“Lo de Ale” is the only business that remained in the Zorrilla de San Martín street, in Durazno, until this Tuesday. On Monday there were two: Alejandro’s store that was there 14 years ago and a vet that decided to close and on Tuesday it was gone. It closed just like the bicycle trade, the clothing store and the sale of cold cuts.
The street used to be busy and that benefited them, but the construction of the train tracks through which the supplies for UPM will pass left a block practically desolate and without vehicles circulating. On the corner, almost at Alejandro’s store, there is an arrow that diverts traffic to the right so that they do not circulate on the street where the work is located and where it used to be a commercial block.
Maria Eugenia Scognamiglio
Zorrilla de San Martin Street, in Durazno
“No one passes through here now,” lamented the last remaining merchant. The bicycle trade made a complaint when the work began and managed to get the State to expropriate the place and pay them. Alejandro is looking for a solution for himself and plans to make a complaint that he has not yet filed because the tunnel that will pass through that street and continue under the train tracks has not yet begun to be built. When the tunnel is built, the passage through the tunnel will be practically impossible.
“I already called the lawyer because since the first of March the street is already completely closed. Before, people would pass by and cross the train tracks, but this month it is no longer possible,” he explained. In addition to the tunnel, which will remove traffic completely, the width of the sidewalk where his business is it will go from 4.5 meters to 1.65, according to the plans available to the merchant.
Maria Eugenia Scognamiglio
Alejandro, owner of the only business left on the block
On the other side of Alejandro’s store, on the parallel street, the neighbors also complained. one of them has a tire shop almost on the corner and the work of the train took part of the streetso that the trucks do not have enough time to get to the business of Euphrasius Ansalas. “They killed me. I have missed trucking companies that were coming. If they can’t turn there! And with the problem that there is to go up the road, the traffic decreased and every day there are accidents there, the cars skid. it is going to expropriate part of the place where the rubber factory works to build the tunnel.
Juan da Silva
Anasala Rubber Shop
The train tracks are finished, but the trench (a kind of pit without a roof) is not. At the moment, cars and pedestrians circulate through some steep stone descents that, according to the neighbors, caused traffic accidents because the slope reduces visibility to those who are coming from the front and there were pedestrians who were injured.
On the same block where the Ansalas tire shop is, lives the nationalist mayor Inés Colina, which has been in charge of the negotiations between the neighborhood group and the Ministry of Transport and Public Works (MTOP). Although his house will not be affected by the work in the trenches, she “empathizes” with the demands of the neighbors.
There are seven padrones that were expropriated, but those families have been waiting for more than a year for the MTOP to pay them. However, some of those residents have already left the neighborhood because they had a reservation ticket in the new property and risked losing them. The mayor Colina explained that although the papers are all approved and in orderthe delay is a “bureaucratic” issue within the ministry.
Juan da Silva
UPM train works in the city of Durazno
But the construction of the trench, which the residents understand is urgent and necessary to avoid accidentsgoes hand in hand with these expropriation payments, because the mayor, Carmelo Vidalín refused to sign the authorization to start the work until the payments were made. The Observer He tried to communicate with Vidalín and with the Minister of Transportation, José Luis Falero, but did not receive a response at press time.
“You are being critical. The slope is a danger due to traffic accidents. It gets very complicated for motorcycles and if it is dry it is very slippery. Although it is urgent that the neighbors comply with them, it is also urgent that the trench be made, “said the mayor. On the other hand, Colina explained thatThe train tracks, the trench and the tunnel leave the city of Durazno “practically divided” into two halves and that only in one are most of the services such as schools, high schools, hospitals or firefighters. Therefore, the unfinished passage also “complicates” access to services on the other side of the track.
