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Reference Date: 26-07-98
Experience selected in the 1998 Dubai Award for Best Practice, and catalogued as GOOD.
(
Best Practices Database.)
País/Country: Spain
United Nations Region: Europe
Ecological region: Continental
Activity: Metropolitan
Partnerships: Trade Union Organization. Private Sector. Workers'
Association. Central Government.
Themes = Infrastructure, Communications, Transportation; energy
use, conservation and production.
Main contact:
Kanguros Company (Private sector)
Carretera Arganda-Mejorada, Km 5,3
Velilla de San Antonio
Madrid
Spain
28850
Tel: +34 91 675 59 00
Fax: +34 91 656 13 04
Partner:
Comisiones Obreras (Trade Union Organization)
Carlos Martínez
C/ Fernández de la Hoz, 12
28010 Madrid
Spain
Tel: 91 319 17 50
Partner:
Kanguros Company (Private Sector)
Javier Artucha
C/ Brújula, 21
Torrejón de Ardoz
Madrid
Spain
28850
Tel: +34 91 675 59 00
Fax: +34 91 656 13 04
Partner One Support Type: Financial Support
Partner:
Works committee (Workers' Association)
Joaquín Iturralde
C/ Brújula, 21
Torrejón de Ardoz
Madrid 28850
Spain
Tel: +34 91 67 55 900
Fax: +34 91 65 61 304
Partner Two Support Type: Political Support
Partner:
Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Power (IDAE)
(Central government)
Concepción Cánovas del Castillo
Paseo de la Castellana, 95 planta 21
Madrid 28046
España
Tel: +34 91 456 49 00
Fax: +34 91 555 73 89
E-mail: comunicacion@idae.es
Partner Three Support Type: Technical Support
Financial Profile:
The investment needed for the year 1998 shall be Pesetas
20,000,000, provided in full by the Company Management. If this
investment is extrapolated to subsequent financial years, it may be
estimated that the good practice may be developed with Pesetas
100,000,000 over five years
Date and Start of the Initiative:
These types of practices are very slow, the first negotiations date
back to September, 1996, since then and till the present time, the
preliminary stages of the
Alternative Mobility Plan: Diagnosis of the situation (performance
of a survey on the workers' patterns of mobility), Preliminary
Proposals, Shared-Car Manual, Plan of Action, signing of the
undertakings agreed between the company and the workers (see
Enclosed Document) and Start of the transfer of the company to
Velilla de San Antonio (April, 1998).
Previous situation:
Excessive use of private vehicles with a single occupant to travel
to work.
Situation afterwards:
Increase in the rate of occupation of the vehicles, increase in the
use of public transport, implementation of company transport
through a shuttle service and promotion
of the use of transportation without engines.
Most important impacts as a result of the Good Practice:
1. Situation before the start of the action
The reason which led to the development of the action was the
change of location that the plant belonging to the "Corporaci.n
Comercial Kanguros, S.A." Company were to make from the municipal
district of Torrejon de Ardoz (Madrid) to that of Velilla de San
Antonio (Madrid Province).
Both towns are located in the Region of the Corredor del Henares
which constitutes one of the largest industrial concentrations and
representative of the Autonomous Community of Madrid (it
concentrates 30% of the employment), located around the main
connecting highways, the N-II motorway and the International
Airport of Madrid-Barajas.
This Corridor is made up by 26 municipal districts with a
population of 375,324 inhabitants (1991), all of these towns
suffered the consequences of a deep-rooted industrial conversion in
the decade of the 80s with the closing of plants and high rates
of unemployment, in the last few years the area has had up to 27%
unemployment.
The presence since the 1950s of a large industrial sector has had
serious consequences and some of an irreversible nature in the
ecosystems in the Corredor del Henares. Since the production
sectors for the Region were concentrated in the area, the demand
for transport has became ever greater, therefore the negative
consequences of this activity keep on increasing by the day. At the
present time, one of the largest Transportation Logistics Centres
in Europe is being built, the Barajas-Coslada Logistics Platform.
The main environmental problems are the presence of gravel pits in
the surroundings of the river Henares, the pollution form emissions
from industry (especially the chemicals industry), the great
presence and the extension of large transport infrastructures
(motorways, dual carriageways, railways, Airport, ...), the
invasion of chaotic urban growth, the problems of uncontrolled
tipping, etc.
