Yesterday the tunnel that connects the La Esperanza highway (TF-24) with the Northern Highway (TF-5) in the direction of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The Cabildo Highway area completed the work and opened this new branch to traffic yesterday. An important work in that it prevents the traffic coming from El Rosario and accessing the Padre Anchieta roundabout, which will expedite the traffic in a point of great influx of vehicles.
Specifically, it is a detour of about 120 meters in length, of which 40 meters run through a tunnel. This connection helps to ease the traffic at the Padre Anchieta roundabout by preventing around 3,500 vehicles that circulate every day on the TF-24 with the aim of joining the Autopista del Norte from reaching it. In addition, in this way the safety of pedestrians and drivers who make this itinerary also increases, says the Island Corporation.
The work was awarded in July 2021. It has had a budget of almost 7.9 million euros. During its execution, 61,953 cubic meters of rubble have been extracted and 1,590 linear meters of permanent anchors have been installedwith state-of-the-art security facilities, highlights the island government.
The catwalk
This is the first solution to reduce the traffic jam that one of the main black spots on the Northern motorway registers almost daily. But the diversion of the TF-24 to prevent the vehicles that circulate on it from converging on the Padre Anchieta roundabout is not the only solution that this work will provide at one of the most collapsed points not only of the TF-5, but also of all Tenerife, with a daily average of 50,000 vehicles just passing through the roundabout, a figure that exceeds 110,000 on the motorway itself.
The other solution is the walkway over the roundabout, which is intended to facilitate the transit of pedestrians, especially students of the University of La Laguna. The purpose announced so far is that said action is finished during the next month of October.
The catwalk will modify the image of the Anchieta roundabout, an infrastructure with an award-winning design at the 2019 National Innovation and Design Awards, granted by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities of Spain.
The solution proposal is a continuous curved beam in the form of a ring over the roundabout of approximately 100 meters in diameter, supported by a system of supports, with a space attached to the current car park of the Faculty of Biology, of the University of La Laguna (ULL). The total length of the ring is 314 meters. Among the complementary works there will be sidewalks adapted to pedestrian traffic, gardens, a square in the surroundings of the Faculty of Biology and the conditioning and urbanization of accesses to Avenida de la Trinidad.
