More than 20 companies bid to extend A-357 Malaga motorway along Guadalhorce valley

With no extension to the Guadalhorce valley motorway (A-357) from Malaga city for the last 15 years, the first section tendered this summer has attracted a great deal of interest from construction companies. A total of 22 companies (21 grouped in temporary joint ventures and one standing alone) have submitted bids to undertake a project valued at around 57 million euros, according to the regional government's department of public works.

This is the section between Casapalma and Cerralba, which was initially awarded in 2010 but was then suspended. Regional minister for public works, Rocío Díaz, expressed her satisfaction with the large turnout of bids from competing companies and with the participation of the key players from the sector, "who have shown interest in resuming a project that we had to start practically from scratch". She explains further: "We found ourselves faced with an old, outdated project that had to go through the environmental impact assessment process again after 15 years of paralysis."

Díaz stressed that this development will deliver a boost to the economy of the municipalities of the Guadalhorce valley and improve the movement of people and goods. She also announced that this will soon be followed up with projects for a further eight kilometres on the Malaga-Campillos-Ronda intersections, currently in the drafting phase. These include four kilometres on the southbound side, which will continue the 4km stretch now in the awarding phase, called Cerralba-Zalea, also on the A-357. The other four kilometres will extend the dual carriageway along the northbound route, with the doubling of the access roads to Ronda on the A-367.

The Casapalma-Cerralba section involves the construction of a 4.2-kilometre stretch of motorway on the A-357 between the end of the Casapalma interchange sliproads - already built - and Cerralba. The route of the new motorway will be a by-pass, running largely parallel to the existing road, which will remain as a service road, providing access to nearby properties. It only deviates from the original road to cross the Grande river with a new 250-metre viaduct.

Finally, it will connect with the current road in Pizarra via a new roundabout. The future junction for the next section of motorway (Cerralba-Zalea) will remain in the construction project drafting phase. The new road will be a dual carriageway, with two lanes in each direction, 3.5 metres wide, with outer and inner hard shoulders of 2.5 metres and one metre respectively, a central reservation of ten metres and berms (raised slopes, useful for traffic separation and drainage) of one metre wide.

Construction work on this section between Casapalma and Cerralba was awarded in January 2010, but never began, so the contract had to be terminated nearly a decade later, resulting in a cost overrun for the regional government of nearly half a million euros.

Years later, in February 2024, the regional ministry of public works reactivated the proposal to extend the Guadalhorce motorway with an update to this project. Once the environmental impact assessment process had been completed and approved, the Junta's governing council of senior ministers authorised the expenditure this summer and then put the project out to tender, financed with regional funding.

The A-357 road comes under the responsibility of the regional government as part of its road network and is 69 kilometres long. It is a motorway from Malaga city to Casapalma, with peak traffic of 80,000 ADI (average daily intensity) vehicles. From Casapalma, where the motorway currently ends, demand remains above 25,000 vehicles per day as far as Pizarra, where the roads converge that carry all traffic from the areas of Antequera (A-343), Serranía de la Nieves (A-354), Guadalteba (A-357) and part of the Serranía de Ronda (A-367).