Central government reactivates project for construction of northern road access to Malaga Airport

Spain's central government is reactivating the plans to complete the construction of the northern access to Malaga Airport. It’s a small link of only 1.7 kilometres but it is important to ease the congestion of traffic as it will connect the A-7 directly to the terminals. After awarding the works, for 26.7 million euros, in 2018 the then Ministry of Development (now Transport) backed down and the project never started.

The reason given was the need to make the infrastructure compatible with a new western bypass road, a 6.1-kilometre link that was conceived 15 years ago to connect industrial estates, Alhaurín de la Torre and the airport that was also contracted by the regional government after being suspended for more than a decade.

Faced with this, the Ministry of Transport has once again invited offers for the 1.47 million euro tender for drafting the layout of the new project and the construction of the northern access to the airport. The expected duration of the study is two years, starting when the contract is finalised. Considering that all interested parties have until 22 April to present their tenders and the time it will take to decide between them, the drafting project will not start until the end of this year.

As stated in the General Directorate of Highways the project must be subjected to environmental impact assessment, which will extend the final project deadline even further.

According to the specifications, the road will connect the airport with the A-7 motorway at kilometre 230, at the Alhaurín de la Torre exit. It will be 1.7 kilometres long and will have two lanes in each direction with a speed limit of 80 kilometres per hour. The cost of the total project is now estimated at 42.26 million euros.