Public works: action promised

However, time goes by, administrations come and go, and promises to build public works remain proposals. Why? ``Because for many years successive governments have forgotten development,'' asserts the current Minister of Public Works, Rodolfo Méndez-Mata.

The Rodríguez administration is trying to bring the projects off the back burner and into reality, including improvements to the roads to Limón, Heredia, the General Cañas and Bernardo Soto freeways and the Zapote-Sabana viaduct. It is still too early to talk of happy endings to this story, but hope is shining brighter than it has for some time.

Jaime Ugalde, a bus driver on the San José-Nicoya route, gets up at 5 a.m. every day to drive his route. At present it takes at least four hours, but he says that the River Tempisque bridge would save him at least 40 minutes - the time it takes him to cross the river by ferry.

Elsewhere in the country, Carlos Alberto Abarca, owner of an Orotina-based fruit and vegetable company, speaks of the 35 minutes he could save if the stretch of road from Orotina to Ciudad Colón were to be constructed.

Then there is Carlos Solís, a San Carlos farmer who has been waiting 30 years to see a new road between Naranjo, Ciudad Quesada and Florencia, which he claims would save him at least half an hour a day.

These Ticos are just three of the thousands who would save a great deal of time and money if the long-promised projects were to finally happen, according to a government research team who traveled through Puntarenas, Guanacaste and San Carlos.

``The legal mechanism to contract out public works, as approved by Congress last year, allows us to find new ways to finally carry out these works,'' explained Minister Méndez Mata.

Great Losses

According to MOPT (Ministry of Transport) figures, this country loses $20 million every year in operating costs for the want of a highway between Ciudad Colón and Orotina.

On top of this, a further $4.5 million is lost by the lack of a bridge over the River Tempisque. These figures take into account expenditure on fuel, vehicle maintenance and damage to the present routes caused by excessive traffic.

Carlos Alberto Hernández has strong views on the subject: ``For ten years I've been hearing about what they're going to do to the road; can you imagine how much I'd have saved by cutting 40 minutes off the trip to San José? And not just me, everyone who uses the road would save on fuel and fixing up their cars after having to drive on this terrible road.''

Truck driver Alonso Céspedes has the same complaint about the journey from San José to Caldera, and also highlighted the dangers to heavily-laden traffic of the route to Atenas through Mount Aguacate: ``You go a little too far towards the edge, and your vehicle will flip over: it's that simple.''

The lifetime of these public works projects has been tortuous. In the case of the Ciudad Colón-Orotina route, the process of appropriating land for the new road has become the project's Achilles' Heel for the controversy it has produced.

But now, Minister Méndez is confident that the new sub-contraction legislation will allow the works' timescales to be sped up.

Notwithstanding this, Hubert Rojas, a lawyer representing 20 people whose land was appropriated for the construction of the new Naranjo-Ciudad Quesada-Florencia road, says that after three years of intense work, the state has still failed to compensate any of his clients.

``A short while ago I was promised that a check for one of my clients was finally ready, but then new complications arose and it seems that the check was a fantasy. If this is just one of the appropriation cases, imagine what will happen to the other projects... it's easy to see how some things have taken 30 years,'' added Rojas.

In the case of the San Carlos road, every passing year seems to bring with it fresh problems. Carlos Solís, President of the San Carlos Road Association, explains that, logically, the longer the project takes the more it will cost.

For a single stretch of the route -between San Carlos and Florencia- Solís notes that the projected cost would be ¢579 million (around $2.25 million). However, the current estimates put the final cost at over ¢1,000 million (approaching $4 million).

These figures nevertheless pale into insignificance when the overall costs of the project are considered. The previous administration determined that the road would cost $35 million, a figure for which it then secured a loan from the government of Taiwan. Today, the MOPT estimates that the project will cost $75 million.

To get around the shortfall, the ministry is considering the option of using the funds that are currently available and paying the rest from public coffers.

If these projects can be given the green light, the savings will be substantial. The bridge, for example, would save 150 km on the journey from San José to Nicoya, which is currently made via Liberia, according to Mayor Freddy Gómez of Nicoya.

The ferry is always an option, but with traffic of over 1,000 vehicles per day during peak times (i.e. much of the dry/summer season, and especially Holy Week), regular users have reported queuing times of as much as two hours.

In the case of the Ciudad Quesada route, Solís points out that it is not only local residents who would benefit: 65 percent of the country's dairy produce comes from the area, and a better road could lower the transportation costs that are currently passed on to consumers. Furthermore, the route to Nicaragua through Peñas Blancas could be shortened by 100 kilometers in comparison with the Pan-American highway route.

These are just a few of the potential benefits that could be brought to the country by the construction of these long-awaited public works projects - that is, if they can at last make the transition from political footballs into cornerstones of the country's development.