Major road projects for inland Malaga dusted off by the Junta

The Junta de Andalucía appears to have decided to go ahead once and for all with several major road projects in Malaga province. These have spent years or even decades tucked away in drawers by different regional governments despite being key to development of the inland areas of the province.

The motorway to connect Ronda with Malaga; improvements to the road between the coast and the Serranía de Ronda; the extension to the Guadalhorce motorway; widening the road which will link the future dry port in Antequera with the A-92; and the construction of the much-trumpeted western feeder road to connect the airport and Malaga's industrial areas with the A-7 motorway and Alhaurín de la Torre. These are some of the main projects which the regional ministry of Public Works has dusted off and placed back on its agenda of planned investments in Malaga province.

Nevertheless, there is still quite a way to go. Unsurprisingly, most of these projects are only at a very early stage, with nothing more concrete than informative studies and draft plans, and in some cases they will need to be updated because so many changes have taken place over the years since they were first proposed.

But not everything is only on paper. Some works are under way already, such as the widening of the access road to Alhaurín de la Torre from the A-7, which the Junta is carrying out itself because of the lack of action from the government in Madrid. It means that within a few months some of the worst traffic congestion in Malaga will become a thing of the past.

Work is also being carried out to widen and improve safety on part of the A-404 between Alhaurín el Grande and Coín, and the urban section of the Marbella-Istán road (A-7176) between the N-340 and the A-7.

This is the current status of the projects which the regional ministry is working on:

Widening the slip road from the A-7 to Alhaurín de la Torre

The widening of the slip road from the A-7 into Alhaurín de la Torre will be finished in a couple of months. It was always intended to have two lanes in each direction, but problems caused by the 2008 crisis meant that it ended up with one. This road is used by 25,000 vehicles a day, and the Junta took matters into its own hands and invited tenders for a 1.24 million-euro contract which will be financed with EU funds.

As part of the same project, new slip roads are being constructed to reduce congestion at the roundabout between the A-404 (Churriana-Coín) and A-7052 (Churriana-Cártama), so that vehicles heading from the A-7 to Cártama will be filtered off without needing to go round the roundabout. Seven kilometres of the A-7052 between Churriana and Estación de Cártama are also to be made safer in the Santa Amalia area.

A-404 safety improvements in Alhaurín el Grande

Another project which is already being carried out is the widening and improved safety along four kilometres of the A-404 between Alhaurín el Grande and Coín, which will take one year to complete and will cost 3.1 million euros (co-financed by EU funds).

This will be carried out in two stages: the first is from the intersection with the A-355 (at Venta Casa Pedro Lucena) to the roundabout after the Fahala river (Venta Los Chavos) and the second at the intersection between the A-404 and the A-355 Marbella-Cártama road.

The road will be widened to seven metres plus a hard shoulder on each side, and this will mean that the speed limits on the main roads to Alhaurín el Grande can be increased. Three new roundabouts are also to be built.

Widening the urban section of the Marbella-Istán road

This section of the A-7176 passes through The Golden Mile and is an integral part of Marbella but it is less than six metres wide and has no hard shoulders. In February work began to widen the stretch between the N-340 and the A-7 at a cost of 4.2 million euros (40% will be paid by Marbella council), and will take a year to complete.

The plans include four new roundabouts which will reduce the speed on this road and improve safety at the existing junctions.

The long-awaited motorway to Ronda

One of the biggest projects which has been outstanding for some time is a motorway to connect Ronda with Malaga city. The Junta de Andalucía has now commissioned an informative study to plan the best route for a road with two lanes in each direction. The new route will also help to link other inland areas of the province and will improve communications between the Malaga metropolitan area and the rest of Andalucía via the A-384 (Arcos de la Frontera-Antequera), which in turn connects with the A-92.

Widening and creation of slow lanes on Ronda-San Pedro road

The widening of the A-397 (Ronda-San Pedro road) is another project which has been dusted off by the Junta. It is still some time from becoming reality but initial plans are now being drawn up for a series of slow lanes in sections of the 48-kilometre road. This project has replaced the original idea of building a dual carriageway to link the Costa del Sol to the Serranía de Ronda.

Extension of the Guadalhorce motorway

The A-357 between Malaga city and Campillos is 70 kilometres long but only 30 of them have two lanes in each direction: they form the motorway stretch between Malaga city and Casapalma, the point at which the road becomes single-lane. The A-357 holds the dubious record of having the worst accident rate in the province.

Back in 2009 it was announced that two more stretches of this road were to be converted into motorway: one is a four-kilometre section between Casapalma and Cerralba, and the other is 3.5 kilometres long, from Cerralba to Zalea. Nothing was ever done and 14 years later, the regional ministry of Public Works is going to have both projects updated.

Construction of the metropolitan link road

The western metropolitan link road was planned nearly 20 years ago to join the A-7 Malaga outer bypass with the industrial estates and Alhaurín de la Torre and to service the future northern access to Malaga Airport (another project which the government has now reactivated after several years) and the Guadalhorce road (A-357).

In fact, the contract for a 6.1-kilometre section which would run parallel with the A-7 was awarded for 36.8 million euros in 2009, but after ten years in which nothing was done the Junta approved the cancellation of the contract with the intention of updating the plans and costs and bringing the project in line with the one for the northern access to the airport.

The regional government and the national ministry of Transport have been holding talks to coordinate the two projects, and the new contract is likely to be put to tender in the next few months.

Widening the road between the A-92 and Antequera dry port

The inland, so-called dry port in Antequera will be the biggest logistics platform in southern Europe, thanks to its strategic location in the centre of Andalucía and its excellent communications by road and train, providing easy connections to the ports of Algeciras and Malaga. The regional government is very clear about the potential of this future hub and is therefore planning two major projects to improve its connections even further.

A nine-kilometre railway line is to be built between the dry port and the main rail network and the A-384 between the dry port and the A-92 is to be widened. This is not a new project, as initial plans were drawn up in 2008 to widen the 13 kilometres from the exit on the A-92 to the Colonia de Santa Ana district, to improve connections with the AVE high-speed train station. At that time, the cost was calculated to be 103 million euros. Now, the contract to draw up the construction plans is to be put out to tender, and those will provide the definitive cost for the project.

Bus-HOV lanes at the accesses to Malaga city and the PTA

The project to extend the Guadalhorce motorway is not the only one on that road: the contract is about to be put out to tender to build two bus lanes which can also be used by private vehicles with more than two occupants (known as High Occupancy Vehicles or HOVs). The aim is to improve traffic flow at the accesses to Malaga city and the Andalusian Technology Park (PTA).

In order not to lose the seven million euros of European funds, the regional ministry of Public Works must meet two conditions: the contract for the works must be signed before the end of this year and the projects must be completed by 31 December 2025. In fact, they should be finished a year earlier than that.

At present, the plans are being drawn up for a third lane on the 2.5-kilometre section of the Guadalhorce motorway (A-357) between the junctions with the A-7054 (by Cortijo Jurado) and A-7056 (the exit from the PTA), a continuation of the one which came into operation on the access road to the Technology Park in December. The estimated cost will be 3.5 million euros, of which 2.9 million will come from EU funds.

More complicated, and therefore more expensive, will be the project to improve the accesses to Malaga city from the A-357. In this case, a platform will be created in the middle of the road between the access to the university campus at Teatinos and the Clínico hospital and the intersection with the western bypass, and the bus/HOV lane will then join the existing urban one along Avenida Blas Infante and Avenida de Andalucía.