Autopista Central ("Central Highway", in Spanish) is a privatized, partially submerged

highway A highway is any public or private road or other public way on land. It is used for major roads, but also includes other public roads and public tracks. In some areas of the United States, it is used as an equivalent term to controlled-access ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

forming part of the Ruta 5. It forms part of the urban highway network of

Santiago Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is the center of Chile's most densely populated region, the Santiago Metropolitan Region, whose ...

, all of which incorporate a free flow toll system. Out of these highways it is the longest, with a length of . Within the network the Autopista Central forms the primary north–south connection through the centre of the city, the northern terminus is at the interchange with Vespucio Norte Express, where it continues northward as Autopista del Aconcagua. The southern terminus is located immediately north of the Maipo River, after which it continues as Autopista del Maipo. Autopista Central really consists of two highways: The main section runs the full length of the route, and the second, called "Eje General Velásquez", runs further to the west, bypassing the downtown districts. The western route has a length of about , duplicating the route between the municipalities of El Bosque and Conchali. The eastern highway is the section of

Chile Route 5 Chile Highway 5 or Route 5 known locally as ''Ruta 5'' is Chile's longest route, . It is part of the Pan-American Highway. Stretch It runs from the Peruvian border connecting with Peru Highway 1 north of Arica to Puerto Montt where it connects ...

that traverses Santiago.

History

The Avenida Norte-Sur, a predecessor road of Autopista Central, was the first urban highway built in Chile.The construction of that long highway began in 1966.The northern portion of the road was built in an

open cut Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of mining ...

. Previously, many city blocks of downtown Santiago were cleared of buildings. Part of the removed earth was used to create an embankment on the south bank of the

Mapocho River The River Mapocho ( es, Río Mapocho) ( Mapudungun: ''Mapu chuco'', "water that penetrates the land") is a river in Chile. It flows from its source in the Andes mountains onto the west and divides Chile's capital Santiago in two. Course The Mapo ...

, which was planned to carry the tracks of a new railroad running to the

Estación Mapocho Estación Mapocho is a former railway station that, since 1994, has been refitted as a cultural centre that hosts many kinds of events. History The design and construction of the station began in 1905 at the hands of Emilio Jecquier, a Chilean ...

History

References

Bibliography

External links