MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Truck industry complains Andes crossing “bottleneck”

As an estimated 8,000 trucks which had been bogged by snow for over a week on both sides of the Argentine/Chilean border Andes crossing, Paso Internacional de los Libertadores, began moving, the Chilean transport industry is bitterly complaining about the country's economy “bottle neck”.

The delay caused by exceptionally cold weather in the Andes region, plus land slides, in the access area to the Libertadores Pass not only froze to death several Brazilian truck drivers but proved how vulnerable Chile's main land link with Mercosur.

Dusan Simunovic, president of the Chilean International Land Transport Freight Companies organization, Agetich, described the situation as "inefficient and dangerous" since 80% of the Chile's land trade must go through the Libertadores Andes crossing, "a real bottleneck for the Chilean economy".

During a round table in the Gabriela Mistral University with private transport companies and Chilean officials, Public Works Department advisor German Millan mentioned several joint Argentine/Chilean projects to improve the situation.

One of them is the building of an "Andes train" which would join Los Andes in Chile with Mendoza in Argentina. The project involves 250 kilometres of railways, 70 of which in Chilean territory with an estimated investment of 370 million US dollars, which if works finally begin, should be ready by 2008. However the most ambitious proposal which has been in the air since the seventies, is drilling an eight kilometres tunnel in the Andes at a height of 1,500 metres, which have a cost in the range of 1,1 billion US dollars.

But "this initiative is not a priority", admitted Mr. Millan.

"Forget about those projects", replied Mr. Simunovic who considers totally "unreal an unnecessary" to think about investments of such a magnitude.

"We can't understand why the investments really needed haven't been done" added the transport industry leader who considers "unexplainable" that Chilean authorities haven't started building side refuges for the trucks, "to avoid vehicles obstructing the route, which is currently the main obstacle we face and would help solve most of the problem".

Mr. Millan said the Chilean government is ready to begin building 4,500 metres of refuges along the route leading to the Libertadores crossing which will demand 20 million US dollars.

"This is but one part of the project and we're already facing a very extreme winter", regretted Mr, Simunovic.