Infrastructure

By: Lykke E. Andersen*

According to official statistics from the National Statistical Institute, the number of people injured in traffic accidents in Bolivia has more than tripled between 2000 and 2013 (the latest year for which data is available). Figure 1 shows the number of non-fatal traffic injuries rising from 5,356 in 2000 to 17,204 in 2013. To that we should add the number of traffic fatalities which increased from 681 deaths in 2000 to 1,848 deaths in the year 2013. Three of every four injuries in 2013 took place in the departments of La Paz, Santa Cruz and Cochabamba.

Figure 1: Non-fatal traffic injuries in Bolivia, 2000-2013, by Department

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By: Lykke E. Andersen*

For more than a year now (since 20 July 2016), the road between Santa Barbara and Caranavi (on the primary road between La Paz and Rurrenabaque) has been closed from 7 am to 5 pm, Monday to Saturday, due to road construction activities. We didn’t know that, though, when we left La Paz at 5 am last Tuesday morning in order to drive to Rurrenabaque. When leaving La Paz, well before dawn, we paid the road toll of Bs. 9.50, and the guy in the toll booth didn’t think to warn us that we would soon have to wait for 9.5 hours because the road is closed all day.

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By: Lykke E. Andersen*

According to Nina and Arduz (2016), the density of roads in Bolivia is about 8 km per 100 km² of territory, which is less than half the average density in Latin America and less than a third of the world average of 28 km/100 km². By 2012, about 52% of the primary road network was paved, while a very small fraction of other roads was paved. The lack of good roads constitutes a serious limitation on the development of the country, as it dramatically increases transportation time and vehicle maintenance costs, and therefore transport costs (1).

This situation is pretty much inevitable for a large, sparsely populated, mountainous, jungle covered country, like Bolivia, but the Government of Bolivia has been doing its best to improve the situation by channelling enormous amounts of money into road construction (around USD 10 billion during the last 10 years), making the transport sector by far the single biggest recipient of public funds. For example, last year the Bolivian Government budgeted 28.9% of all public investment to the transport sector (28.9% of USD 6.4 billion amounts to USD 1.8 billion), while the education and health sectors received 5.5% each, and the water infrastructure sector only 0.9% (2).

The problem is that almost all of these road investments have been unbelievably badly executed.

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By: Lykke E. Andersen*

Academic research is rarely nauseating, and I did not expect to get sick to my stomach from a research project we have with Boston University called “Safeguarding Sustainable Development.” The project is simply trying to find out whether the social and environmental safeguards of the institutions that finance major infrastructure projects in Latin America (e.g. CAF, IDB, WB) help secure the successful implementation of the projects with minimal environmental harm and minimal harm to the people living in the affected areas. The project covers several countries, but at INESAD we just have to evaluate three Bolivian road projects.

Last week we visited the first of our road projects, which is the double-road between La Paz and Oruro (Bolivia’s Highway No. 1). Most people appreciate this new road because it makes travelling between La Paz and Oruro much quicker and safer. It also created lots of local jobs during construction, and local communities have generally been adequately consulted and well compensated for the direct adverse effects of the road construction project. Local people quickly figured out how to get from A to B using this new road (even if it means driving in the wrong lane in the wrong direction for a stretch), so for them the lack of, or highly confusing, road signs were not considered a big problem.

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