The Canary Islands Government summon andhe competition for drafting the project for the layout and construction of the third lane of the Autopista del Sur between Oroteanda, in San Miguel de Abona, and Playa de Las Américas, in Arona. The tender budget amounts to almost 550,000 euros and is one more step in the process to solve the problem of the retentions that this road registers every day.
Yesterday, the Public Works, Transport and Housing Department of the Government of the Canary Islands published the tender for the Third Lane project of the TF-1. San Isidro – Las Americas section. Subsection: Oroteanda – Las Américas. The department that manages Sebastian Franquis He stressed that with it “the aim is to improve the fluidity in this section of the highway in the south of Tenerife, which is continuously affected by retentions due to the links with the residential areas along the route.” For this contract, which is tendered through the Deputy Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, the Executive allocates 549,115 euros.
The section to be projected includes the works of the third lane between Oroteanda and Las Américas, a nine-kilometre route that begins after the recently built Oroteanda (San Miguel de Abona) junction, and ends once the Playa de Las Américas junction has been passed. Americas, already on land in the municipality of Adeje (always in the south direction of circulation).
The jobs.
The works to be designed will consist of equipping the South Highway of a third lane in each direction and remodeling the existing links, as a consequence of the extension of the platform and the adaptation to current planning and regulations.
The end of this action will coincide with the opening of the cut-and-cover tunnel between Playa de Las Américas and Fañabé, a project that is also currently in the bidding phase by the Ministry of Public Works. The action must be completely defined, including the determinations added by the Environmental Impact Statement.
Retentions.
The nine kilometers that will be the object of this work “present a generalized problem of saturation”, a situation in which the links of the most important towns that are on this route appear mainly congested. Thus, there are frequent traffic jams in Guaza and Los Cristianos, both in the municipality of Arona. The malfunction of the links causes retentions that spread to the trunk of the motorway. In this sense, in 2012, when the layout project was approved, the operating situation of the TF-1 as it passed through Guaza registered an average daily intensity of 65,420 vehicles, a record that increased in 2019 to 91,445. daily vehicles.
The South Hospital.
Given the strategic importance of the Hospital del Sur, Public Works has taken into account in its call that it is necessary to carry out a study of alternatives that allow the incorporation of direct accesses to the health complex both from the Los Cristianos junction and from the Playa de The Americas. «In a first phase of the contract, at least three alternatives will be studied that improve the connection of the projected links with the Hospital del Sur, in order to select the one that best suits the needs of the roads and their operation, as well as the social conditions that concern us, based on a multi-criteria analysis, ”says the Government of the Canary Islands.
“In the right direction.”
The mayor of Arona, José Julián Mena, values this last aspect of the competition in a special way. Persistent claimant, essential, of direct links of the TF-1 with the Hospital del Sur, he understands that this announcement from the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Housing of the Government of the Canary Islands “points in the right direction”. He recalled that “I have always defended the extension to three lanes of the motorway, especially in one of the sections that presents many traffic jams and mobility problems. Therefore, this future project, which will entail a significant investment, is very positive.” Of course, he draws attention to the need to address «the Guaza roundabout or the entrance and exit of Los Cristianos, due to the port activity and that generated by the city itself. This must also have a solution, because it ends up having repercussions on the traffic on the South highway ».
Bittersweet.
The tender for a nine-kilometer third lane on the TF-1 motivates mixed arguments in the mayor of San Miguel de Abona, Arturo González. Although the announcement itself is an aspect that generates satisfaction for the importance of the work, “it saddens me that the current Law on Public Administration Contracts delays the start of work by seven years. It saddens me that with the mobility problem we have in the south of Tenerife we have to wait ten years for this third lane to become a reality.
A decisive impulse
The current regional government considers that “it has given a decisive boost to the improvement of traffic on the TF-1 motorway in the last three years.” He justifies this statement by citing several actions in a row, such as the works on the third lane and the Oroteanda-Las Chafiras junction (currently underway), the tender for the project and works on the cut-and-cover tunnel and third lane of the TF-1 between Los Cristianos and Fañabé (with an endowment of 107 million euros) and now with the section between Oroteanda and Los Cristianos whose wording has just been put out to tender for 549,114 euros. In this project, the third rail section that will run between San Isidro (Granadilla de Abona) and Las Chafiras (San Miguel de Abona) still remains to be completed. In the middle is the Tenerife Sur Airport, whose link calls for an improvement intervention, especially for the incorporation to the motorway in the South direction. The first public reference to this third lane dates back to the first five years of the century, when the BOC collected the announcement to prepare the first layout study for this road.
