Análisis operativo y ambiental de la ampliación de la vía Suba-Cota

Abstract

The Suba-Cota road is part of the road infrastructure of northern Bogotá, which connects the capital city with the municipality of Cota (Cundinamarca), allowing the passage of people who move by inter-municipal transport, private vehicles, school routes, motorcycles, bicycles or people who transport goods and food in heavy-duty vehicles. Over the years, this important road has presented mobility issues, where is evident that the demand for traffic is greater than the capacity of the existing infrastructure, generating long lines daily during peak hours, which decrease the speed of vehicle traffic and increase the time spent on the road. In addition, at kilometer 3.5 in the South-North or Suba-Cota direction, the road meets Carrera 111 (Corpas entrance), where it becomes one of the most critical spots because the intersection does not have a traffic light system that allows the regulation of it, assigning the right of way or priority to vehicles, which shows that is necessary to expand it to a cross-section with greater capacity, which improves the current traffic conditions. On the other hand, this road infrastructure crosses the Thomas Van der Hammen reserve through the area defined for crops and sustainable use, where any project to expand or improve the road requires an environmental analysis that guarantees the care and protection of this area of the Bogotá savannah. Given the above, an operational and environmental analysis of the activities involved in the expansion of the Suba-Cota road was carried out in the present project. In the first instance, a location, identification, and characterization of the pathologies found in the 5. 3 kilometers of flexible pavement was carried out, in order to find out which sections of the road were most affected and their relationship with current traffic, where two sections with percentages of affectation greater than 60% were identified. These results of location, identification, and characterization of the pathologies were organized in a database in the ArcGIS software, in order to recognize the pathologies that characterize each of the analyzed sections. Next, the environmental impacts that can be generated in the activities considered for the construction stages of the Suba-Cota road extension were evaluated, using the Conesa Fernández methodology, which allowed the impacts to be assessed with a qualitative method to assign the levels of importance, obtaining as a result 102 negative impacts classified between irrelevant and severe, and 5 positive impacts classified as important. Finally, Environmental Management Plans were formulated for the impacts resulting from the Environmental Assessment, where measures were designed with activities aimed at preventing, mitigating, correcting, and compensating the effects generated in the development of pre-work activities, activities for the recovery of the right-of-way, and dismantling and abandonment activities.