Costa Rica News – The repairs to the train tracks towards Alajuela are set to be finished this year, although use of the service won’t recommence until 2015. The announcement was made yesterday by the Costa Rican Railway Institute (Incofer) in a press release.
According to the document, they’ve now managed to connect San Joaquín de Flores in Heredia.
They have also now finished installation of a bridge over the Burío river; it’s one of two that the project hoped to put in place.
With these improvements, the reparations of the railway line are now just 2.8km from the INVU-Las Cañas sector in Alajuela, where the train will make its final stop on the route.
The work will involve the positioning of around 18,000 new concrete sleepers, as well as the replacement of some 11 kilometres of tracks, Incofer said in April, when the work started.
Before they could begin with the replacements, they had to remove rubbish, dirt, asphalt and concrete from the disused train tracks.
Guillermo Santana, who was made Executive President of the Institute in May,said the railway will have as much traffic as the current one to Cartago by 2015.
Their intention is to first get the results from an external audit of the Institution, rather like a study of the demand that the new route will bring.
It’s for the same reason that, according to Santana, they haven’t yet followed suggestions of getting hold of new trains to bring to Alajuela. The previous authorities estimated that they would need six.
Translated by Leah Hendre from La Nacion
