TRANSIT TRAFFIC IN THE ALPS AND THE ANDES. A COMPARISON OF VERY DISPARATE SYSTEMS

Abstract

In the Austrian media, transit traffic across the Alps is often treated as a key problem for this alpine country. In the Alps, it seems, (road) traffic has become the enemy of mankind and nature. This is in stark contrast to reports about traffic in the Andes. There it consists mainly of articles on road and bus accidents, often caused by landslides, rock falls, cloud burst and other natural events. In the Andes, it seems, nature is the enemy of traffic. If you think about it, there is only very limited scope for comparing reports on traffic in both mountain areas. The two mountain regions differ too much in their topography, infrastructure, traffic density, in the physical state of the vehicles but also in the urban and market networks as well as the political systems and structures. If we do attempt a comparison – of the tropical part of the Andes only – then we must bear in mind the relative differences and restrict ourselves to a specific issue, in this case whether the Andean countries might not be able to learn from those in the Alps. The issue of the transferability of experiences within an international development discourse is not new but has never been raised in this context. This is surprising, given the great bulk of literature on alpine traffic problems. Moreover, scientists and practitioners have concerned themselves with traffic in the tropical Andes for a long time, both in theory and empirically. There are reliable data for both regions, even if they have been taken up less in the academic literature on the Andes than on the Alps. In the few attempts that have been made, traffic is excluded, even in the most recent publications (e.g. Busset, Lorenzetti and Mathieu, 2003). In current research on traffic problems in the Alps, there is research that focuses on national structures, problems and solutions and research oriented towards the entire Alpine Arc and the extra-alpine sources of traffic. In the literature on the Andes, an international perspective on traffic is almost entirely absent. This TRANSIT TRAFFIC IN THE ALPS AND THE ANDES. A COMPARISON OF VERY DISPARATE SYSTEMS Axel borsdorf, Innsbruck University and Institute of Mountain Research of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria Regional Survey Regions No 280 Winter 2010, pp. 22-25