels.
It must be remembered that the department headed by Sebastián Franquis has already put out to tender the drafting of the project for the layout and construction of the third lane between San Isidro and Playa de Las Américas and the cut-and-cover tunnel on the motorway between this tourist area and Fañabé, while the works on the Las Chafiras-Oroteanda section.
The construction of two more roads along 34 kilometers will not only increase the capacity of the island’s main traffic artery, but will also considerably improve the safety of the vehicles that pass through it. Along the section between Güímar and San Isidro, more than 50,000 vehicles circulate daily, a volume of traffic that is largely concentrated between 07:30 and 09:00, heading south, coinciding with the start of the working day, and between 3:30 p.m. and 5:00 p.m., in the direction of Santa Cruz.
In addition, this high-capacity road connects the largest industrial estate in Tenerife, that of Güímar, with the Port of Granadilla, of General State Interest, in which there are great expectations of development in the medium and long term, which will increase considerably the volume of traffic on the TF-1.
The section of the southern highway between Güímar and San Isidro was built in the 1970s and the roadway was doubled at the end of the 1980s. In 2009, work on the third lane from Santa Cruz to Güímar was completed. Now, with the tender for the drafting of the project, the Tenerife Insular Management Plan is fulfilled, which includes among its objectives the “progressive adaptation” of the infrastructures to the needs of the Island.
From the Provincial Federation of Construction Entities (Fepeco), its president, Óscar Izquierdo, described the Ministry’s announcement as “very good news”, since, in his opinion, “it reflects what we have been saying for months: Tenerife has been launched in public works”. The employer’s leader told this newspaper that “we are beginning to see realities, not promises, with projects underway such as Las Chafiras-Oroteanda, the closure of the Insular Ring, the La Laguna variant and the third lane of the highway from the south”.
Izquierdo thanked the “silent work” carried out in the last three years, and that “now begins to flourish”, by the director Sebastián Franquis and the general director of Road Infrastructure, José Luis Delgado, although he recalled that “there is still a long way to go, because we have a delay of four decades, but we can say that we are in the beginning of the end of traffic queues”.
This is the third tender of the Ministry in recent weeks in the South, after putting out to tender, at the end of May, for 549,000 euros, the drafting of the project for the layout and construction of the third lane of the TF-1 between San Isidro and Playa de Las Américas (Oroteanda-Las Américas sub-section), a nine kilometer stretch through which more than 90,000 vehicles circulate every day and which presents problems of saturation, with frequent traffic jams in Guaza and Los Cristianos.
Days before it went out to tender for €107 million both the drafting of the project and the work on a cut-and-cover tunnel on the TF-1 between Playa de Las Américas and Fañabé, which will include the creation of a boulevard in the upper part with space for motor vehicles, bike lanes, garden areas and four roundabouts that will allow the connection between the two margins of the tourist areas.
Likewise, the machines continue to work on the Las Chafiras-Oroteanda junction, in the municipality of San Miguel de Abona, to finish with one of the large funnels of the South highway, and work continues on the Insular Ring, focused on the construction of the Erjos double tunnel, one of the works with the highest budget currently being carried out in Spain.
