The reasons why the road between Bogotá and Girardot collapsed and its corrective measures

After the road between Bogotá and Girardot collapsed on Tuesday night, April 12 and the early morning of Wednesday, April 13, forcing dozens of travelers to be stuck in their vehicles for between three and four hours waiting for them to enable the passage, the Vía 40 Express concession explained why the road collapsed, and announced the new measures that will be will take to facilitate mobility in this road corridor.

According to the explanations given by Vía 40, 35,000 vehicles were mobilized on Tuesday, 15,000 more than the 20,000 that usually transit the highway, which, in addition to an accident near the Chusacá toll in Soacha, in which a soda transport vehicle suffered a breakdown and was about to tip over and a tractor-truck was In addition to the closure of the Sumapaz Tunnel, in addition to the closure of the Sumapaz Tunnel, as part of the fulfillment of the work schedule for the construction of the third lane on the Bogotá -Girardot highway, caused the road to collapse.

The Secretary of Mobility, Jorge Godoy, warned that in addition to the more than 12 points of intervention, which “predictably” would affect mobility in those places, there was also the early departure of thousands of travelers who found that freight vehicles were also moving along the road, since the restriction for these was scheduled as of Wednesday.

“People, because they won on Wednesday, started to leave since Tuesday and found themselves with cargo vehicles, and the concession had not stopped working either; this added up to generate this chaos,” Godoy explained to El Tiempo.

New measures

The concession, in order to respond to the problems on the road, activated the contingency plan, which provides for the suspension of the night closures of the Sumapaz tunnel.

“In these remaining days of Holy Week and until next week we will resume work inside the Guillermo León Valencia tunnel, that is, on these nights and starting tonight, we will not have scheduled closures,” Hernán Alarcón, director of operations of the concession, announced through social networks.

However, he said that due to the complexity of the works, the closure of a lane will continue permanently, “only the activities that are carried out in the closed lane that we usually have inside the tunnel to complete the works we have been developing.”

Likewise, the concession also announced, through a statement, that it reduced active construction fronts since the afternoon of April 13, and that to facilitate traffic, contingency plans are being implemented with the National Police to allow the mobility of users.

For his part, the head of the Transit and Transport Section of Cundinamarca, Lieutenant Colonel Diego Edixon Mora Muñoz, announced, through a video shared on Twitter, the restriction of cargo for vehicles of 3.4 tons onwards, during Holy Week. For Holy Thursday, from 6 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon, Friday will not apply this measure, on Saturday we will have it from 12 noon to 11 in the evening, ending on Sunday from 10 in the morning to 11 at night”.

Finally, he recalled that for the return plan, on Saturday and Sunday another lane will be allocated through the Nariz del Diablo sector, with two remaining in the direction of Bogotá and only one operating towards Girardot.

“The big traffic is Saturday and Sunday, which is from Girardot to Bogotá. That is why in the return plan we will guarantee the two lanes to Bogotá, on all sections of the road. So, there will be only one lane left from Bogotá to Girardot on Saturday and Sunday,” explained Alarcón.

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