Infrastructure initiatives must focus on client needs and not just on technical aspects, Latin American transport specialists told BNamericas during a meeting held in Chilean capital Santiago.
Specialists met to discuss financing alternatives and ways to attract the private sector, as well as improvements to the design of infrastructure development initiatives.
Officials said projects are sometimes designed to attract investors, but not with the user's real needs in mind. This is especially evident in Santiago, where authorities sought to improve traffic flow by concessioning urban highways, without always considering their integration with the city's existing infrastructure.
While urban highways in Santiago are relatively well designed, the capital's road network is insufficient to handle the amount of cars that exit the highways in a number of areas.
The Pérez Zújovic roundabout is an example of insufficient coordination and deficient road infrastructure design, said an official from the country's public works ministry (MOP).
The roundabout receives vehicles from all areas of Santiago, including the Costanera Norte concessioned highway, the San Cristóbal concessioned tunnel, and avenues Kennedy and Vitacura, among others.
According to the official, authorities looked at each project, making sure they all met the required standards. However, they did not think about integration with surrounding infrastructure. Therefore, although the initiatives became great investment opportunities, their benefit to users was limited. Travel time is faster using the private highways, but the benefits are lost once vehicles enter the public road network.
Similar situations have happened in Peru, Colombia and Argentina, where new highways are well designed, but they connect to poorly developed and insufficient public road infrastructure, a Colombian government official said.
Meeting participants spoke about the importance of implementing good infrastructure planning and management systems, and discussed the benefits of using integrated geographic information system (GIS) technology to optimize resources and improve their planning, design and management capacity, the Chilean official said.
Another point of discussion was the need to carry out well designed and integrated mass public transport initiatives to avoid the Chilean experience, where the unsuccessful launch of Transantiago almost brought the country's capital to a standstill.
Good planning not only benefits users directly by providing them with the infrastructure they need, but also saves on costs by optimizing government spending, which after all is financed mainly by the end-users tax money, the officials agreed.
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