The Minister of Public Works, Transport and Housing of the Government of the Canary Islands, Sebastián Franquis, specified this Monday with the Cabildo of Lanzarote the most outstanding investments and actions that his department is going to carry out on the island in the last year of the current Legislature. As explained by the regional Executive, they will be specified in an investment of about 124 million euros in the implementation of four road works, the projects to build 472 new protected homes, the investment of seven million euros in port works and another eight million that will be allocated both to the maintenance of the island's land public transport system and to finance sustainable mobility.
Minister Franquis held a working meeting this Monday with the President of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, María Dolores Corujo, to whom he conveyed "the commitment of his Ministry to promote and leave on track before the end of the Legislature the major investments in roads, transport, ports and housing planned and coordinated with the island administration at the beginning of the new Canarian Government".
In this way, Franquis assured that in the first three years of the Legislature his Ministry has allocated to this island "74.2 million euros in public works, transport, housing and ports", and the forecast from now until the end of the Legislature, in the summer of 2023, is that this investment "will add another 123.9 million euros in the same areas".
“Anyone can confirm all these projects on the Contracting Platform, they are all reflected there. I say this because the previous custom was to make announcements in the media, but then you would not find these projects, which is where these projects are truly managed. And on this island, a public road work has not been tendered since 2011”, the minister pointed out.
Franquis and Corujo also highlighted the institutional collaboration to carry out several road projects "that had been in the drawers of the Government of the Canary Islands for more than a decade and that have been launched in this Legislature". The regional minister stated that the works of the new roundabout of La Calderina, in Mácher, are already underway, with the forecast that they will be finished in September; and the tender for 3.2 million euros for the new underpass of Playa Honda, which would begin to be executed in autumn.
The minister assured that the largest works will begin to be tendered "at the end of this year and will total 65 million euros". These include the new connection between the Ring Road and the LZ-2 at El Cable (with a planned investment of 10 million euros), which will be tendered before the end of the year; the duplication of the LZ-40 (with 40 million euros) which is expected to be tendered in spring, and the conditioning of the LZ-1 between Guatiza and Órzola (with 15 million euros) whose project is being finalized.
The minister emphasized the "enormous boost" that will be given to public housing on this island with the start of the tender before the end of the year of "the construction of 200 new houses in the Arrecife neighborhood of Maneje, the largest batch of all those that are being launched within the Canary Islands Housing Plan 2020-2025 in all the islands". Franquis highlighted this action because it involves building public housing again in Lanzarote "after 27 years without the Canarian Government building any". An investment of approximately 25 million euros is reserved for this promotion of 200 homes.
“We committed at the beginning of this legislature that we were going to prioritize especially in terms of housing, because it had been 27 years since a public house was built. What we have done is to draft the projects, on a plot that was transferred to us by the Arrecife City Council, and we are going to start building the first 200 homes on the Island”, said Sebastián Franquis.
Other projects for Lanzarote
The regional minister also informed the Cabildo of the preparation of the projects by the Canarian Housing Institute (ICAVI), for the construction of another 172 homes in the municipalities of Yaiza and Arrecife to combat the high price of rentals in stressed municipalities, works for which "about 17 million euros of European funds" are allocated. In addition, he recalled that the public company Visocan is preparing the construction project of "another 100 homes also in Maneje". "To these investments in housing we must also add the 1.6 million that would be invested this year in the second edition of the program of the Housing Plan 2020-2025 to avoid depopulation in municipalities of less than 20,000 inhabitants, or the rental aid for families with fewer resources that each year benefit around 500 conejeras families with an investment of 1.1 million euros", added the minister.
Other works that the Ministry is executing in Lanzarote and La Graciosa are those of ports, with the new Port of Playa Blanca as the most outstanding milestone. These works, in which Franquis assures that "47 million euros have been invested", are already heading towards their final stretch to be fully operational in the summer of this year with the new terminal and pontoons for recreational boats. Since the end of last year, the shipping companies that connect with Corralejo have been operating from the new facilities of this port. In addition, with the aim of continuing to improve the services of these facilities on the island and in La Graciosa, the minister maintains that "an investment of about seven million euros has been planned in the ports of Caleta de Sebo and Puerto del Carmen".
The maintenance of the island's public road passenger transport service has also received support from the Ministry, as detailed by Sebastián Franquis, "with contributions of 12.6 million euros in the first years of the Legislature, including the extra contribution that was made in 2020 to all the councils to cope with the damage caused by the COVID pandemic in the mobility of the Canarians". From now until the end of the Legislature, Franquis announced, "another eight million will be invested in land transport in Lanzarote, a partida that also includes the 3.3 million euros with which the Ministry, with EU funds, will finance several sustainable mobility projects requested by the Cabildo for the purchase of electric vehicles or the installation of charging stations".
“The Government of the Canary Islands is committed to remedy the investment abandonment and discrimination that Lanzarote has suffered with the governments of Coalición Canaria”, said President Corujo, “and Sebastián Franquis is keeping his word: all his announcements, all his promises, are being fulfilled rigorously because there are already several projects that have entered the bidding platform and that are being done or will soon become a reality in Lanzarote”.
Project for Playa Honda
Regarding the future variant of Playa Honda, which is planned by the regional Ministry, Sebastián Franquis reported that "several studies have already been commissioned to convert the current section of the LZ-2 that crosses the town of San Bartolomé into a boulevard with attenuated traffic, in which the circulation of motor vehicles coexists with bike lanes, pedestrians and garden areas".
Minister Franquis explained that once the new variant is finished and enters service, it will take over the current LZ-2, "absorbing the vast majority of the 56,000 vehicles that circulate every day through the Playa Honda crossing, which will allow to free a huge amount of traffic and perform a soft action that allows the coexistence of different modes of more sustainable mobility without the need to bury the current road".
