Caminos

Passing through Cuatro Caminos at rush hour is an experience that, if you can avoid it, the better. The problem is that the people who cross its road every day have been waiting for decades for a solution that does not come. The good news is that the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility has approved provisionally the informative study of the Guadalajara bypass and the conditioning of the N-320 highway. An administrative step with which the Ministry hopes to soon relieve traffic in one of the most saturated accesses of the capital of Alcarreña. What has been approved. The document contemplates works for an estimated amount of 103.7 million euros, VAT included, as reported by the Ministry itself. Of course, it should be noted that the provisional approval is not the only thing that remains, as can be expected, since the next procedure will be the release of the project to public information in the Official State Gazette (BOE). What the project consists of. The works will be divided into three main actions: The first is the Guadalajara variant itself, 6,626.55 meters long, which will run from kilometer 269.480 of the N-320 to the Cabanillas del Campo junction with the A-2. Of the four alternatives that have been studied, the Ministry has finally opted for this route, somewhat shorter than the other options. The second action is the splitting of the N-320 between kilometers 290.02 and 295.68, a section that will become a highway. And the third is a new Eastern connection, by conventional road, between the Fuente la Niña junction, on the A-2, and the existing link between the N-320 and the N-320A. Added to all this are several new links and the remodeling of others, including the crossing of the variant with the N-320 itself and the semi-link with the CM-2004. relief for Four Paths. The Cuatro Caminos roundabout is, according to has recognized on several occasions the City Hall itself, one of the most critical points in terms of traffic in the entire city. In March 2023, when the study was presented for the first time by the then mayor, Alberto Rojo, together with the Secretary General of Infrastructure, Xavier Flores, it was explained that the set of actions linked to the N-320 (including the South and East roads) could reduce traffic pressure on that junction by up to 50%, according to Nueva Alcarria. The variant does not solve the problem of Cuatro Caminos by itself, but it would remove from that point a considerable part of the through traffic that today crosses it. ccriticism from the City Council. Not everyone in Guadalajara has received the news with the same enthusiasm. And the second deputy mayor, Alfonso Esteban, has asked to the Government to definitively expedite the processing and recalled that the Ministry submitted this same study to public information already in February 2023, then committing to approve it that same year. “Three years later, the only known news is the provisional approval of the aforementioned document, it has been three lost years,” declared Esteban. The mayor has insisted that this provisional approval does not imply the start of the works, since there are still procedures such as a new public information period, the Environmental Impact Declaration, the final approval of the study, the drafting of the construction project and the issue of its budgets. Four Paths, a separate debate. The Town Hall maintains that the variant and the solution for Cuatro Caminos are two related but different issues. As declared by the City Council in November 2024 to the State Highway Demarcation, the definitive solution for this junction involves the total or partial burying of traffic, while “any other action would be provisional,” the City Council itself states. Esteban explained that a system of elevated pedestrian walkways was discarded due to lack of consensus between the institutions involved, due to accessibility and safety problems, and that the General Directorate of Traffic proposed as a provisional alternative to place traffic lights on pedestrian crossings and accessibility improvements. Cover image | Ministry of Transport and Asqueladd (Wikimedia Commons) In Xataka | “We have six kilometers that have melted due to the heat”: in the face of extreme temperatures, France needs to Spanishize its roads