Assessment of Environmental Impacts Essential for Third Imigrantes Runway Construction

For years, the Anchieta Imigrantes System has been unable to serve the enormous flow of vehicles that use the highway to reach the beaches of Baixada Santista and Litoral Sul, not to mention the high flow of trucks that access the port of Santos, the largest and most important in the country. Country. The first Imigrantes runway was built in 1976 and the second was completed in 2002.  

The construction of a third lane on the main connection between Baixada Santista and the plateau should help solve mobility bottlenecks that are currently facing saturation, especially during seasonal periods or long holidays, when the existing lanes are unable to accommodate the large volume of vehicles. leisure activities, not to mention the transportation of cargo to the port, which needs to be interrupted on weekends and holidays, causing great losses to the Brazilian trade balance.

Professor Amarilis Gallardo, from the Department of Hydraulic and Environmental Engineering at the Polytechnic School of USP, a specialist in environmental planning, who participated in the works on the second runway, explains that the project for the third runway – called reversible – has always existed, since the original project . 

The biggest challenge in building this new Imigrantes runway is crossing the Serra do Mar State Park, with stretches of virgin Atlantic forest, where the biota can be truly affected. “The construction of tunnels reduces important environmental impacts mainly related to the pressure of native forest vegetation, interference with rivers and streams and the instability of slopes, but this also does not exempt a project, built by tunnel, from having environmental impacts”, he explains. the Poli teacher. 

Cutting-edge technology

Any construction of road works in Serra do Mar has always been a great challenge, from the Lorena sidewalk, in the time of the Empire, the Caminho do Mar – which today is closed and used only for walking – to the current Imigrantes viaducts. The advancement of engineering and cutting-edge technology has helped to make the work easier and, above all, have less impact on the environment. 

The technology used in the construction of the second lane created another paradigm for works on other highways throughout the country, precisely because of environmental preservation. “Impacts must always be evaluated in light of the project that is being proposed, that is, what is the interaction of this project in that intervention area”, evaluates Amarilis. 

The preparation of students at the USP Polytechnic School, in this sense, is intense work that is done in the classroom. The third lane of Imigrantes involves several challenges, all of them huge, such as the size of the highway in question. Serra do Mar is also contested for other infrastructures, such as transmission lines, energy, technology, among others.