Authorities of the Ministry of Transportation and Public Works and the municipalities of Montevideo and Canelones coincided this Monday with representatives of the business consortium that plans to launch a Train-Tram between Coast City and Montevideo, as part of the event “New ideas for metropolitan mobility”, organized by the Center for Development Studies, on the floor of the complex World Trade Center.
There, details of this and other important infrastructure works that are planned for the metropolitan area in the short and medium term were given. In that framework, Alejandro Ruibal, commercial and operations vice president Saceem, considered the “Tren-Tram” as “a mobility project that is going to be a before and after in the metropolitan area.”
“As in 400 cities of more or less 2 million inhabitants in the world, precisely what it does is move away from an atomized system, as we have today of bus lines ‘stacked up’ in some axes to a trunk-fed system,” he said. Ruibal.
And he added: “It is a change, it is a new breaking of paradigms and it is a change that is going to come no matter what, because today with the Central Railway functioning, it is logical that we think about a Train-Tram to the east.”
At the moment, the project is in a pre-feasibility study, a situation in which it would be for a few weeks while it is studied by various state agencies. If through the feasibility studies it is understood that the project is viable, a list of conditions will be put together for the call to interested companies, where the consortium that proposed the idea has a preferential score.
Deadlines and financing
“Large projects have their times, doubts must be cleared up, we must discuss, the minister said it, the people from the mayor’s office said it. Cannelloni. This project starts from Pinewood, comes to the Old City, but clearly, being a Train-Tram, you can get on the network of the Central Railway. It could also be extended towards the east, eventually towards Atlantis in the future. And these projects must be thought of in the long term,” he said. Ruibal.
“I think we are talking about something for 2025 perhaps, and it is a work that will take 2 or 3 years to complete, it will generate many jobs and really reconfigure the metropolitan area,” said the businessman.
For Marcos Taranto, executive president of Stiler, A company that is also a member of the consortium in charge of the work, reported that after this current feasibility stage, the search for financing will come to then complete the project.
Taranto defined that what is sought “as a summary is to improve the quality of life of the population of the metropolitan area of the Uruguay”.
The vision of public authorities
For the Municipality of Cannelloni, It is essential that the new means of transportation “be integrated into the metropolitan transportation system (STM), that the bus routes and public spaces that will be used to carry out the project, which will travel 35 kilometers, with 33 stops, be reorganized and articulated.” on his journey,” he reported at the event Paola Florio, Director of Territorial Planning of the Municipality of Cannelloni.
It is expected to establish “a joint work table” between the national government represented by the Ministry of Transportation and Public Works and the municipalities of Montevideo and Canelones.
Interspa highway, the other big bet
The minister José Luis Falero announced to the highway as one of the major works in the medium term and stressed that the intention is to decongest traffic on the route Interspa. The highway would have around 45% of the traffic that today chooses the Interbalnearia.
The project under study proposes the construction of a 20 kilometer stretch from the vicinity of the Interspa Route to Route 8, passing over Route 34 and 107.
The minister pointed out that the objective is for the fast track to begin in the Carrasco Airport. This implies a change with what was proposed until now, since it was planned as an alternative that the highway would begin about two or three kilometers from the air terminal.
The proposal was formally made last Friday to the authorities of the Municipality of Cannelloni, who expressed their agreement with the initiative. It was decided that in approximately 20 days the final layout of the work will be reported.
Source: Ambito
