Tolls return to Las Pedrizas motorway in Malaga sooner than expected

Ignacio Lillo

Málaga

Monday, 17 March 2025, 21:24

The consequences of the heavy rains in the province have reached levels that were hard to imagine until a few days ago. The drought, first, and then the series of storms are taking a particular toll on the roads. Last week the road from Ronda to San Pedro was cut, and it will be closed for at least four and a half months; and this weekend it was the turn of Las Pedrizas, north of Malaga.

The serious landslide on the A-45 motorway, which has forced one lane to close, led to an unprecedented decision: for the first time in history, the Ministry of Transport asked the management of the parallel toll motorway, the AP-46, to lift the barriers and allow all drivers to pass through free of charge.

The chaos experienced on the old road due to a rockfall and the works to repair it, led the ministry to request "the release of the road" from the management Autopista del Guadalmedina.

The barriers were opened for free passage at around 5pm on Sunday, 16 March. The plan was that they would remain open until next Friday, although this would depend on the rate of progress of the roadworks.

Finally, the toll road management has announced this Monday afternoon on its social media that the toll will be active again this Tuesday, 18 March, from first thing in the morning, in its usual timetable (the motorway is free during the early hours of the morning, every day).

As a result of this decision, those responsible admitted that this Monday the motorway has had much more traffic than usual for a Monday at this time of year. But it has only taken up a percentage of the 40,000 vehicles that usually travel along the Las Pedrizas road during the week. "We had everything prepared but we are not really seeing a huge amount of traffic. It's true that there is a lot more than normal, but it's certainly not three times as much," which would be the figure resulting from a massive transfer from the A-45 to the AP-46.

The AP-46 motorway was opened to traffic on 28 October 2011, as an alternative long-distance route, especially to connect the Alto de Las Pedrizas to the city of Malaga and the Costa del Sol, which until then caused serious traffic jams on the A-45, especially during the summer with the arrival of tourists.

This is the first time in its almost 14-year history that the toll has been made free of charge for exceptional reasons, due to the damage caused to the free road by last week's storm Konrad.

In the province, there is a very distant precedent for the opening of tolls on the Costa del Sol motorway (AP-7). But this type of measure is very unusual, as it is applied directly by the Ministry of Transport, as the owner of the road network, which must then compensate the concessionary company for the vehicles which have used the toll free of charge during this period of grace.

In addition, since last weekend the Ministry of Transport has been carrying out emergency work to stabilise a slope on the A-45 through Casabermeja, which was damaged by heavy rainfall in the province of Malaga. This intervention, aimed at removing rockslides and strengthening the affected slope, caused traffic jams from Saturday on the dual carriageway in the direction of Cordoba.

Specifically, these episodes of rainfall caused the landslide of the slope on the dual carriageway, at kilometre 128.900, affecting the hard shoulder and right lane of the carriageway in the direction of Córdoba. The traffic management centre warned of the total closure of the road in the area where the works were being carried out.

At this point, cars are being diverted by means of a transfer in the direction of Malaga, between kilometre 128.300 and 129.150, leaving the Malaga direction with two-way traffic between the two kilometre points so that work can be carried out to repair the damage safely for the workers. At around 1pm on Saturday congestion in the Córdoba direction reached six kilometres.