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Túnel de la Línea: Colombia opens South America's longest road tunnel
Colombia inaugurated yesterday South America's longest road tunnel.
8.65 km long Túnel de la Línea took so many years to build and cost $270 million.
It is a great day for the tunneling community of Colombia.
President of Colombia called it 'Tunnel of Hope'
BBC with their usual snobbish attitude
I think inauguration of this tunnel is certainly something to celebrate, but we should not loose our sobriety and we should not forget the mistakes made. Otherwise we will repeat them in the future.
El Tiempo's Germán Vargas Lleras may have been a bit too pessimistic with his opinion headline "La Línea Tunnel : There is nothing to celebrate". Still, I think he has a point.
He is not wrong in saying that if there were prizes for badly planned, badly designed, badly tendered, badly hired and badly executed work, La Línea Tunnel would get the top prizes in all categories... Is he wrong?
He reminds us that:
- It would have been a much better tunnel if La Línea Tunnel was a base tunnel, as was originally proposed in 1968. Instead it was built at an altitude of 2500 meter. The main reason for not choosing the base tunnel option was the cost. Imagine the cost of vehicles now having to climb over the mountains up to 2500 meter altitude for many years to come. How much will it cost to the nation with all that gasoline cost, depreciation cost, environmental pollution cost and above all the time cost???
- Tunnel has been put out to tender without any studies, designs or geological risks involved (the rest has happened).
- Payments were made to contractors not on earned value but in advance. The result? In August 2018, 80% of money had been paid with only 1% of work completed! Lawsuits followed and the then-government (Santos government) had to pump more money...
- It has cost the 5 times the original budget and took almost 2 times longer to build.
- Tunnel has opened but it is not finished yet. There are still 13.5km roads with 10 short tunnels and 24 bridges leading to the tunnel waiting to be built.
Germán Vargas Lleras also questions the aptness of the bust of the late former Minister Andrés Uriel Gallego placed at the entrance of the tunnel as who he was the one who caused all this mess.He also gives the credit to the previous Santos government (in 2018) for turning around things for the better in a otherwise disastrous going project.What a great summarization of La Línea Tunnel mess!!! Only for the ones who can take lessons:
I think they mean fun. I don't think it is.
Algunos de los datos que comparan el Túnel de la Línea colombiano con el Eurotúnel no son correctos
(Some comparison data between Colombia's Linea Tunnel and Eurotunnel is not correct)
cover tunnel photo by: Matt Brown from London, England / CC BY
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President of Colombia calls the Túnel de la Línea 'Tunnel of Hope'
[En Vivo] Inauguración del Túnel de la Línea
www.youtube.comInauguración del Túnel de la Línea