Caracas is a city defined by asphalt. Kilometers of bridges, highways, and interchanges weave together a vast road network—one that evokes a time when modernity moved on four wheels. This living system moves thousands of vehicles each day and defines the urban landscape of the Venezuelan capital, cutting through the surrounding mountains to connect different parts of the city and even reach the Caribbean coastline of La Guaira, the neighboring coastal state to the north, in just a matter of minutes.
Most of this infrastructure dates back to projects developed between the 1940s and 1980s, a period marked by Venezuela’s booming oil revenues. That wealth fueled urban planning on a grand scale, especially in and around Caracas. Among the most influential blueprints were the Rotival Plan (1939), which helped shape the authoritarian vision of dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1952–1958), and the Caracas 2000 Master Plan, introduced in 1983 but eventually abandoned in the early 1990s, as the metropolitan area became fragmented and local governments lost coordination.
When Hugo Chávez came to power in 1998, another oil boom ushered in a wave of ambitious infrastructure promises. The government pledged to invest in long-awaited transportation projects, some of them recycled from earlier plans. Among the most high-profile proposals were two major tunnels—one in the north and one in the south of the city—designed to relieve pressure on Caracas’s already overwhelmed highways by opening up new routes. Neither tunnel was ever completed.
In this second installment of El Diario’s series on the transportation and mobility crisis in Caracas, we examine what became of the city’s unfinished tunnels and the broader vision of connecting Venezuela’s capital to its surrounding cities—one that, decades later, remains trapped beneath the surface.
In the Heart of Ávila
Exiting Boyacá Avenue (known locally as Cota Mil) toward Baralt Avenue in the northwest of the capital city, a third road appears at the fork, leading nowhere. The unpaved path, made of concrete that still kicks up a fine gray dust, is littered with exposed steel rebar, posing a risk to vehicle tires.
It was late February 2025. A group of workers wearing “Juntos podemos más” (“Together we can do more”) overalls swept and carried out rehabilitation work nearby, yet their focus seemed detached from the large stain cutting across the green expanse of Ávila Mountain (Parque Nacional Warairarepano). This was the site of the Baralt Tunnel camp, a project intended to be the longest highway tunnel in Venezuela, stretching 2.8 kilometers through the heart of the national park.
The project was first announced in 2011 by then-President Hugo Chávez, who allocated an initial budget of 1.062 billion bolívars (equivalent to $240 million at the official exchange rate). The Portuguese consortium Teixeira Duarte was awarded the contract, but construction stalled after Chávez’s death in 2013. Two years later, in 2015, President Nicolás Maduro announced the resumption of the project with an investment of €809 million ($898 million), once again assigning Teixeira and the construction company Precomprimido to the work.
According to the Structuralia portal, the tunnel was designed to include three lanes, each 15 meters wide and 12 meters high, running from the Baralt interchange in the Cotiza neighborhood to the Macapaya area, eventually connecting to the Caracas-La Guaira highway. The tunnel was expected to handle over 50,000 vehicles per day, saving drivers an hour of travel by providing a direct connection to Cota Mil.
On July 21, 2015, then-Minister of Transport and Public Works, Haiman El Troudi, announced that nearly one kilometer of the tunnel’s northern gallery had been excavated, along with 700 meters of the southern gallery. He estimated that both tunnels would meet in 2016, and that the tunnel would open to the public by 2017.
Total Darkness
Eight years have passed since the estimated inauguration date given by El Troudi, and the Baralt Tunnel remains stuck at just one kilometer of construction. El Diario visited the camp, where the cement silos and structures still stand as if work could resume at any moment, though there are no signs of machinery or workers.
Residents of Cotiza (a neighborhood in northwest Caracas) reported that in early February 2025, a commission of senior government officials conducted studies inside the tunnel, though their hopes for a resumption of construction are low. What remains of the project is a massive concrete wall embedded in the mountain, flanked by the twin tunnel entrances, leading into absolute darkness. Tall grass surrounding the area, which has grown so high it blocks access to one of the tunnel entrances, completes the scene of abandonment.
Inside the tunnel, remnants of campfires and trash from occasional homeless individuals who stay there can be seen. A report by the Venezuelan radio network Unión Radio in January 2021 revealed that at least three homeless families had been living in the tunnel. However, locals note that these families were relocated, and the tunnel is now uninhabited. Only a small group of caretakers lives in a house near the camp’s entrance.
