The City Council is going to invest nearly 20 million euros in financing the infrastructure, which starts from Comunidad Valenciana avenue to the PP 3/1 roundabout
The new road that will connect Benidorm with the industrial estate and the N-332 will come into operation in the summer of 2025
The project includes, among other actions, two lanes in each direction and burying traffic under the train track, following the model of Beniardá Avenue
The mayor highlights that it is “the largest and most budgetary work that a city council is carrying out in the province.”
The works on the roundabout and the new road that will connect Benidorm with the future industrial and commercial estate and National Highway 332 will be completed in the summer of 2025. This was announced this Thursday by the city's mayor, Toni Pérez, during a visit to them to see first-hand the evolution of these works. The mayor has defined the construction of what is known as 'Vial Discotecas' as “one of the largest engineering works being carried out in the province of Alicante” and recalled that it is “entirely financed with municipal funds, in the face of the State's refusal to assume its part."
Accompanied by municipal technicians and numerous members of the Municipal Corporation, including the mayor of Urban Planning, Lourdes Caselles, the mayor has toured the works of this road together with the technicians of the company, Públicas SA (Tecopsa), who explained in detail all the actions that are being carried out.
The construction of this link was the condition required by the Ministry to give the green light to the development of PP 3/1, which includes the construction of the shopping centre designed by Unibail Rodamco. It is estimated that the industrial and commercial estate will offer more than 2,000 direct and as many indirect jobs.
The City Council will invest close to 20 million euros in the construction of this link, “a complex work that, budgetarily, must be the largest that is currently being carried out in the province and is being carried out by a city council, the Benidorm City Council, despite the intermodality and the connection with other routes that are the exclusive responsibility of the State,” according to Pérez.
The project includes the construction of a road with two traffic lanes in each direction; infrastructure for pedestrian and bicycle mobility; as well as a large roundabout that will travel under the N-332 bypass, establishing in turn a new connection with the partial plan of the industrial and commercial estate or with the area of the old AP-7 toll. Likewise, it contemplates the burying of road traffic in the section where the train track runs – between the Intermodal station and Les Coves –, through a tunnel that will follow the operation adopted on Beniardá Avenue. “Just one of the various actions planned in the project, such as the burying of traffic under the Generalitat Valenciana Railway tracks, can serve as an example to get an idea of the magnitude of these works,” Pérez stressed.
For all this, he has defined the resulting new avenue as a “very important, fundamental project” and has recalled that it “was already reflected in the General Urban Planning Plan of 1990, 34 years ago.”
Once in operation, the Vial Discotecas “will improve all the connection nodes, especially in Levante and Rincón de Loix areas,” highlighted the mayor, who also emphasized that the execution is characterized by “ maximum respect for all the issues that the administrations with responsibility for the Environment have been pointing out and that we have been complying with step by step.”
About the work
The work was awarded by Benidorm City Council to the company Tecopsa for an amount of 16,165,746.66 euros, which will be financed through bank loans. Apart from paying for these infrastructures, the City Council has also assumed the acquisition of the land necessary for their construction. Virtually all of the land has been obtained through mutual agreements with the owners, thus facilitating the entire expropriation process.
The mayor explained that this method of financing has been chosen “because the economy of the people of Benidorm is very well managed and we can arrange loans, even though they are infrastructures that do not obey the municipal economies.” Furthermore, because "this is a work that we are going to enjoy for many years and it is good that we finance it over time so as not to condemn, for the satisfaction of a few, the growth of the city or the own resources that we derive for the action of the City Council year after year.”
Finally, the first mayor regretted that the Ministry "not only has not assumed what is within its competence, such as the execution of this connecting roundabout, but it has also made the completion of this work conditional on being able to grant licenses for the development of PP 3/1 when we are talking about an approach that dates back to the year 90 and that already obtained all the approvals 34 years ago." “Sometimes conditions are imposed on us that others are not,” he added, concluding by pointing out that, with the works already in a very advanced state, “we are going to continue putting all our efforts into making them a reality as soon as possible.”
