Date announced for reopening of Ronda-San Pedro road to traffic and it's several weeks ahead of schedule

As expected, the work to reopen the Ronda-San Pedro (A-397) road is proving to be quite a challenge due to the complexity of the process, the urgency to reopen it as soon as possible and the importance of the affected stretch. The road was seriously affected by the heavy storms this past March, when a huge rockslide happened, severly damaging a viaduct and forcing the total closure of the bridge. On top of this, the terrain is characterised by very steep slopes, which makes the application of careful and very specific techniques essential.

However, all the efforts have proven to be successful and the regional ministry of public works of the Junta de Andalucía regional government (Fomento) will be able to reopen the road to traffic on Monday, 14 July, earlier than initially planned.

As SUR has learned, it will be a partial reopening, involving one lane on the Ronda-San Pedro road. Despite the limitations, it will bring a relief for the thousands of drivers who use the road every day to go from the Serranía to the Costa del Sol. In recent months, several complaints about the weakness of road communications in Ronda and the surrounding area have been raised by the mayors in the affected districts, workers and business owners.

The incident that led to this entire road infrastructure complication happened on 8 March, when a massive landslide was trigerred in the municipality of Benahavís.

The latest work has focused on rebuilding the foundatons of the affected viaduct. The new support beams were manufactured in a workshop in Ronda. In the next few days, the repair team will undertake work on the lateral defence barrier, the road itself, drainage and the corresponding signposting.

Next week, one of the lanes will be reopened, while the work continues.

The regional minister of Fomento - Rocío Díaz - made a personal commitment to shorten the deadlines and return the road to normal as soon as possible. Her department has certainly managed to speed things up, which came at a cost - the investment budget grew from 3.7 to 4.5 million euros.

As required for work in a hostile terrain, the teams were advised by geotechnical experts at all times.

The first step necessary to rebuild the road was to make sure that the slope was stable. The great initial challenge was to remove all the unstable rocks with heavy machinery, manual means with specialists in vertical work and controlled micro-blasting. Another temporary stumbling block was the difficulty of bringing a large crane to the area.

Containment membranes were progressively installed in the upper and middle areas of where the land slipped.

Once the road is reopened, additional stabilisation actions will be necessary in order to ensure safety. Due to the complexity of the work, the technicians were hesitant to set any deadlines.

The initially planned timeframe for opening one lane was four and a half months. This was to alleviate the situation, although with complications, by opening traffic with alternative crossings between the two directions. Thanks to Fomento's investment and efforts, this timeframe has been shorted by two weeks. The road is expected to be fully reopened in September.

On the day of the landslide, Malaga province registered up to 44mm of rainfall in some inland areas. Overflowing river and stream warnings followed one after the other. Some institutions, such as Malaga's provincial authority, are still immersed in millions of euros worth of work to repair the significant damage to the provincial road network.