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Uruguay Transportation and Communications
Uruguay's small size and relatively flat terrain have
made
development of an excellent transportation network easy.
By most
accounts, the country had one of the best domestic highway
and
rail systems in Latin America. The country's location in
the
Southern Hemisphere, far from many of its trading
partners,
however, and its lack of land links with neighboring
countries
have been a hindrance in the past to foreign trade and
transportation. New technologies, including the
introduction of
refrigerated ships early in the twentieth century and
later the
airplane, have improved access to distant markets.
Moreover,
since the 1970s the country has made a concerted effort to
upgrade links with neighbors, improving road connections
to
Brazil and constructing highway and later railroad bridges
across
the Río Uruguay to Argentina.
The highway network radiated out from Montevideo and in
1989
consisted of about 50,000 kilometers of roads, including
6,500
kilometers of the national network that received
improvements
during the 1985-89 period. Rural areas were served by a
secondary
network of 3,000 kilometers of gravel roads and 40,200
kilometers
of dirt roads. Road transport carried an estimated 87
percent of
all freight, and a modern bus system provided passenger
links
between most of the populated areas. Bridges at Fray
Bentos and
Paysandú spanned the Río Uruguay and provided for easy
road
transit to Argentina, and by the late 1980s newly paved
roads to
the northern border tied into the Brazilian road network
(see
fig. 8). In 1989 Uruguay was granted loans of US$84
million from
the Inter-American Development Bank and US$81 million from
the
World Bank (see Glossary) to modernize its international
highways
and to begin construction of Route 1, linking Montevideo
with
Buenos Aires.
Owing to the high cost of automobile ownership in
Uruguay,
traffic congestion in Montevideo remained low by the
standards of
other cities in the world. There was no subway system in
1990,
but an extensive bus network operated on a
twenty-four-hour
basis. The city's electric trolleys had been allowed to
decay,
and the number of routes had been repeatedly reduced.
In 1989 the government-owned AFE maintained 3,000
kilometers
of standard-gauge railroads. Montevideo was the center of
the
system with lines extending out to the north, northwest,
and
east. Three connections with the Brazilian rail system and
a new
link with Argentina that opened in 1982 allowed for easier
shipment of goods to these countries. The rail authority,
however, found it increasingly difficult to maintain
passenger
trains in the face of a decade of declining ridership. In
1988
all passenger service was discontinued under the
government's
five-year rationalization program designed to downsize the
stagnant railroad subsector.
Carrasco International Airport, located twenty-one
kilometers
from Montevideo, was the country's principal airport.
Capitán
Curbelo Airport, near Punta del Este, also handled
international
flights to Brazil and Argentina. Fourteen other primarily
commercial airports with paved runways were distributed
throughout Uruguay. Uruguayan National Airlines (Primeras
Líneas
Uruguayas de Navegación Aérea--PLUNA) operated fourteen
aircraft
to domestic destinations and neighboring countries. Three
Boeing
737s and one Boeing 707 were the workhorses of PLUNA's
regional
service. Uruguayan Military Air Transport (Transportes
Aéreos
Militares Uruguayos--TAMU), a small airline owned by the
Uruguayan Air Force, maintained commercial flights on
several
domestic and foreign routes.
Despite improvements in land and air transportation
since the
1960s, most foreign trade still went by water. Montevideo
was the
country's principal port, handling close to 60 percent of
all
cargo in the early 1980s. Other major ports included
Colonia and
Punta del Este on the Río de la Plata Estuary and Fray
Bentos,
Paysandú, and Salto on the Río Uruguay. Passenger ferries
linked
Montevideo and Buenos Aires with six-hour-long crossings
via
Colonia, and a modern high-speed hydrofoil traveled from
Colonia
to Buenos Aires in three and one-half hours.
River transport remained an important means of
transportation, carrying about 5 percent of all freight,
and the
country counted over 1,600 kilometers of navigable inland
waterways. The Río Uruguay was by far the most important
waterway, and oceangoing ships of up to 4.2 meters draught
could
travel north as far as Paysandú. Smaller vessels of up to
2.7
meters draught could travel upstream to Salto.
Broadcast facilities were numerous, and all parts of
the
country could receive at least one AM radio station or one
television station. In 1990 there were ninety-nine AM
stations, a
quarter of which were in the Montevideo area. Ten of the
AM
stations broadcast on shortwave frequencies to reach a
larger
audience both domestically and abroad. All stations,
except for
one government-owned transmitter, were commercial, and
broadcasts
were in Spanish. Montevideo had four television stations;
another
twenty-two were scattered in towns across the country.
Uruguayans
had an estimated 1.8 million radio receivers and 650,000
television sets in 1990.
Improvement of the nation's telephone system was a
priority
for the Sanguinetti government. By 1990 there were over
345,000
telephones (at least 11 percent of the population, the
highest
per capita in South America), an increase of over 25
percent from
five years earlier. The US$13 million expansion of
service, about
half of which took place in the country's interior, helped
reduce
the number of households and businesses on a waiting list
for
telephone service. The government's monopolistic
communications
agency, ANTEL, planned to invest US$100 million in the
telephone
system between 1989 and 1993, extending service to another
180,000 households in the country's interior. The basic
elements
of the nation's telecommunications network were expanded,
and the
system was modernized. In 1990 the government heeded the
growing
Latin American trend toward privatization of state
enterprises
when it began allowing private investment in the nation's
telephone system. After years of depending on Argentine
relay
stations for its international telephone service, Uruguay
installed its first satellite earth station in 1985. In
1990 it
had two International Telecommunications Satellite
Organization
(Intelsat) earth stations. Telex and facsimile (fax)
service was
also expanded.
Data as of December 1990
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