Junta gives green light to Costa del Sol road widening project

Traffic jams on the six-kilometre stretch of the A-357 from El Trapiche to the A-7 motorway junction have been getting increasingly worse in recent years

Eugenio Cabezas

Vélez-Málaga

Tuesday, 21 January 2025, 15:56

The Junta de Andalucía has given the green light to the environmental report to widen a six-kilometre section of the A-356 road as it passes Vélez-Málaga on the eastern Costa del Sol.

The project to widen the six-kilometre stretch of the A-356, or Carretera del Arco, from El Trapiche to the junction with A-7 motorway has been pending for more than two decades. The action is expected to cost 30 million euros.

Traffic jams in this area have been getting worse in recent years as a result of the significant increase in traffic on this road which goes up to Alhama de Granada, especially on the six-kilometre stretch from the junction of the A-7 Mediterranean motorway to the El Trapiche junction.

Lorries

This is due to the traffic of lorries heading for the Parque Tecnoalimentario, where there are twenty companies already established, and the industrial estate of the largest cooperative of subtropical fruit, avocados and mangoes in the country, Trops, also located in El Trapiche.

This section of the A-356 carries up to 27,000 vehicles a day, according to the newly approved environmental study, to which SUR has had access. Traffic jams are kilometres long between the different roundabouts, especially in the early morning and lunchtime rush hours.

According to the document published in the Official Bulletin of the Junta de Andalucía (BOJA) on 15 January, the widening of the road from two to four lanes "has been planned in general to be carried out on the right-hand side of the current road, representing a substantial improvement in the geometric characteristics of the road, while allowing the existing accesses to be organised and considerably increasing the capacity and level of service".

Tender process

In its report, the regional government proposes the construction of 1,200 linear metres of acoustic screens which will be approximately three metres high, "in order to reduce, as far as possible, the impact on nearby houses, as well as the laying of sound-reducing asphalt along 5,700 metres, which will greatly reduce this impact and improve the quality of life of the inhabitants of these buildings".

According to the official document from the regional administration, once the road is widened, the final standard section will have two carriageways with two lanes of 3.5 metres each, two outer verges of 2.5 metres, two inner verges of one metre and a central reservation of three metres.

Once the environmental report has been approved, the Junta will continue with the procedures for tendering and executing the project, although no deadlines have been specified.

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