Coastal Line Final Design Approved

This from local press on the new Avenue Balboa bypass.

Coastal Line Final Design Approved

Jose González Pinilla jagonzalez@prensa.com <mailto:jagonzalez@prensa.com>

The works of construction of the multi million dollar project "coastal line and new road" will begin October 15. Thus the minister of Public Works (MOP), Benjamin Colamarco announced, when he explained to this newspaper the final design of the work. "I can say that for April of 2009 we will have the coastal line", he assured. The project, that in principle was hard criticized by the civil society, now has the endorsement of that sector.

Rodrigo Mejía-Andrión, of Alliance Pro City, maintained that they are satisfied with the design. He said the company Norberto Odebrecht, will construct the project in partnership with Constructora Urbana, S.A. (Cusa), was based on the design that Alliance Pro City had proposed and that was elaborated by architects Boris Aguilar and Alberto Arosemena. The minister informed this week the proceeding order will be granting to the company. And this weekend, the General Contraloría of the Republic authenticated the contract that signed MOP and the company to a cost of 189,1 million dollars. The amount includes 172 million dollars for the construction of the work, one million for deprived affectations, million 500 thousand for environmental plan handling and 4 millions for the affectations of services.

Colamarco maintained that they will deal with the final cost of the work is smaller to 189 million dollars, price that offered Odebrecht-Cusa in the public bidding. The coastal line will begin from the mouth of the Matasnillo river, in the Balboa Ave., to the Seafood Market. It will have an extension of seven kilometers. In addition to the six existing routes of the Balboa Ave., they will be constructed four more lanes on a filling of 30 hectares in the bay.

These four tracks will have a one way towards Paitilla, while the six existing routes go towards the Old Quarter, in San Felipe. It will be constructed to a special avenue for bicycles and bicychair, of seven kilometers of extension and four meters wide. The work will have 2 thousand free public parking and five pedestrian steps for handicapped people. There will be an amphitheatre and fields of games, with water sources in different places.

The monument of Vasco Núñez de Balboa will be removed forwards and will be aligned with Parque Porras. In this point Alliance Pro City it suggested recently stays the original design of the monument. According to the minister, the work will have 25 hectares of park with palms and trees, and there will be bridges of walls armed in front of the Balboa Ave as the Government had designed originally.

Also two viaducts elevated for cars will be constructed. One will be near the Seafood Market and will exit up to the National Avenue, and the other will begin in the Israel Route until the bridge on the Matasnillo river, in the Balboa Ave.. It was known in addition that the line of the cleaning project of the bay will be underground. 60% of the works will become via marine, while 40% are from land, that is to say, in the Balboa Ave. Colamarco said that on the coastal line will not be any kind of condominiums of commercial building. The only one that will be there is the Miramar hotel.