BOGOTÁ–GIRARDOT EXPRESSWAY

The project

This highway is vital to the area’s economy and daily life. It is the country’s busiest road and connects its capital city to the Pacific coast.

The upgrade involves widening the expressway, which carries over 15 million vehicles a year, with a 65 km third lane, and building three bidirectional tunnels totalling 2 km in length. The contract also includes operating the rest of this 141 km highway between Bogotá and Girardot, in the Cundinamarca and Tolima regions.

The solution

The goal is to ease and increase traffic on this highway. In addition to widening 64 km and resurfacing 118 km of the expressway along with 24 km of urban roads, the project involves revamping very high embankments and stabilising a number of areas.

The challenge

The biggest challenge was to optimise drainage production methods, as Bogotá stands 2,640 metres and Girardot 326 metres above sea level.

Environment

For VINCI Construction GeoInfrastructure, bio-engineering is a desire to go even further in designing our projects to minimise their environmental impact. Derived from plant engineering, bio-engineering on the Bogota-Girardot expressway project in Colombia is a skilful solution involving slope stabilisation devices.

The work involves two stages:

• A drainage system using bamboo stems to capture groundwater circulating at shallow depths.
• Stabilising and protecting against erosion by planting local grasses and shrubs.

This system enables the development of a circular economy and the creation of local supply chains.