THE Council of Majorca announced yesterday that contracts for a total value of 13 million euros are being put out to public tender for the construction of three new major access roads to Palma.
Public Works Director Antony Alemany, accompanied by Council of Majorca President Francina Armengol, said that the awards of contract will be made within six weeks and that the works themselves are scheduled to be complete in less than a year.
The works which will free up access to Palma will affect the Ma-13 motorway where a new link will be built to Sa Cabana; the Ma-11 (the Soller road) which will lead directly to the Palma ring road; and the ring road itself where a bypass to the Manacor dual carriageway will be built.
Armengol said that the Council of Majorca has a public commitment to build the access roads.
All these projects, explained Alemany, are to be financed through an agreement signed with Central Government's Ministry of Public Work amounting to 685 million euros payable between now and 2017.
Spending on Palma access roads, furthered Armengol, had begun earlier this year with the building of the third lane of the ring road - still incomplete - and with the access roads to the new general hospital of Son Espases. She said that so far this year, the Council of Majorca had spent 33 million euros on road-building in Palma.
The new link from the Ma-13 with the Camí de Sa Cabana will decongest the exits from the city suburbs of Sa Indioteria, Sa Cabana and Sa Cabaneta, providing direct access to the motorway with two intersections at different levels.
The second of the three contracts aims to unblock the dangerous bottlenecks which accumulate daily at the exit to the ring road onto the Manacor roundabout near the Balearic football stadium. This exit is used by traffic wanting to access the dual carriageway running east of the city.
Structural solutions here, say the Council of Majorca lie in building a connecting tunnel to avoid noise for local residents and unsightly impact on the environment. A new pedestrian crossing will be built, eliminating the present one.
The third project is the link from the ring road itself to the Soller road, the Ma-11, as at the moment only vehicles coming from outside Palma going in the direction of the airport are able to get onto the ring road. A new roundabout will be built over the current intersection in front of Palma prison with a short branch-road heading off in the direction of Andratx.