The coordinator of the Morena party’s parliamentary group in the local Congress, Ricardo Ferro, leveled serious criticism at the Silao-San Miguel de Allende highway, warning that it is an overpriced, opaque project that falls far short of what was promised to the public. The legislator maintained that, far from representing an advance in infrastructure, the project presents technical and financial inconsistencies that must be publicly clarified.
According to the analysis presented by the Morena representative, the new highway will cost approximately 51.78 million pesos per kilometer-lane, almost double the cost of the Dolores Hidalgo-San Miguel de Allende Boulevard, which was valued at 27.01 million pesos per kilometer-lane.
Despite its high cost, the highway will operate with only two lanes, without bike lanes, side roads, or street lighting, which, according to Ferro, calls into question the project’s cost-benefit ratio.
In addition, the highway will not actually reach San Miguel de Allende, but will end approximately 20 kilometers before the city. Although the state government has promoted it as a direct connection between Silao and the tourist destination, the official route does not include urban or tourist access points as announced. For MORENA, this represents a failure to meet expectations and a political use of the municipality’s name to inflate the scope of the project.
Furthermore, Ferro questioned the decision to grant a 30-year concession for the Silao-Guanajuato highway to a private company to finance the construction, despite the fact that this public asset generated estimated revenues of at least 245 million pesos annually. The legislator emphasized that at the time of the concession, the state had more than 30 billion pesos in banks and investments, making the argument of a lack of liquidity, he said, unconvincing. In response, he presented a Point of Agreement to urge Governor Libia García to make transparent the final route, the executive project, the concession title and the real financial status of the work.
Source: masdeaca
