In the holidays, the route becomes mostly a single direction highway eastwards from Caldera to San José in advantage of the returning beach goers coming back to the Greater Metropolitan Area.

In the mid-1970s, a preliminary design was drafted along the left (south) margin of the Virilla River (crossing towns such as El Rodeo, Piedras Negras and San Pablo de Turrubares) that seemed the most economical, passing through low-cost uncultivated lands.

At the end of the 1990s, without available financing, a private concession was considered, but it was necessary for the government to acquire more than half of the required lands, an opportunity that the owners took to their advantage to inflate the prices.

When the second administration of Óscar Arias (2006–2010) arrived, the concession was negotiated directly with the Spanish company Autopistas del Valle, a winner of the San José-San Ramón highway since 2005, but it did not obtain immediate financing.

In addition, the concessionaire managed to get the contract to include a guarantee of a "minimum annual income", so that if the toll collected does not reach the expected amount, the government will have to pay the remainder.

Since then, the highway was delivered and managed by Autopistas del Sol with a public works concession contract (Law 7762 of Costa Rica) for its maintenance, for an extended period of 25 years.

[5] For example, in 2017 Costa Rica’s National Concessions Council (CNC) noted that the road had reached a saturation point of 70 percent, which qualified for expansion.

[6] In 2020, the Costa Rican government and the current concessionaire Globalvia signed a letter of understanding to negotiate a process for conducing studies on the expansion of the road from San Jose to Caldera.

The anticipated first phase of widening is set to involve the area between the National Gymnasium and the Siquiares exchange and will include the construction of a new overpass to unload traffic at the highway’s terminus.