Due to winter emergency they closed the road between Medellín and Manizales again

Due to the winter season, the road leading from Medellín to Manizales has presented preventive closures in recent hours and users have been asked to travel with caution and inform themselves about the condition of the corridor to avoid mishaps.

The concessionaire Pacífico Tres reported in the early hours of Monday, April 25 that a preventive closure had been ordered in the Puente Arquía sector on the stretch of the La Felisa - La Pintada highway, due to heavy rain on Sunday.

A ravine in the sector overflowed and ended up affecting the road with sediment. Faced with the risk of possible slippage, a decision was made to suspend vehicle traffic.

Later, a landslide occurred in the PR77+200 sector and it was necessary to intervene the machinery, to clear the track and remove the material that fell, to enable restricted and cautious passage over the corridor.

“Vehicular passage to a lane is enabled in the Puente Arquía PR77+200 sector, La Felisa - La Pintada section. We remind our road users to travel with caution due to the heavy rains that have been occurring,” the concessionaire reported.

It is a sedimentation point of the track. According to the newspaper El Colombiano, last Thursday there was a collapse in the same place that forced the road to be completely closed and affected the Ecopetrol pipeline between Medellín and Cartago.

The passage had been enabled since April 22 to a single lane while debris removal work was being carried out, as it is now. Work was also carried out to assess the risk and stabilize the oil pipeline between Santander and the Coffee Region.

In this regard, the emergency response agencies of the concession and the authorities that control vehicle traffic are activated in the sector.

The concessionaire has recommended as an alternative route in previous closures, taking the Medellín exit for La Dorada and then continuing to Manizales, as one of the options to avoid traffic cuts due to construction and emergencies.

During 19 and 20 April, sporadic partial closures had been carried out on the highway, at the height of PR64+500 in the Vereda Guascal sector due to high-risk work in the realignment of the Medellín - Cartago pipeline.

These road closures, especially due to emergencies, have caused damage to transport companies, which on April 21 were forced to suspend travel. The dammed buses were returned to the cities of origin due to the impossibility of passing, according to Semana magazine.

Ánderson Quiceno, director of the Association of Freight Transporters, told the media that transporters are also affected by closures and daily without being able to transit represents up to 1 billion pesos in losses. This corridor is used to connect the capital of Antioquia with the port of Buenaventura.

Another of the roads affected in the department of Antioquia is the one that leads the road from Medellín to Quibdó, due to the heavy rainfall that would have occurred in the El 13 sector of Puente Bolardo, according to the Blu Radio station.

This corridor is kept under a paving contract, but the transfer of the contract derived from the measures taken against the companies that formed the Temporary Union Centros Poblados was ordered for alleged corruption in the MinTIC Digital Centers contract. According to the newspaper El Colombiano, the Vías concession for Chocó, which was in charge of the contract, consisted of ICM Ingenieros S.A.S. and Intec de la Costa S.A.S. and therefore had to be suspended.

The Bogotá Medellín corridor according to Devimed is in normal transit.

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