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Contract to draw up plans still has not been awarded almost six months after public tender deadline

In the time it has taken since a pedestrian bridge was supposed to have been built over the AP-7 motorway at Lomas de Cabo Roig in Orihuela Costa, children have been conceived, born, finished school, come of age as adults and even finished university without a single day’s work being done.

The footbridge was supposed to have been built by the developer of Lomas de Cabo Roig urbanisation back in 2004, as a condition of the licence granted to the company by Orihuela Town Hall.

Promises have been broken, protests have fallen on deaf ears and pedestrians have had to take their lives in their hands every time they cross the existing road bridge, which has no pavements or street lighting.

Although the company did put aside a mandatory bank guarantee in case of any failures to comply with the contract, the Town Hall did not present a claim for this money until 2022, and the case has not yet come to court.

Even now, after the current council announced the footbridge as their star project for Orihuela Costa (ahead of a multitude of other, long-standing demands from residents), and assigned €1.37 million in this year’s budget, the contract to draw up the plans still has not been awarded - almost six months after it was put out to tender.

According to residents’ association Unidos por la Costa, by the time that these plans have been drawn up and approved by the national roads department, the contract to actually build the bridge has been put out to tender and awarded, and the work is carried out too, it could well be the middle of 2027.

Image: Unidos por la Costa

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