The Ministry of Public Works plans to start improvement works in February to the road access system to Alicante-Elche airport, once the expropriation process has been completed transferring ownership of the land that connects the N-338 road with the N-332.
The improvements will affect a section about five kilometres long that has been waiting for the project to be approved since 2013.
In principle, the works should have started last year, following the approval of a 29 million euro budget but the political instability that led to the fall of the Government of Mariano Rajoy, and the realisation that they did not own the land, paralyzed the work which it is hoped will put an end the traffic jams suffered by the almost 14 million passengers who pass every year through the Alicante-Elche airport.
The project consists of the improvement of the 4.75 kilometres of the N-338 with the construction of two lanes in each direction and four links. One to the Alicante Trade Fair Institution and the Vía Parque, another to the N-332, a third to the ring road (A-70) and the fourth to the airport entrance roundabout.
Despite the airport handling almost 14 million passengers in 2018 there is still little information regarding a planned railway connection, a project that was approved last year, but which still hasn’t received a budget.
At a cost of about 85 million euros, half of the budget of the original Torrellano variant, the intention of Fomento is to build an underground branch of the current commuter line to the terminal. The airport has been waiting for this infrastructure for 18 years, from the year 2000 when it first exceeded six million passengers per year, a figure at which the EU considers that airports must have a connection with the railway.
Ecologists say that they see no environmental objections to the rail project.
