Madrid awards ring-road tunnel project contract

The new Calle-30 tunnel section in Madrid, Spain, will feature a rooftop green space, that will further expand the city’s new Madrid Rio Park

Ferrovial’s construction subsidiary and Acciona have been awarded a contract for works to the new Calle-30 tunnel in Madrid, Spain.

Madrid City Council awarded the contract – the value of which was not disclosed – to a joint venture firm made up of the two companies.

Part of the city’s “Nuevo Mahou-Calderón” road renewal project, it aims to transform the city’s above-ground M30 motorway into an underground route.

The M30 is a major inner-city orbital that measures over 30km long and surrounds Madrid’s central most districts.

With much of the works to redirect the route underground already complete, Ferrovial and Acciona’s new Calle-30 tunnel contract covers the last above-ground section of the M30’s southern arc.

The Ferrovial-Acciona joint venture will construct a 630m-long cut-and-cover tunnel that will be integrated with the adjoining sections of the new Calle 30 tunnel, which have already been built.

With varying widths of between 21m at its northern end to 26m at its southern end, the new Calle-30 underground road tunnel will also incorporate the related facilities and services required for its operation and maintenance.

These include systems for ventilation, atmospheric conditions detection, radio communications, CCTV and other power and traffic control systems such as a public address system.

Works are due to start this September and are expected to take 20 months to complete.

The enclosing of the section was scheduled for this year in order to allow the demolition of Madrid’s Vicente Calderón stadium, which is in close proximity, to be completed first.

The stadium, once the former home of the Spanish football team Atlético Madrid, was replaced with a new public recreation and sports area called the Madrid Rio Park.

This will now be further expanded as a result of Ferrovial and Acciona’s upcoming works to the Calle-30 tunnel.