Highway to Oaxaca: update 10/21
THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT THE SANTA MARTHA TUNNEL IS now open. The bad news is that there is no access on the Colotepec side. Blame it on the composition of the mountains where the rocks are varied and complicated, echoing the communities through which the highway will pass.
To get you up to speed (metaphorically), the highway, which was begun in 2007, was supposed to be completed in 2010. Now it is around 65% done and is scheduled to open next March. Do not hold your breath. Work has not even begun on the San Sebastián Coatlán tunnel and the bridges over the Pita and Colotepec rivers and others have to be rebuilt.
It’s not that construction has been going on for 14 years. There were years when no work was done at all as the project was abandoned by first one and then a second construction company that had been granted the concession to build the toll road. (No work or maintenance was done at all for the four years between 2015 and 2019 which explains the landslides and why bridges rusted out.) Now the highway is in the hands of Banobras, the federal infrastructure development bank which has contracted out the construction.
When the 104 km turnpike is done, it should take less than three hours to go from Puerto Escondido to Oaxaca. It will run from highway 200 in Ventanilla, Sta. Ma. Colotepec to Barranca Larga, Ejutla, on highway 175.
