The President of the Government of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, and the Minister of Public Works, Transport and Housing, Sebastián Franquis, made a visit this Friday to supervise the state of the works that the Ministry is carrying out in the section of the western closure of the Insular Ring of Tenerife, between Santiago del Teide and El Tanque.
Progress was made that the tunnel works are 80% finished on the inside (one kilometer would remain) and 45% on the outside, pending a new modification of the project to build two lanes in each direction, instead of one, in the outer pathways.
The president and the counselor, along with the Government delegate in the Canary Islands, Anselmo Pestana, the president of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Pedro Martín, the mayoress of El Tanque, Esther Morales Sánchez, and of Los Silos, María Macarena Fuentes Socas, and the mayor from Santiago del Teide, Emilio José Navarro Castanedo, accompanied by the Director General of Road Infrastructure of the Canary Islands Government, José Luis Delgado, checked the status of the work being carried out both outside and inside the Erjos double tunnel, the largest (5.1 kilometres) that is currently being built in Spain, with a budget of more than 240 million euros, which has now risen to 256, and an execution period of 48 months that should be completed in November and which, due to the modified will be delayed until 2025, after the start of the work in 2019.
However, as was said this Friday, it is very likely that the two drillings (north and south) will be communicated before the summer, noting that they are drilling about eight meters a day, with greater difficulty in the north, when finding more basalt, José Luis Delgado recalled before President Torres, who highlighted the commitment to “the mobility of this Government”, something that Pedro Martín also had an impact on, highlighting that “the projects to complete the insular ring road are already drawn up”, when also speaking of the section from Icod de los Vinos to Los Realejos, it being expected that all these works, together with the extension of the TF-1 from Arafo to Adeje, will be completed in this decade.
Ángel Víctor Torres ended by saying: “They are not words, they are actions; They are facts, not promises.