ARCHIVED - Work begins on new outer ring road to the north-west of Murcia

The 21-kilometre motorway will ease traffic on the massively congested Ronda Oeste ring road

The Ministry of Development has announced that work has started to build a new 21.7-kilometre motorway north-west of the city of Murcia, the aim being to reduce the congestion on the A-7 and the A-30 by separating local traffic from vehicles on longer-distance journeys.

The main cause of the traffic jams which form on a daily basis during the morning, at lunchtime and again in the evening on the motorway which skirts the north-western edge of Murcia is the confluence of the A-7, which runs from Andalucía to Alicante and then north along the Mediterranean coast, and the A-30, which leads from Cartagena in the south to Madrid in central Spain but which coincides with the A-7 for 4 kilometres between Espinardo and the Thader and Nueva Condomina shopping malls. The new motorway will alleviate the problem by creating a kind of short cut for traffic between Madrid or Valencia and Andalucía (or, on a more local scale, between northern Murcia and Alhama), thus easing the flow of traffic on the existing road.

In addition, by taking the new stretch of road and the MU-31 between Alcantarilla and El Palmar, drivers will be able to travel between Madrid and Cartagena without using the “Ronda Oeste” motorway which runs alongside the western edge of the city: this is currently the busiest road in the Region of Murcia, carrying 111,000 vehicles a day.

The whole project is budgeted at a cost of 139 million euros and is divided into three phases: section A, 4.35 kilometres long and budgeted at 44.6 million euros, section B (9.45 km and 48.7 million euros) and section C (7.9 kilometres and 45.6 million euros).

The new road will run between the Alcantarilla junction on the A-7 and the Archena junction of the A-30, with 4 additional exits and entry points which will help to ease traffic in the municipalities of Archena, Lorquí, Ceutí, Alguazas, Las Torres de Cotillas and Murcia, and the work to create it has started with preparation of the land, surveys and other planning actions.

In the end its construction will entail the building of 7 viaducts, 15 bridges and 8 tunnels or underpasses.

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