The Ministry of Public Works, Transport and Housing of the Government of the Canary Islands has published the tender to contract the drafting of the layout and construction project of the new highway between the Lanzarote airport and the Argana link, on the LZ-3, which gives access to the Doctor José Molina Orosa University Hospital, a new road that "will allow a more agile and fluid connection to motorists in the south of the island and the capital between two essential island infrastructures such as the airport and the hospital." This project drafting is put out to tender with an allocation of 1,646,682 euros.
The new highway that is projected "must solve the current capacity problems" and connectivity that registers the layout of the LZ-2 that connects the Arrecife ring road with the LZ-40 and the access to the airport, a road through which an average of 65,000 vehicles pass daily, the one with the highest intensity in Lanzarote. This factor, together with the presence of industrial and residential areas, such as Playa Honda, on its margins, service roads and different connections to allow all movements, "make its current level of service deficient, and it is foreseeable that, in the medium term, its capacity will be insufficient to meet the road transport needs in this area of the island, which advises the search for solutions to this problem," say from the Government of the Canary Islands.
Added to this scenario is that in the Arrecife ring road (LZ-3) is the only access link to the hospital area of the island, which shares location with the important residential area of Argana, which causes long retentions on the shoulders of the LZ-3 highway due to the accesses to Argana being collapsed at peak hours, hindering the access of ambulances and health personnel in shift changes.
Therefore, from this previous analysis, the road technicians confirm capacity problems in an eight-kilometer section bounded between the new airport link at the intersection between the LZ-2 and LZ-40, and the Argana link located on the LZ-3 that generate a circulatory collapse in this area of the island.
To determine the layout of the new highway that must be projected, in the last two years several previous studies of alternatives to the current layout of the LZ-2 between the airport and Argana have been carried out, and one focused on the alternatives to prevent the LZ-2 from crossing and splitting the town of Playa Honda in two halves. As a result of these previous technical studies, the project that is going to be drafted now includes the alternative that the alternative study determined as "the most advantageous" from a technical point of view, which is to make an outer variant that connects the LZ-3 with the LZ-40 outside of Playa Honda, diverting in this way, most of the traffic of the LZ-2 that currently crosses this town.
That new direct variant between Argana and the airport, which would be called LZ-5, would allow a faster and more agile connection in the connections between both infrastructures and, in addition, transform the current LZ-2 that covers the same route into an island road with calmed traffic. In the local area of Playa Honda, this alternative would allow transforming the section of the current LZ-2 that crosses Playa Honda as a crossing, into a boulevard with calmed traffic, bike lanes and large promenade areas with sports and outdoor recreation spaces.
Already in its connection with the airport area, the project for this new highway must have several alternatives since the final solution will be agreed upon with the Cabildo of Lanzarote, the city council of Tías and that of San Bartolomé to not interfere in the development of the industrial area next to the airport, alternatives that could include specific undergrounding of the LZ-2.