The Ronda Norte and Mayor Canteli: “The donkey returns to the prairie” – Nortes | Focused on the periphery

What are politicians for? What good is having them if they don’t solve the problems? This is one of the questions that hover over all the television talk shows, interested rather than interesting, and also the conversations in the bar, or at the chigre, more typical of this land.

This reflection comes here to put in focus the management of the mayor of Oviedo and his insistence on North Round of Oviedowhich only he sees as essential, as well as in the attack on the alternative of Via a la Pixarra. In order to understand the mayor’s position, we need a small analysis of the two alternatives that are proposed to connect the neighborhoods in the northwest of Oviedo with the main communications network of Asturias.

On the one hand, the Northern Round, as proposed by Canteli and his team, would consist of a single tunnel with an entrance at the height of the Fitoria sandpit, and an exit in the area of ​​San Lázaro de Paniceres, which represents almost four kilometers of tunnel, without further access, and without any use for those who live in Naranco Citywho will only know that cars pass under their houses at a depth of about sixty meters, while they continue to suffer from the lack of connection with the center, limited as until now to Ramiro I Street, the Marquina Viaduct, and the tunnel , finally expanded, by Nicolás Soria.

On the other hand, the proposal presented by the platform There are alternatives of the Vía a la Pixarra, with a straight line length of less than two kilometers (1.94 km), which is already urbanly planned, and with a surface layout that overcomes a difference in level of 88 meters, which would, for a straight layout, a slope of 4.5%. To make a comparison, Fuertes Acevedo Street has a greater slope, and if we think that the route will not be straight and that the route proposed for the failed Montecanales urbanization was 2.6 km, the average slope would be 3. 4%.

Once the two alternatives have been presented, we must remember the recent experience of the construction of the Pajares Bypass, with a 24.6 km main tunnel, a final cost of 3.8 billion euros, and a duration of the works of nineteen years. This layout is not comparable, but it does give us an idea of ​​the cost of tunnel construction, to which it is necessary to add that railway tunnels, much narrower than road tunnels, have much lower costs and deadlines.

There is no doubt that the construction of the alternative Vía a la Pixarra will have a significant cost, and the execution time will not be short, but in comparison with the Ronda Norte tunnel the advantage will easily be ten to one. So, if the construction of the Via a la Pixarra could last two years, the Canteli tunnel would take close to twenty.

And if the deadlines are important, the costs are even more so. A lot more. There was talk at the time of a budget of more than two hundred million euros, which if updated would be around three hundred. If we now apply the usual extra costs in these works, following the Variant model, with an initial budget of 1,085.5 million euros, the factor to multiply would be 3.8, resulting in an estimate of more than one billion euros.

Once these two scenarios have been raised, it is time to ask the important question: what interests does Canteli defend? Because it does not seem to be that of the affected citizens. Opting for a twenty-year project versus a two- and billion-year budget, even without having an estimate of the cost of the Vía de la Pixarra, clearly tells us who the mayor is with, and of course, not It is in favor of the surrounding neighbors.

The consideration towards those who populate the enormous neighborhood that constitutes Vallobín, La Argañosa, Les Campes, La Florida, Parque del Oeste, the multiple phases of Pórticos, along with those of San Claudio, to which we must unite the rural area on the slopes of the Naranco, Villamar, Tresllames, La Lloral, Les Maces, and so many towns, quintanas and scattered houses, should lead the entire municipal corporation to stand up against those interests of developers, construction companies and others. “prays”, whose name is not that I don’t want to, it’s just that it’s not convenient for me to remember. It is the citizens and neighbors of Oviedo who I remember, and who their mayor should worry about.