What was intended to be one of the greatest urban milestones of the Bolivarian Revolution has taken on a new role for the surrounding communities. Water runoff from the mountain flooded one of the tunnels, prompting residents from nearby neighborhoods like San José de Cotiza, Los Mecedores, El Retiro, and El Cardón, among others, to create a canal to extract the water due to the chronic shortages they face.
Initially, they set up a system that allowed them to fill their containers and even wash there, an image widely documented by the press as a testament to the country’s complex humanitarian crisis. Today, the residents have created their own makeshift plumbing system to transport the water directly to their communities, so they no longer rely on the tunnel as frequently. Only groups of young people now tend to bathe in an artificial lagoon known as “La Piscina”, located near the cement factory.
Historical Background
The idea of connecting Caracas and La Guaira by a direct route has been around for several decades. As early as the late 19th century, an unsuccessful attempt was made to build a funicular to ascend and descend the mountain. However, it wasn’t until 1947 that urban planner and businessman Luis Roche first proposed the idea of a tunnel through Ávila Mountain (Parque Nacional Warairarepano), from the newly inaugurated Altamira neighborhood to Caraballeda, a town on the Caribbean coast.
In an article for the magazine Tiempo y Espacio (June 2009), architects Lorenzo González Casas and Orlando Marín recount that Roche commissioned technical studies from companies in the United States and France, which assessed the feasibility of the project (and whose data would later serve as a reference for future plans). Roche also established the Caracas al Mar Corporation, a company with 52 partners aiming to develop the tunnel with 100% private capital. Although efforts were made to obtain permits, the fall of Rómulo Gallegos’s government in 1948 put the project on hold.
Years later, the military dictatorship of Marcos Pérez Jiménez took an interest in the idea once again, but without the involvement of the original promoters. In 1957, the Ministry of Public Works (Ministerio de Obras Públicas, MOP) presented the Ávila-Litoral Tunnel project, which would connect Altamira to Tanaguarena, a coastal town. In July of that year, a public notice inviting companies to bid on the project was published, although there are no records of any assignments beyond Norwegian-American engineer Ole Singtadt, who had revised the original plans years earlier.
The Pérez Jiménez government had already inaugurated the Caracas-La Guaira highway in 1954 and the Maripérez-Ávila-Macuto cable car system in 1955, so although the tunnel was promised to be completed by the 1960s, it was never a priority. In fact, González and Marín note that the MOP’s records show the project was officially shelved just a week before the dictatorship’s fall on January 23, 1958.
During Venezuela’s democratic period, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, preliminary studies were conducted once again, but the plan was dismissed due to environmental concerns, as Ávila Mountain had by then become a national park. In the 1980s, the Metro de Caracas (Caracas subway system) included a possible rail system in its Master Plan, but this was also abandoned following the 1994 financial crisis.
Similarly, in 2006, Hugo Chávez’s government introduced the Telmag project, an Electromagnetic Train system linking Caracas to La Guaira, designed to pass through Ávila Mountain with minimal ecological impact. The development was entrusted to the Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research (Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas, IVIC) and the University of the Andes (Universidad de los Andes, ULA). However, the collapse of Viaduct 1 of the Caracas-La Guaira highway in the same year forced the suspension of the project, which was ultimately canceled in 2008 due to lack of funding.
Boyacá Project
The Baralt Tunnel was just one part of a larger project the Chávez government intended to complete by 2017. The so-called Boyacá Project revisited plans from previous governments to expand Cota Mil, a key highway in Caracas, to improve east-west traffic flow, as well as to create alternative routes between Caracas and La Guaira (a coastal city and seaport located 15 km from Caracas).
According to the Venezuelan digital outlet El Estímulo, the original plans for Boyacá Avenue, inaugurated in 1973 by President Rafael Caldera, already included a connection with the La Planicie tunnels and the Caracas-La Guaira highway. Between 1973 and 1983, there were plans to continue the missing section, but it required demolishing over 1,600 homes in La Pastora and Lídice (two neighborhoods in western Caracas), among other complications that made the project unfeasible. Caldera proposed the idea again during his second term (1994–1998), but it failed due to economic and political issues.
