• NEW ROADS TO SAN RAMON AND CALDERA WILL START BY YEAR END
Free Translation from article published in newspaper La Nacion- of September 7th, 2006
By the end of this year, a European-Costa Rican consortium will start simultaneously building the roads from San Jose to San Ramon (58 kilometers) and from San Jose to the Port Caldera (77 kilometers).
This will reduce the trip between San Jose and Alajuela from 34 to 15 minutes during rush hours.
The trip between San Jose and San Ramon will also be reduced from 90 to 45 minutes during rush hours, while the trip between the capital and Port Caldera, in Central Pacific, will be reduced from one and a half hours to one hour and 10 minutes.
The road construction between San Jose and San Ramon will take 25 months and from San Jose to Caldera, two years. Both projects will be developed through public works concessions; this is, the private group will finance the works and will recuperate the investment collecting the toll for the next 25 years. On the road to San Ramon the toll will be $1.30; and, on the road to Caldera, $2.70.
These projects were awarded by the National Awarding Council (NAC) of the Ministry of Public Works and Transportation (MPWT) to a group formed by the Spanish enterprises FCC Construction and Itinere Infrastructure, the Portuguese group Soares Da Costa Concessoes and the Costa Rica Corporation M&S International. In the construction of the road to San Ramon the builders will be the groups Autopistas del Valle and Autopistas del Sol.
The drive for expropriations. The expansion of the road to San Ramon with additional lanes and overpass roads in the intersections has been awarded since June of 2004, but the works could not start at the beginning of the year due to some delays in the process of expropriations. Some 217 properties had to be acquired, of which the MPWT only had 20 when the previous administration ended its term. Now there are almost 120 more to be possessed by the State.
Luis Diego Vargas, technical secretary of the NAC explained that during the passed administration there was only one person at the MPWT to process the expropriations; but the present administration assigned five people more giving them travel expenses and vehicles. This allowed them to reduce the purchasing time for each property from 450 to 215 days. “It was a matter of willing to do it, everything depended on the Minister”, said Vargas.
Starting the construction of the section between San Jose and the International Airport depended on this 120 properties, explained Hada Muñoz, Manager of the concession.
The construction will start enlarging the bridges and moving the soil. Vargas guaranteed that the works will be initiated between November and December, in order to take advantage of the dry season. “The construction will be on its way by Christmas”, he assured.
The NAC expects to have completed the expropriations by March of 2007. The Manager indicated that the concessionary accepted to draw a timetable according to the acquisition of the right of way.
The road to San Ramon is the road most traveled in Central America. At the present time 80,000 cars drive through every day. With the enlargement NAC expects 120,000 cars per day.
In the case of the road between San Jose and Port Caldera the expropriations are almost completed, which will allow to immediately start the construction between San Jose and Santa Ana.
The construction work was undertaken by the consortium last March, after a Canadian-Argentinean group abandoned it. The NAC expects to have the financing for both projects finalized by the end of this month.
Projects details
San Jose-San Ramon
58 Km long. It will reduce the trip from 90 to 45 minutes during rush hours. Traveling from San Jose to Alajuela will take 15 minutes with a cost of $0.40. The total toll will be $1.30. The construction will include going from six to eight lanes in the section between San Jose and the International Airport (17 Km), and to four lanes between the Int. Airport and Manolo’s and refurbishing the three lanes between Manolo’s and San Ramon. Overpass roads will be built in every intersection, the bridges will be widened and there will be an 8.3 Km new road connecting Rio Segundo and Santa Ana. The group Autopistas del Valle will build this road for $266 million.
San Jose-Port Caldera
77 Km long. It will reduce the trip from 100 to 70 minutes. The construction will include refurbishing the road between San Jose and Santa Ana (14.2 Km), build the road Santa Ana-Orotina (38.8 Km) and rebuilding Orotina-Port Caldera (23.8 Km). The first section has four lanes; the second one will have three and the last one, four lanes.
The toll for the whole trip will be $2.70. The cost of the project, $150 million will be financed by the consortium Autopistas del Sol through a public concession for 25 years.
