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Lilian Mariño Espinosa – [email protected]
12 years ago, Juan Esteban Gil received perhaps one of the best news he has heard in his career as a civil engineer. It was August 4, 2008 and when he was leading one of the works that was going to mark the future of the La Línea Tunnel, he was able to show how 200 workers who had been digging from Cajamarca (Tolima) met another 200 who came in the opposite direction from Calarcá (Quindío). The tears and even the melody of the Colombian anthem did not seem exaggerated at that moment when the last piece of rock fell, confirming that the Colombian engineers had been able to cross the Central Andes for the first time through a tunnel and that Indeed, the project dreamed of in 1903 was possible.
Gil, who is now Director of Invias, He was the engineer in charge of leading the works for the completion of the pilot tunnel, the one that was awarded in 2005 to analyze whether it was possible to carry out the project to cross the Central Cordillera, and in this way bring western Colombia and the center of the country by land . Today Gil was also in charge of leading the completion of the Darío Echandía Olaya Main Tunnel, which materialized after the passing of 29 presidents, 17 transport ministers and even a pandemic.
The tunnel investment exceeds $ 1.4 billion (see graph) and the project as a whole reaches $ 2.9 billion, since in the structuring in 2008 it was defined that the way to cross the Cordillera was not with two long-dimension tunnels , but with a set of works, which today include 31 viaducts, 25 tunnels and 30 kilometers of dual carriageway.
Yesterday, part of the work was delivered, which already reduces the time to transit the Alto de La Línea from an average of 45 minutes to 15 minutes, and it is expected that the rest of the project, which is about 80% as explained by Gil, be delivered in April 2021.
Tourism will be one of the most benefited, since “30% of the visitors to the region come from Cundinamarca, so this decrease over time we are sure that it will boost tourism by 30% or 40%. In addition, we have studied that convention tourism can grow and in the commercial part we can become a relevant logistics center, since the work could promote the La Tebaida Free Zone ”, explained Rodrigo Estrada, executive president of the Chamber of Commerce of Armenia .
For Gil, the project had five challenges, but perhaps one of the most difficult moments occurred when outside the Government he had to see the abandoned works. This occurred in 2017, a year after the project had been taken away from Carlos Collins’ construction company due to recurring non-compliance. “So when I returned eight years later, under the mandate of President Duque, we found an abandoned work, with quality problems and underfunded. We got to lift a white elephant that was going to total loss, but we raised it and today we are delivering the most important infrastructure work in the history of Colombia ”.
The Quindío road
The Camino del Quindío has always been a strategic route to connect the center with the west and the La Línea Tunnel becomes the strategic work to boost competitiveness and reduce the cost of the products of the Port of Buenaventura, which in 2019 mobilized 42% of foreign trade. The work was carried out in phases and one of the challenges was to overcome the La Soledad fault, which is present in 3.2 km of the 8.6 km tunnel, which made the mountain not stable when drilling. This was overcome with railroad rail arches, 20-meter bolts piercing the mountain, 40-cm-thick hydraulic concrete, and a ring at the bottom.
