Benidorm opens Beniardá avenue to traffic

At noon today, Avenida Beniardá has been definitively opened to road traffic after a little more than eight months closed to undertake the works of burying it as it passes through the TRAM track. An act attended by the acting mayor Toni Pérez, accompanied by members of the municipal corporation and hundreds of residents who had gathered to take a brief walk through the renovated section and thus learn first-hand the details of the work and the work that remains to be carried out, mainly in the upper part of the underground section.

The act, framed within the weekly campaign 'A pie de calle', began at 11:15 a.m., with many residents in the vicinity of the entrance to the underpass. From there, a walk has been made to the end of the work, where many of the attendees boarded a double-decker bus to make the reverse journey and check, 'in situ', that the tunnel is high enough so that any type of vehicle can pass under it.

After that, the formal act of signing the commissioning act was carried out by the mayor Toni Pérez, the acting councilor for Public Space, José Ramón González de Zárate, as well as the technicians responsible for the work. A protocol act, but mandatory to be able to proceed with the official opening of the road.

An opening took place minutes after which the first vehicles began to pass eight and a half months after it was closed to traffic on September 15.

In this sense, the acting mayor of Benidorm, Toni Pérez, has once again expressed "eternal gratitude to the residents of this area who have had to endure the inconvenience that a work like this entails" and has also remembered the " thousands of drivers” who used the avenue every day “and who have dealt very satisfactorily with all the alternatives to traffic that we had designed from the City Council”.

It must be remembered that this action has allowed the suppression of the old level crossing and its transformation into a pedestrian-cyclist crossing with the construction of an underpass under the railway infrastructure for the passage of wheeled vehicles.

This new underpass has a section with two traffic lanes in each direction and the pedestrian and cyclist routes on the surface are maintained.

During these months, the work has entailed the reordering of surface traffic, with numerous alternative itineraries to facilitate the transit of drivers. In addition, an improvement and urban integration of the railway crossing will be carried out, with the construction of pedestrian space on both sides of the railway platform.

Toni Pérez has highlighted the intervention that "Benidorm is a great city that undertakes works of a great city and this is one of them". The mayor recalled that the objective "was the passage of vehicles under the train track, but also attend to those who have experienced the greatest incidences of a work of this magnitude, who are the neighbors." That has been the reason why the walking section has been carried out before the opening to traffic.

“I think we could afford an hour of the pedestrian opening so that everyone could get to know the work from the inside, to see the rainwater collection system, the anti-storm tank with access to the l'Aigüera ravine and the absorption capacity of vehicles of all types and heights,” he said. In addition, while work continues on the left side of the underpass, one lane going down will remain closed.

Pérez also specified that they were looking for a day with neighborhood prominence "so that they could savor what has been a longing for many years because the railway line has been with us for 100 years and it was worth it for people to enjoy it today".

In his opinion, the execution of this work and its design "allows pedestrians to move to their commonplace, the surface, so that from now on it will only be vehicles that cross that passage, which is already a reality and that It was a great goal."

The investment for the execution of these works has been financed by European Next Generation funds and has amounted to 5,287,983.97 euros. The initial expected term was 16 months, although from the beginning it was indicated that they would be shortened to have the work open to traffic on the first day of July. Finally, the efforts made have made it possible to further shorten that period by one month.