Malaga aims to invite tenders for Guadalmedina 'plaza-bridges' project in one month
The city council has asked the regional government for a million-euro subsidy to draw up the document
Now that the regional government of Andalucía (Junta) has endorsed the Guadalmedina 'plaza-bridges' project, Malaga city council is aiming to put it out to tender in a month.
Just a week ago, the Junta declared the project of regional interest and certified its environmental and safety conditions.
To draw up the document, the city council has asked the Junta for a one-million-euro subsidy. It expects that the initial construction work could be put out to tender within a year and a half.
The credibility of the 'plaza-bridges' and the integration of the Guadalmedina riverbed have been weighed down by decades of promises, but significant progress has been made in recent months.
Hydraulics
The most notable advance is the work carried out to assess and outline the hydrological behaviour of the river and the safety of the riverbed under any circumstances.
The measures regulating the safety of the El Limonero dam have been essential in this task. The maximum filling limit has been set at 14 million cubic metres, instead of the 21 established by the previous threshold. At the same time, simulations, projections and calculations have been carried out, the contributions of the tributary streams have been fine-tuned and factors such as water transport have been taken into account.
The idea of the subsidy is to prioritise the 'plaza-bridges' and green areas and leave the burying of traffic underground for later, as it is more complex.
The Port Authority has also expressed interest in the idea of extending underground traffic to the port to offer a quick exit to the motorway from the north of the city.
Design
"We are finalising the draft project and the riverbed between the language school and the CAC. Our absolute priority is to guarantee the safety of the riverbed against flooding," councillor for sustainability Penélope Gómez said on Tuesday.
The preliminary plan also includes the creation of recreational areas along the riverbed, which acts as the dam's drainage channel and only carries water when the bottom gates are opened.
The preliminary plan increases the amount of green space to 76,000 square metres (600 trees in total). This is quite significant, considering that the entire area of the project covers 121,000 square metres.
The design eliminates the large central 'plaza-bridge' and replaces it with five lighter, X-shaped bridges. The aim is to ensure permeability between both banks, which requires lowering the side walls, which currently act as a barrier. This has required refining the hydraulic modelling to understand the river's behaviour under the worst flood scenarios.
Construction is expected to take ten months.
