The north of Tenerife, where they reside more than 226,000 people, has suffered for more than 30 years the ordeal of traffic jams on the TF-5 motorway. Every morning, in the direction of the metropolitan area, thousands of drivers find themselves trapped in queues that They double or triple the usual duration of the journeys to Santa Cruz, La Laguna or the South. One of the possible solutions to these traffic jams is a third lane in each direction, which would serve to make public transport more competitive and encourage vehicles with high occupancy. After years of ideas, debates and proposals without concretizing, The Official Gazette of the Canary Islands (BOC) published this Friday, April 14, 2023 Finally, the announcement of the public exhibition of the project for the layout of that longed for third lane between La Orotava and Guamasaa work valued at about 339 million euros which, when tendered, will have a five-year lead time.
The Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Housing of the Government of the Canary Islandswho drives Sebastian Franquis (PSOE)is responsible for the publication of this process of public information and consultation with the administrations, groups and people affected by the project. For 30 business daysStarting tomorrow, those interested and affected will be able to consult this enormous project, made up of 13 volumes of documentation and studies of all kinds. Only the first of these volumes occupies 775 pages.
The drafters of the project maintain that most of the land that will be affected by the construction of this third lane “is already public.” However, the execution of this work along about 17 kilometers of the TF-5 will force you to cross part of six municipalities (La Orotava, Santa Úrsula, La Victoria and La Matanza de Acentejo, El Sauzal and Tacoronte) and provides for the total or partial affectation of 684 plots. The expropriations affect 483 rustic lands, which occupy 328,383 square meters, and 201 urban plots, with a global area of 38,200 square meters.
The works will last 5 years and will include a double tunnel of one kilometer to avoid the curve of El Sauzal
The budget of the work foresees a game of 35.5 million euros to finance all these expropriationswhich focus mainly on Tacoronte, El Sauzal and La Matanza. The Sauzalero municipality is the one that will lose the largest area of rustic land, some 90,462 square meters, in addition to 4,233 square meters with urban classification. The town of Tacorontera will be affected 35,145 square meters of urban land and another 48,748 of rural plots. In La Matanza, expropriations in rural areas affect 70,732 square meters and in urban areas, 8,802. In La Victoria there will be 35,357 and 9,561, and in Santa Úrsula, 37,834 and 9,590. La Orotava is the town with the least impact: 15,837 square meters of rustic land and just 76 urban.
This layout project was contracted for 1.8 million euros to a specialized joint venture. The document now begins its public exhibition, the subsequent response to the allegations and the complex environmental authorization process, some essential steps that will still require many months, or years, of work and bureaucracy.
It will be necessary to expropriate totally or partially 684 parcels, 483 of rural land and 201 with urban classification
This work provides for the total reconfiguration of nine links on the TF-5; the merger of the two links of Santa Úrsula into one; six overpasses and 14 underpasses; the creation of a double tunnel of about 1,100 meters, with a total of six lanes, to avoid the curve of El Sauzal; five pedestrian walkways, and the replacement of the conditions to 38 highways, roads, streets and service roads.
The writing team raises the need to carry out the works without eliminating any of the two lanes that the TF-5 has in each direction, with the aim of not aggravating the very serious traffic jams suffered by the road during the works. The cost of this effort to maintain traffic during the works is estimated at around 4.3 million euros.
The most expensive part of the budget is construction of new structures (75.3 million), the double tunnel of El Sauzal (59 million), expropriations (35.5 million), firm and pavements (25 million) and earthworks (19 million euros). Only the cost of the IGIC will be 19 million and an industrial benefit for the contractor in charge of the works of about 13.6 million euros is calculated. There will be 9.1 million for environmental integration and another 1.6 million for the environmental monitoring program.
The cost of the planned expropriations is estimated at 35.5 million.
All project documentation can now be consulted on the website of the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Housingand there will also be copies of the project in digital format available to those interested in the offices of the aforementioned Regional Ministry, at its headquarters on Avenida Francisco la Roche, 35, in Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
According to the capacity studies cited in this project, the TF-5 supports an average daily intensity of vehicles that in the section from the Tenerife North airport to Puerto de la Cruz varies between 66,000 and 88,000 vehicles. The amount of traffic and the numerous existing entrances and exits in this section of the Northern highway, many with significant deficiencies, are the main causes of the traffic jams.
This project is also the first step for the future implementation between La Orotava and Santa Cruz de a traffic management system based on the use of BUS-HOV lanes, “that favors a more efficient and sustainable transport by promoting collective transport and car sharing to the detriment of the private vehicle, which will have an impact on improving fluidity on the TF-5”. This measure requires a minimum of three lanes per road between La Orotava and the airport. Once that third rail is built, the intention is for it to function as “a flexible BUS-HOV lane not physically segregated from the rest of the road and managed with Intelligent Transport Systems technology, which will allow the reservation of the left lane of the road at times of greatest demand, while the rest of the time it will function as a normal lane”.
The double tunnel of El Sauzal
The project for the layout of the third lane of the TF-5, from La Orotava to the area around Los Rodeos airport, provides for a double tunnel in El Sauzal, with three lanes in each direction, and a length of between 1,120 and 1,189 metres. It will be straight and will have a slope of 5%. In the access areas to both mouths it will be protected by false tunnels. This infrastructure will be located between kilometers 20 and 22 and its main objective is to avoid the section known as the El Sauzal curve, where the danger of the original route has forced the authorities to impose a speed limit of 80 kilometers per hour, controlled by a section radar. In the study phase, alternatives such as a curved tunnel or a tunnel only in the Santa Cruz direction were discarded.
