Six-lane masterpiece

Opened on June 28, 1976, by President and General Ernesto Geisel, Anchieta - Imigrantes is Brazil's busiest and most astonishingly engineered motorway system. It connects the city of São Paulo, the country's financial centre, and one of the world’s most populous cities, with Santos, Brazil’s number one port.

It is 176.79 km long, and is divided into six motorway segments. The main one is the Rodovia dos Imigrantes: 58.54 km of road completed in two rounds of work between 1999 and 2014.

The central challenge was to build a new motorway section to supplement the existing one in the direction of Santos: 20.3 km with three lanes in each direction (each 3.5 metres wide); 11.35 km over mountainous terrain with gradients reaching over 6%, crossed by six viaducts and three tunnels, with a total length of 2,663 metres.

In all, 489,300 cubic metres of concrete, 13,682 metres of concrete reinforcement, and 16,970,464 cubic metres of earth were moved.

In short, 44 viaducts, seven bridges, and 11 tunnels through the rainforest in under 60 km. All in harmony with the surrounding environment, protected by using the least heavy vehicles possible, and by forestation work to compensate for any trees lost. For every tree felled, ten new were planted (a total of 450,000 new seeds). Drainage water treatment plants were also used to reduce water consumption.

This much-needed infrastructure relieves traffic congestion on the Rodovia Anchieta, the first concrete road built in São Paulo in the 1930s.