The Ministry of Public Works of the Canary Islands Government has awarded to the UTE formed by the companies HSIA-Esteyco the drafting of the project to duplicate the LZ-40, or Carretera de Las Playas, between the Lanzarote airport and the town of Puerto del Carmen, in the municipality of Tías. "Once the contract with the successful bidder is formalized, endowed with 273,586 euros, it has a period of 12 months to deliver to the Government a construction project that culminates, after 35 years, the double-lane road that was planned for this road in 1986", they point out from the Executive.
In this regard, they emphasize that "the current road was built in 1989 and only one of the two lanes initially planned by the planning was executed". For this reason, they highlight that with this project they give "a definitive boost to the execution of an old demand of the Lanzarote society that will also allow a greater development of the tourist activity of the island of Lanzarote, since the Carretera de Las Playas connects the urbanizations that have been developing in recent years next to the beaches of the municipality of Tías".
With this award, the Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Housing affirms that it intends to "expand the current road with a new lane parallel to the existing one that provides sufficient accessibility to the tourist area and, at the same time, allows maintaining the capacity and safety of the road with adequate access control". The execution of this second lane "will allow doubling the capacity of the road, with two lanes for each direction, and will also increase the safety conditions at crossings and level crossings", they add.
The new road, with a route of eight kilometers, will start from the link with the LZ-2 that goes to the airport and the town of Tías, and will end at the roundabout at the entrance to Puerto del Carmen that connects with the LZ-504.
"This duplication of the LZ-40 constitutes the drafting of the third project that is awarded on the island of Lanzarote in the last six months with the aim of starting the works in the final two years of the current legislature", highlight from the regional Government, which recalls that the island of Lanzarote "has a significant deficit in road works since no project has been executed in it since 2011". For this reason, the Minister Sebastián Franquis, launched at the beginning of the legislature a working table jointly with the Cabildo of Lanzarote to "coordinate and prioritize the actions of public works on the island".
As a result of that working table, the drafting of the following projects has already been awarded: link of the LZ-2 with the Circunvalación (LZ-3), the conditioning of the LZ-1 between Guatiza and Órzola, and now, the duplication of the LZ-40 between the airport and Puerto del Carmen. It is planned that the works of these three projects will be tendered and begin to be executed in the period 2022-2023.
In addition, the Ministry granted the Cabildo of Lanzarote a subsidy of 3.1 million at the end of 2020 to execute several improvement works in the Travesía de Tahiche, the link of San Bartolomé, the accesses to the airport and to install panels against noise in the LZ-2.