In a note published in El Mercurio de Valparaíso, Las Salinas reiterates its rejection of the 6 Oriente project and explains the scope of the Plaza Alessandri proposal, which would be truncated if the highway is installed, since such an installation would break the connectivity with the neighbors of Santa Inés, preventing the connection of the hill with the coastline. Check the text of the note below: There is a project developed more than twenty years ago by Serviu, which has received endless criticism from various organizations, which aims to install an extension of Avenida 6 Oriente, in order to decongest vehicular traffic around the mall and 15 Norte. The discontent has to do, mainly, with two factors. On the one hand, a series of expropriations that would affect some 70 people on the Santa Inés hill, as well as those who see in this project an “urban highway”, twenty years out of date with respect to current needs and which aims more to segregate than to build a city. The neighbors who make up the Centro Urbano y Medio Ambiente Santa Inés (Ceuma) even proposed an alternative to the Serviu people, but the regional director of the organization, Tomás Ochoa, ruled it out, since the 6 Oriente project is an idea that is already underway. David Arce, secretary of the organization, said that the idea that is about to be implemented “leaves a good part of our Santa Inés neighborhood isolated, especially the elderly, which is an indolence that we claim, but to which we receive no response”. BARRIO LAS SALINAS Although Serviu considers 6 Oriente to be a 50 k/h road project, Barrio Las Salinas considers it to be an “urban highway that is completely obsolete as a planning policy”. What it does, says Esteban Undurraga, development manager of Las Salinas, is to continue disintegrating Santa Inés. That is why they have been forming a nucleus of pressure against the road extension project. “The problem of congestion exists, therefore the most immediate way of generating an effect that Serviu has is, precisely, to decompress and generate alternative connections”, assured Undurraga. In addition, he insisted that, although this short-term solution is advanced, “it is known on the basis of studies that these urban highways temporarily decongest, but after a few years they end up just as collapsed”. Another reason for their opposition has to do with the fact that the highway eliminates the eastern access to their land, “which goes against a fundamental principle of our project, which would be the pedestrian integration of the sector with the community and the expeditious access to the future Las Salinas neighborhood”. The urban project planned for Las Salinas contemplates the development, in the middle of the area of the city’s former industrial center, of a mixed-use neighborhood which it says seeks “to be a contribution to the urban, social and environmental development of Viena del Mar, where territorial integration is fundamental and must be protected”. What we want, said Esteban Undurraga, “is to settle a debt, which is the connection of the Santa Inés hillside with the coastal edge”. To achieve this objective, they propose a series of public space projects, which would be lost if what they call the Serviu’s “urban highway” is implemented.
From the project they tried to reach points of agreement, accepting the extension of 6 Oriente with some modifications, however, the response in this case was also negative. In Undurraga’s opinion, the city “what it needs is to integrate communities, to ‘agent and its territory, to promote pedestrian use and public transport, not the use of the automobile, which is what a highway is in charge of”. Twenty-year-old urbanism or modern urbanism? That is the question raised by Undurraga. The mandate he received as representative of Las Salinas from Empresas Copec, owner of the site, is twofold: to complete the final stage of the definitive process of decontamination of the site, which would take about five years, and to help, through an integrative city development project, “in the great challenges facing Viña del Mar today, accessibility to services, the housing deficit, sustainable public transport, new mobility, among others”. None of this, Esteban Undurraga believes, will be solved with the 6 Oliente highway. The Serviu responded to the claims made by Las Salinas real estate agency, assuring that they know the positions of the neighbors who oppose the project, as they have held a series of meetings with all those involved, as well as field visits and focused meetings to gather their proposals and resolve their doubts. Regarding the Las Salinas site, specifically, they held meetings with the real estate company, however, they emphasized that, as a public institution, “we aim to benefit the community and not a private entity”. They also insisted that “the 6 Oriente project has no relation with this area and does not affect its surface”. Serviu also wanted to remind that this road work is not a highway, but a 50 kilometers per hour road and that, therefore, “it does not segment but rather integrates with a new high standard connection”. They are currently preparing for the bidding process, which is expected to take place in December.
