It was designed as an alternative to the old highway linking Caracas with La Guaira, the Carretera Vieja, a circuitous route with dangerous curves and steep drops.
However, like the later Guri Dam, it remains one of the most iconic examples of Venezuela investing its oil wealth in capital programs (sembrar el petróleo, as the concept is known in Spanish).
[3] Caracas is located in the mountains of the coast 17 km south of La Guaira and the Caribbean Sea, at an altitude of about 936 metres.
The construction of the highway began in January 1950 after six years of studies by the Ministry of Public Works in Venezuela during the military regime by colonel Marcos Pérez Jiménez (1952-1958).
The highway serves as a vital artery linking Caracas with Maiquetia Airport, whose daily turnover is about 200 domestic and international flights, and the port of La Guaira, where it enters about 50% of all of the country's imports.
Each tunnel is actually a set of twin tubes separated by a natural wall of about 12 metres wide, with two lanes of traffic in one direction on each side.
The tunnels have a ventilation system that automatically regulates the entry of fresh air in proportion to the concentration of carbon monoxide expelled by motor vehicles.
These galleries are raised tunnel about 37 m to the surface of the mountain, and are used to inject fresh air and expel combustion gases coming out of cars that travel.
In addition to more efficient lighting that existed at the time, the tunnels have a system for regulating traffic in case of occurrence of any emergency, as well as a variety of apparatus for firefighting.