Bogota’s district administration presented a traffic megaproject today, intended to decrease the notorious traffic jams in Southwest Bogotá, specifically within the communities of Kennedy and Bosa. The area is referred to as the Alsacia-Tintal-Constitución corridor.
This project promises the opportunity to facilitate more efficient transportation via automobile, but also by bike, with 12 kilometers of roadways and 29.8 kilometers of bikeways yet to be constructed. This corridor will also offer broad and forested sidewalks and three lanes for traffic in each direction.
The project is intended to benefit more than 1.5 million inhabitants by reducing transportation times to the center of the city. It will also allow a connection to some of the main roads of Bogotá, including Las Américas, Boyacá, 13th and Villavicencio Avenues, as well as Bosa and Ciudad de Cali Avenues, which are still under construction with 81% and 60% completion rates respectively.
The mayor of Bogotá, Enrique Peñalosa, expects the construction cost to be approximately US $2.9 billion dollars, or 900 billion Colombian pesos, and will involve the purchase of 487 properties. If funded, the project is scheduled to start in early 2018 and to end by late 2019, and will require the reallocation of 1,210 families and businesses to purchase the territories, according to the Urban Development Institute (IDU).
