The European Investment Bank (EIB) has signed a €200 million loan with Interbiak, a public company affiliated with the Department for Infrastructure and Territorial Development of the Provincial Council of Bizkaia.
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The loan will finance the construction of a road tunnel under the Nervión River estuary in the metropolitan area of Bilbao.
The tunnel project will connect the Artaza roundabout in Getxo with the Ballonti roundabout between Portugalete and Sestao. The aim is to address two major challenges of Bizkaia’s metropolitan road network.
First, it will provide an alternative crossing point to the Rontegi Bridge, which currently experiences heavy traffic and can see up to 165 000 vehicles a day at peak times.
This situation means that the road network is vulnerable, and that people have to take longer and more complicated routes to travel from one side of the estuary to the other.
The tunnel will also alleviate high levels of traffic and congestion on the metropolitan network, in particular on critical sections such as the A-8 on the left bank of the estuary, La Avanzada and the Txorierri corridor. These measures are crucial to improve safety and the flow of traffic.
The subfluvial link will be 3.9 km long and will consist of a twin-tube tunnel, each containing two one-way lanes. The infrastructure will also have two interchanges and three at-grade intersections.
One of the added values of the project is that it will provide the necessary tunnel infrastructure to accommodate future multimodal transport plans.
There will be an option to integrate a rail link in one of the tubes, which would provide metro users with a shuttle train connection between the two main suburban metro lines that run along either side of the estuary but don’t cross it.
The subfluvial tunnel project will have multiple benefits, such as saving time spent travelling in an area plagued by heavy urban traffic, and the consequent reduction in air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
This link will also improve access to the Atlantic corridor of the Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) in the urban node of Bilbao. ■