News
The A-5 recovers 400 metres of straight route from 3 September
From 6:00 on Thursday 3 September, the A-5 will recover its original alignment for 400 metres between Calle de Los Yébenes and San Manuel. Madrid City Council will remove the temporary diversion that maintained traffic while motorway tunnelling works progressed.
Before the new layout comes into use, there will be three nights of restrictions. From 23:00 to 6:00 on the nights of 31 August, 1 September and 2 September, lanes will be closed both into and out of Madrid.
The A-5 will not be completely closed. Work will take place on alternate lanes, and one of the two available lanes in each direction will always remain open. Anyone using the motorway in the early hours should therefore expect reduced capacity when passing through the works area.
The change removes the bends in the Los Yébenes bypass and returns traffic to a straight alignment at this point. It is the second of the three major temporary diversions built last year to allow old underpasses to be demolished, new structures to be built and the tunnels to be excavated without completely interrupting traffic.
The first to disappear was the Batán diversion. Since 28 July, traffic there has been using a 350-metre straight section. The removal of the Los Yébenes diversion now adds another 400 metres and simplifies another of the points that has undergone the most changes during the works.
However, the change does not mean that the underground section of the A-5 will open this week. Vehicles will continue to travel on the surface: what is disappearing is one of the temporary routes used during construction. The new tunnels are scheduled to open at the end of 2026.
According to the municipal schedule, the civil engineering works for these tunnels should be virtually complete during September. The connection between the new infrastructure and the M-30 tunnel that begins on Avenida de Portugal will then need to be completed before the underground route is brought into service.
The project covers 3.2 kilometres of the A-5 and directly affects the area around Latina and Moncloa-Aravaca. The City Council estimates that more than 80,000 vehicles use this corridor every day. Once the tunnel is operational, the aim is to move most of that traffic underground and free up the surface for the future Paseo Verde del Suroeste.
For now, the immediate change for drivers comes this week: three nights with only one lane available in each direction and, from 6:00 on Thursday, the end of the bypass between Los Yébenes and San Manuel.