The Office of the Metropolitan Mayor had also envisioned an extension of Cota Mil in its 2008 Strategic Plan Caracas 2020. However, it was the Ministry of Transport and Communications that finally took on the project in 2011. The Boyacá Project would involve the construction of 10.3 kilometers of new roads, divided into three main works: the Baralt Tunnel, the Macayapa Interchange, and the Tacagua Viaduct.
Map of the Cota Mil extension project. It would consist of the Baralt Tunnel, the Macayapa Interchange, and the Tacagua Viaduct. Image: Ministry of Transport and Communications
“This will be a monumental project. In over 50 years of the country’s contemporary history, Caracas has not seen a project of such significance and magnitude,” stated El Troudi in 2015, claiming the project was 30% complete.
At that time, he added that the Macayapa Interchange would include 5.5 kilometers of road and have dimensions similar to the La Araña road interchange (a major road junction in the city). Located at the entrance to Blandín (a neighborhood in Caracas’s Sucre parish), it was designed to be the connector between the Baralt Tunnel and the Caracas–La Guaira highway. The interchange would include four bridges leading to Catia (a densely populated working-class neighborhood in northwest Caracas). Of this project, only the channeling of the Macayapa and Tacagua Baja streams was completed.
As for the Tacagua Viaduct, El Troudi claimed it would be “twice as large as Viaduct 1 of the Caracas-La Guaira highway,” stretching 1.8 kilometers. The structure was to be made of steel and concrete, elevated 16 meters above the Tacagua creek basin, connecting with the highway. Some work was done on the foundation, including the platform for beam launches and several pillars, but the project was never finished.
The non-governmental organization Transparencia Venezuela reported that the total budget for the Boyacá Project amounted to $1.5 billion, but not even half of it was completed. The consortium in charge of the interchange and viaduct included Precomprimido C.A. (which handled the reconstruction of Viaduct 1 in 2006) and the Paraguayan construction company Barrail Hermanos S.A.
From Caricuao to La Rinconada
A single mountain separates three parishes in southwestern Caracas. On one side is the UD5 sector of Caricuao; on the other, crossed by the Pan-American Highway, is La Rinconada, which belongs to Coche parish. Several informal homes from La Vega climb the hillside, and hidden at the mountain’s base lies the scar of yet another tunnel that was meant to connect them.
More than just a tunnel, it was supposed to be the beginning of an ambitious infrastructure project that would turn Caricuao into a strategic link to the Regional Highway of the Center (Autopista Regional del Centro, ARC), thereby easing traffic congestion toward central Caracas. The nearly one-kilometer-long passage would also revive a proposal from the Caracas Metro Master Plan of 1997, which envisioned a direct connection between Zoológico and La Rinconada stations, enabling transfers between Lines 2 and 3.
Although the tunnel idea had circulated among government offices since the 1980s, formal construction didn’t begin until 2012, as part of the Mobility Plan for the Metropolitan Region of Caracas. The project was to be carried out jointly by the Caracas City Hall and the Ministry of Transport and Public Works, under a joint venture called Circunvalación Sur Consortium.
In December 2013, land clearing work began on a plot located in UD5, which involved the deforestation of a section of the Vicente Emilio Sojo Metropolitan Recreational Park, located in the Caricuao parish in the southwest of Caracas. However, it wasn’t until May 2016 that controlled detonations were carried out inside the tunnels.
Unfinished
El Diario reporters visited the area where the Caricuao-La Rinconada Tunnel was supposed to be. Walking along La Hacienda Avenue, near the entrance to UD6, there are no visible signs of the tunnel’s existence. Only a satellite search on Google Maps reveals a dirt path hidden behind a mechanic’s shop and parking lot.
After several minutes of walking, the tunnel entrances finally come into view, wedged between three concrete walls that slice through the mountain like a passageway. The rest is mostly dirt, where nature is reclaiming the space, creeping between scrap metal, piles of rubble, and the rusted frame of a dismantled bus.
Although photos from 2016 show both tunnel mouths open, they are now sealed with concrete and covered in overgrowth. On one side, a trench—possibly meant to be a third route—can still be seen, though it has no visible access point and floods during the rainy season, becoming a makeshift water channel.
