Mexico’s second-longest bridge has been officially opened in Campeche, linking Isla del Carmen to the mainland.

Governor Alejandro Moreno Cárdenas and Communications and Transportation Secretary Javier Jiménez Epriú inaugurated the new Puente de la Unidad (Unity bridge) on Monday.

“This is a bridge that belongs to all Campechanos, to all Mexicans,” Governor Moreno said at the inauguration. “This project fills us with pride, and it shows that us Campechanos can aspire to bigger things, and that we can do everything we say we’ll do.”

Secretary Jiménez said the bridge will not only benefit Campeche, but also the thousands of people who travel to the Yucatán peninsula every year.

“This inauguration represents the fulfillment of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s promise to use federal resources on projects that optimize the efficiency of our infrastructure, benefit as many people as possible, and promote regional development,” said Jiménez.

The bridge was built over a period of more than two years, with an investment of almost 2 billion pesos (US $105 million), of which 250 million pesos came from the federal government. At 3.2 kilometers, it is the second-longest bridge in Mexico and the fifth-longest in Latin America.

It replaces the old Puente de la Unidad, built in 1982. The old bridge has been in a state of poor repair for at least 12 years, and will soon be unusable.

Moreno said the previous federal administrations had not taken the need for a new bridge seriously, and that the project is 12 years overdue.

“This should have been built before my term,” he said. “But two federal administrations went by, 12 years, that the federal government didn’t support Campeche. But my responsibility was to build it, and finish it, and we did it in a record time of 24 months and 19 days.”

The new bridge is expected to last for at least 50 years.

Source: Milenio (sp), La Jornada Maya (sp), MVS (sp), Tribuna Campeche (sp)