Ausejo (La Rioja), (EFE) works that have recently started.
The Minister for Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez, has visited the work on this “semi-link” of the AP-68 along with the President of the Government of La Rioja, Concha Andreu, and the Vice President of Navarra, Javier Remírez, in addition of mayors of municipalities of La Rioja Baja and La Ribera de Navarra.
With this work, which has a budget of more than 4 million euros, the Government of Spain “is now taking a step that no one had dared to take in forty years”, stated the minister, alluding to the fact that the AP-68 already has with a link in this area, in the La Rioja municipality of Pradejón, but it can only be accessed to travel in the direction of Zaragoza.
With the new link to Lodosa -actually it is on the land that separates that Navarrese municipality with the municipality of Ausejo in La Rioja- this situation will be solved and it will be possible to access the motorway in both directions in the same area.
This connection, which will involve the construction of 3.6 kilometers of new roads, will allow “rectifying an anomaly”, he said, referring to the fact that the AP-68 motorway can only be accessed in one direction, something that he hopes will be corrected at the end of this year, at the beginning of next winter.
Those arriving at this point from La Rioja municipalities such as El Villar de Arnedo, Ausejo or Pradejón, and from the Navarrese of Lodosa and Sartaguda will then be able to travel in the direction of Bilbao, without making a displacement of about twenty kilometres.
El Villar bypass and A-12 motorway
Sánchez has stressed that this action is an example of all those carried out by his ministry in La Rioja and of the “solid commitment” of the central government with the development of La Rioja, something in which he has framed the projects of the El Villar Variant de Arnedo, on the N-232 (barely two kilometers from the junction) whose project will be published for public information in the coming weeks.
In addition, he has assured that the needs study for the La Rioja section of the AP-68 is already in the process of being drafted, with a view to its liberalization, scheduled for November 2026.
And on the A-12 motorway, which connects La Rioja with Castilla León, this year the projects for the section between Villamayor del Río (the first municipality of Burgos to be reached from La Rioja) to Ibeas de Juarros, will be tendered. and the last section, Ibeas-Burgos, will be submitted to public information.
Also in terms of highways, the minister has ensured that the southern roundabout of Logroño will come into service at the end of next year, which will allow “a large volume of traffic, up to 40,000 vehicles a day”, she explained, not having to cross Logroño, but go around it between Navarrete and Arrúbal, with a route of about 30 kilometers by highway, after an investment of 133 million euros.
The President of the Government of La Rioja, Concha Andreu, has highlighted that the point where the Lodosa link is built is “emblematic for all of us who are from this area” because “it is an example of the badly done things that had to be correct” since “I think it may be the only case in Spain of an exit to a highway in only one direction, nonsense.”