Pedro Salaverría, an engineer who participated in the project, confirmed in a 2022 interview with Radio Fe y Alegría that only the tunnel entrances and about 125 meters from the La Rinconada side were ever built. As for the tunnel meant for the Caracas Metro—still shown on metro system maps as the future Line 6—there are no visible traces. After budget constraints stalled progress, the Circunvalación Sur Consortium was dissolved in 2015, and the project was handed over to the ministry.
An Unwanted Project
For residents of UD5, the fact that the tunnels remain unfinished is actually a relief. Locals interviewed by El Diario said they had opposed the project from the start, as it would have disrupted the peace of this predominantly residential area. They noted that La Hacienda Avenue does not have the capacity to handle heavy vehicle flow, let alone freight trucks, and that the tunnel would have increased congestion throughout Caricuao.
What residents did regret, however, was the environmental damage caused by the project. Carving into the mountainside affected nearly 700 hectares of the Vicente Emilio Sojo Park, along with its native wildlife and vegetation. In fact, Caricuao was declared an ecological parish in 2008, granting protected status to its forests and hills.
The expansion of informal settlements from nearby La Vega also worries residents. Some makeshift homes are now visible at the top of the mountain. Locals warned that these settlements are occasionally used as hideouts by criminals, who descend via the abandoned tunnel site to carry out robberies in the area.
The Great Southern Ring
When Jorge Rodríguez, then mayor of Caracas, announced the construction of the Caricuao-La Rinconada Tunnel in August 2013, he claimed it would be the first segment of a megaproject that would completely transform mobility in the capital. This was the beginning of the Circunvalación Sur (Southern Ring Road), a large peripheral highway that would function similarly to Cota Mil (a major highway on the northern edge of Caracas), but on the opposite side of the city.
It’s a powerful project that will have 32.5 kilometers of new roads, eight interchanges, 12 tunnels, and 15 viaducts,” Rodríguez stated.
He also revealed that, alongside the project, drilling had begun on another tunnel intended to connect Antímano and Caricuao (two neighborhoods in western Caracas), though little information is currently available about this part of the plan.
The idea of the Circunvalación Sur dates back to 1995, when the first technical studies were conducted, and it was also included in the Strategic Plan 2020 of the Metropolitan Mayor’s Office during Antonio Ledezma’s administration. The goal was to create a road that would allow vehicles to travel from eastern to western Venezuela without needing to pass through Caracas, providing an alternative route around the city.
A document from the Ministry of Land Transport and Public Works details that, in addition to the tunnel, which would serve as an exit to the Autopista Regional del Centro (ARC), the highway project consists of two main stretches. The first stretch, 12 kilometers long, would run from the Hoyo de la Puerta interchange to El Hatillo, passing through interchanges leading to neighborhoods such as Los Guayabitos, Turgua, and La Unión. The second stretch, 14 kilometers long, would connect La Unión to Parque Caiza, with branches extending towards La Trinidad and Petare, ultimately linking up with the Gran Mariscal de Ayacucho highway.
Rodríguez also mentioned that another stretch would be built from Mamera, located near Caricuao, to the still unfinished Macayapa interchange, creating a direct route from the ports of La Guaira (Venezuela’s main port city) to the country’s major highways. This new road would complete the Circunvalación Sur, a large ring road that would allow residents of southwestern Caracas to quickly reach areas like Baruta and El Hatillo. It would also improve access to neighborhoods such as Sartenejas, home to the Simón Bolívar University (USB).
However, the only thing that was built was the 125 meters of the sealed and abandoned tunnel, barely 1% of what could have been. At the time, the mayor announced that the project would have an investment of Bs.F. 27 billion ($4.4 billion at the exchange rate of that time); however, Minister El Troudi later clarified that the approved amount for the construction of the tunnel was Bs.F. 95 million ($15 million). Transparencia Venezuela (a Venezuelan NGO focused on transparency and anti-corruption) reported that at least $165.5 million was committed to the project.
Both the Circunvalación Sur and the extension of Cota Mil were ambitious projects intended to strengthen the social welfare ideal promoted by Chavismo (the political movement based on the policies of former President Hugo Chávez). Although oil revenues initially fueled this concrete and asphalt frenzy, time revealed the gap between campaign promises and reality, as evidenced in the previous installment of this series. A reality that couldn’t even complete a couple of tunnels, which now lead nowhere.
Translated by José Silva
