PROGRESS REPORT 1998
MOBILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY

THE DUTY-FREE ZONE OF BILBAO PORT

The Port of Bilbao has no specific specialised area for offering services to companies of this kind, and the scant existing initiative is due to the effort of occasional investors. This means that the area has until now only been used as a point of connection between different kinds of transport, without making the most of the break in the logistics chain to carry out added value activities.

The Strategic Plan for the Revitalisation of Metropolitan Bilbao mentions the "industrial effect" of ports in general, in reference to the number of companies and industries that tend to sprout up in the areas around them, and vice versa, given that the existence of construction and naval repairs industries, together with a full range of services, in turn increase the attraction to use a port.

The main Atlantic ports have areas within the docking zone itself that are assigned to the establishment of storage and distribution companies, known as Logistic Activity Areas (LAA), or to industrial transformation industries, both of which convert the port into a centre of business activity.

In the duty-free zones of Hamburg port, 1,047 companies employ 40,000 workers, although the whole port houses 2,000 companies with 140,000 workers, including both direct and indirect employees. This figure is equivalent to 15% of the overall employment in this German city.

There is an important concentration of industries in Liverpool port. Its duty-free zone (created in 1984), occupies half of the port surface and attracts storage and distribution activities with more than 1,000 presently established companies and a merchandise traffic of more than 30 million tons.

The industrial area of Antwerp port occupies 3,700 hectares (a third of the total port area) and employs 33,000 workers in the sectors of refinery, chemicals and petrochemicals, the car industry, gas, foodstuffs and civil engineering. These industries generate a production equivalent to 560,000 million pesetas, and a quarter of the merchandise is handled at the port.

Development of the socio-economic area standing around a duty-free zone is brought about by the two kinds of activities that can be carried out in it: distribution activities, and activities related to light transformation. Moreover, a duty-free zone is an excellent image enhancer, thanks to the fact that it attracts new productive investors, either to the port itself, or to its surrounding areas.

The Port of Bilbao is ideal for the creation of a duty-free zone, since it avails of the same necessary space and potential industrial activities as that found in the duty-free zones of other European ports. This said, as well as a great deal of expense, the materialisation of this project implies the need for a high degree of consensus and commitment between the public and private partners involved in the initiative.
 

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*The metropolitan road network has to be efficiently managed

The main problem of the metropolitan road network presently lies in the enormous amount of traffic recorded, bringing about a situation of congestion and saturation on the main incoming roads, all of which are developed on the basis of a vulnerable network that suffers from the fact that the roads are not organised in order of importance and are poorly interconnected.

Thanks to investments of 327,000 million pesetas, the New Bizkaia Road Plan, which should have been completed by 2016, hopes to deal with the most important changes to the Bizkaia road network. Among these actions are those of improving the road infrastructure and the development of an Intelligent Transport System.

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*The coordination of public transport in Metropolitan Bilbao will make people use it more

According to the conclusions of the surveys carried out on mobility in Bizkaia and Bilbao by the Bizkaia Transport Association, the efforts made by the institutions as regards public transport are extremely important in view of the amount of money invested in the subject and the population it affects. In this sense, the customer has a fairly positive view of the quality of the metropolitan transport plan.

During 1998, important progress was made with respect to the metropolitan public transport system, among which we can highlight, as well as the excellent progress being made on the construction of Bilbao Underground's Line 2, the changes made to the suburban train network. Thanks to this initiative, May 1998 saw the inauguration of the emblematic Ametzola Station, as a starting point for Renfe's new Southern Line, which has been running from Olebeaga to Abando since March 1999 in substitution of the stretch which had until then run the length of the Estuary.


*The need to strengthen the part played by the railway in metropolitan economic development

The railway system presently existing in Metropolitan Bilbao shows a series of serious defects, therefore placing it in an unfavourable position within the European system of land transport, and seriously hindering its revitalisation. In this sense, the EU is offering incentives for investment of the Cohesion Funds in financing railway systems which, while contributing to regional coordination, will also benefit the transport of merchandise by train rather than by road, in view of the fact that the latter is responsible for higher contamination and general deterioration of the environment.

The delay experienced by the so-called Basque "Y" railway project is only aggravating the exclusion of Metropolitan Bilbao from European communication arteries and threatens to isolate it from the main Madrid-Paris artery.


*The need to increase the number of international connections at Bilbao Airport

Having seen more than two million passengers pass through its doors (the number of travellers in 1998 was 2,240,000), Bilbao Airport has now confirmed its place among the group of main European regional airports. This passenger growth, which stands at 42.6%, therefore places Bilbao Airport in fourth place, behind the airports of Clermont Ferrand, Billund and Izmir.

Moreover, this is the ideal moment to consider the need for the Airport to start offering intercontinental flights, the feasibility of which is obvious from the growing number of North Americans who are attracted to the metropolis by the Guggenheim Museum.

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*The perception of mobility and accessibility within Metropolitan Bilbao

The results of the Opinion Poll carried out by Bilbao Metropoli-30 on the Bilbao metropolis and its revitalisation process reflect, in the first place, that most of the citizens believe the public transport system to be of high quality: 64% of those polled stated that they were satisfied with the service, a rise of 1% compared to 1997.

Certain infrastructures that were highly positively assessed in 1997, have this year lost importance in the citizens' opinion. This phenomenon goes hand in hand with a tendency towards more positive opinions of infrastructures, with a more obvious organisation for most people (the underground, bridges) in comparison with elements that are not quite as tangible (the "Y" railway system) or those that are beginning to show practical repercussion in terms of coming into effect (port, airport).
 

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