The Colima-Guadalajara highway will be completed and inaugurated this year, shortening travel times between the state capital and Guadalajara, President López Obrador said during a visit to Colima on Sunday.

Colima city and the Jalisco state capital are only some 180 kilometers apart, but travel times remain unpredictable on a road which connects one of Mexico’s most important cities to its biggest Pacific port in Manzanillo.

“The construction began in 2013 and was suspended when we arrived to government. It will be inaugurated in December and it will provide a time saving of at least 30 minutes” between Colima city and Guadalajara, the president said, talking alongside Colima Governor Indira Vizcaíno and Jalisco Governor Alfaro Ramírez.

Vizcaíno thanked the president for focusing on the project which had seen long delays.

The president also announced the modernization of the Armería-Manzanillo aqueduct, the expansion of the Colima-Manzanillo highway to six lanes, for which he promised no toll charges, and the rehabilitation of roads connecting the state’s 10 municipalities.

López Obrador’s tour of Colima started on Saturday with a visit to health infrastructure in Villa de Álvarez. He promised 24-hour healthcare and announced 55 Cuban healthcare specialists would come to work in the state.

Vizcaíno said the previous state government had abandoned its duties in healthcare. “We received a system in ruins with grave shortage problems, installations in terrible conditions and broken equipment, among many other horrors,” she said. Vizcaíno, a Morena governor, took office in November after 72 years of uninterrupted Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) governance.

With reports from Agencia Informativa de México