Route 32 Closures Will Keep Coming and Here Is What Drivers Should Do

Costa Rica said today it will spend $100 million to take the roundabouts out of Route 32, the highway that connects San José to the Caribbean coast. President Laura Fernández announced the plan during a visit to Limón. She said the highway’s original design was flawed, that the roundabouts were never the right fit for a road like this one, and that the money from the national roads council, Conavi, will pay for 10 overpasses to replace them. She framed it as a promise the previous government made to Limón and this one is keeping. None of that helps you this year as Route 32 closed at least three times in August, and it will close again before the rainy season ends. The problem is not the road surface and the mountainside above it. Through the Braulio Carrillo stretch, rain soaks the slopes, the water has nowhere good to go, and dirt and rock slide down onto the lanes. Crews clear it, the road reopens, and the next storm starts the cycle over. August showed how that works as earlier this month as crews reopened the highway after clearing six separate points between kilometers 28 and 38. In mid August it shut for about four hours after another slide. Days later a run of tropical waves closed it again, with the Cerro Zurquí sector flagged for saturated soil and continuing slide risk. Then two earthquakes near Coronado on August 24, magnitude 5.0 and 4.5, shook more material loose around kilometer 30. The four-lane expansion itself is done and MOPT opened the full 104-kilometer (65-mile) stretch between the Río Frío junction and central Limón last December, eight years after work started. Almost everything around it is no as an audit published by Lanamme, the UCR engineering lab that reviews public roadwork, found more than 157 outstanding items on that stretch. They cover road safety, slope work, materials that failed quality requirements, and gaps in supervision. Two slope sectors near Siquirres, at kilometers 100 and 112, are still eroding and shedding material with no good drainage. At some critical points, Lanamme found, nobody is pursuing a permanent fix at all. Inspectors also found crews working with no supervisor or quality-control staff on site. Fixing a slope is slow, and it costs you time behind the wheel. The job at kilometer 27, started in March, used anchored bolts, sprayed concrete and new drainage. It meant at least three months of one-lane traffic, every day from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Unfortunately, expect more of that since two additional stabilization walls are planned this year at critical points. The roundabouts are the other reason your trip runs long. Seven of them, plus two at-grade right turns, replaced six overpasses and three interchanges from the original design after the government moved to cut costs and avoid buying out landowners. Lanamme later found they were too small to meet international standards, and the Constitutional Court ordered the MOPT and Conavi to fix them. Official estimates put the added driving time across the seven roundabouts at roughly 26 minutes. Four replacements are already contracted, at La Trocha (km 61), Calle 1 (km 64), Jiménez (km 67) and Siquirres (km 96), for ₡7,349,760,000. The MOPT published a tender for more overpasses and pedestrian bridges in July and has said construction should start in October or November. The project is now meant to finish with 44 pedestrian bridges, up from the 20 in the original contract. Fernández also said Monday that highway lighting is nearly finished and that the dead zones with no cellphone signal, a real problem if you break down, are being fixed. Until that work lands, plan around the road. If Route 32 closes, you have three alternatives. Vara Blanca takes light vehicles only. Route 10 runs between Siquirres and Turrialba. The Bajos de Chilamate–Vuelta de Kooper road is the northern option. All three add serious time, and none is a quick detour. So check MOPT channels the morning you travel. Do not book a tight connection between the Caribbean coast and a flight out of San José, and in heavy rain, give yourself an extra day. If you are already driving when a closure is announced, turning back early usually beats waiting for a clearance that can take hours. Route 32 carries most of what Costa Rica imports and exports, plus everyone moving between the Central Valley and the Caribbean. The money is identified and the contracts are moving. But the work runs across several years, and the rain does not wait for it.