Bridge of Americas crawl frustrations
With plans underway to ease the anticipated Christmas season traffic snarls for Panama motorists, drivers coming from the interior are already frustrated with the seemingly never ending repairs to the Bridge of the Americas.
On some nights it can take up to two hours to cross a s two lanes of the bridge are closed for a rehabilitation project that was supposed to be finished months ago, but which has dragged on without an end in sight.
Public works officials, asked when the project will be finished, don’t have an answer reports La Prensa.
“It’s like a house,” Minister of Public Works Ramon Arosemena said. “You have to keep doing maintenance.”
But for months motorists have watched a house project that seems more focused on taking care of the lawn than it does repairing the roof.
Workers spent months focused on repairing the fence on both sides of the bridge, an aspect of the project that doesn’t seem to be essential to the functioning of the structure.
The construction company MCM Global, S.A. received the $74 million contract to rehabilitate the bridge, which is more than 50 years old, during the previous administration, but payment problems delayed the project.
In April 2015 Arosemena said that the payment issues had been resolved and that the work would be finished in early 2016.
Now, with frustration over the project growing, the deadline appears to be “unknown.”
Omar López and Darío Solís, two coworkers who get caught in the congestion nightly, say it is
like “penitence” trying to cross the bridge after a long working day.
On a recent night at 10 p.m., they were stopped in traffic at El Chorillo that was moving so slowly that a reporter on foot was able to interview them as they waited.
Gonzalez said that to get to his destination in La Chorrera, it takes up to two hours, with most of the time being spent waiting to cross the bridge.
Arosemena said he sympathizes with the motorists, but he said the work needs to be done. He said he inherited the project from the last government, which neglected the maintenance.
His point: It’s better to have a half closed bridge than one that can’t be used at all. But it’s a tough message to sell to motorists who spend hours each day getting to and from work, says La Prensa.