The implementation of the Alternative Mobility Plan was caused by
the transfer of the premises of Kanguros, the new location was
situated in a smaller town and therefore it had less public
transport facilities which would cause extra problems for the
workers.
The possibility of reducing these negative effects through the
implementation of measures for rationalising trips to work was an
opportunity for all the agents involved: workers, company and
society as a whole.
2. Preparing the information and clarifying the priorities
The priorities that were set out when designing the Alternative
Mobility Plan meant that each and every one of the measures should
meet the objectives of efficiency and power saving in the workers'
journeys to their place of work. The general principles were to be:
3. Formulation of objetives, strategies and mobilization of resources
The general objectives of this Good Practice were based on:
1. Appointment of a transport director
A "transport co-ordinator" has been selected, who has to develop
different functions to support the improvement in the
transportation for the workers, applying the criteria of power
savings and efficiency. This worker shall be responsible for:
3. Company Transport
For the set-up of the transport services provided by the company it
was necessary to reorganise the timetables for starting and
finishing work, which at the present time are highly scaled,
introduce a new structure which would allow the largest number
of workers to be grouped together who could use this service.
The transport service offered by the company consisted of a shuttle
service which would link to the local train at Torrejon Station,
where the workers residing in Madrid would arrive and which would
then make an intermediate stop at the "Parque de Cataluña" housing
estate (in Torrejon), then travelling on to the new premises for
Kanguros in Velilla de San Antonio.
The approximate cost of this initiative is estimated at Pesetas
20,852,160 per year, carrying out two services with 30 seats to
cover the arrivals at 8:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. and another one with
19 seats in a minibus at 14:00 p.m. For the deapartures there would
be two routes for 30 seats at 18:00 and 19:00 p.m., with a minibus
service at 22:00 p.m. with a minibus service at 22:00 p.m.
4. Shared car proposal
These types of measures are designed for those workers who live in
wide-spread areas with little population where there is not a good
public transport service.
The different pairings were made according to the are of abode,
finding possibilities of pairings for almost all the workers. The
company management has paid for a number of incentives of a
financial nature. Thus, for each trip in a shared car "petrol
vouchers" would be paid according to the number of people
transported. So, for:
5. Parking
This is one of the most useful instruments when applying measures
for managing the demand in order to dissuade people from using
their cars by
themselves.
6. Pedestrian network
The new premises are located on an Industrial Estate far away from
the centre of population, where there are serious deficiencies
which affect the minimum safety conditions for pedestrians.
Proposals have been made which will improve the signals (zebra
crossings, traffic lights, pavements) which will allow a continuous
route to be designed between the town centre and the industrial
estate. It would also be appropriate to install signs for reducing
the speed for road traffic at the crossing for the Velilla-Mejorada
road.
The estimated cost of the improvement for the route between the
town centre and the industrial estate stands at Pesetas 10 million,
which would be paid by the Town Council of Velilla de San Antonio.
7. Facilities for Cyclists
The possible measures in this action will be aimed at those users
of public transport and the residents in nearby towns (for whom the
distance to work would not be over 15 kilometres). This would
involve installing a system of renting bicycles in the town centre
so as to be able to link up to the industrial estate. This proposal
would be accompanied by another series of initiatives:
4. Process
This partial Plan for the undertaking achieved by the Department of
the Environment of the Trade Union "Comisiones Obreras" with the
Institute for Development and Power Diversification (IDAE) for
the development of pilot experiments in which the objectives of
power saving and efficiency would be met.
The selection of the "Corporación Comercial Kanguros" company
started out from the imminent transfer from Torrejón de Ardoz to
Velilla de San Antonio. The climate of dialogue and participation
between the agents involved in the Alternative Mobility Plan
(workers and company) was highly favourable right from the start,
which allowed the undertakings announced in the Plan of Action to
be achieved.
The stages of the Process were the following:
5. Results achieved
The results in these kinds of initiatives are noticed very slowly.
On the one hand, this experiment has already performed one of the
most difficult stages in the process: the agreement between workers
and company management to develop a project for power efficiency
and saving in transport to work.
On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that the changes in
the behaviour of the citizens require a great effort in terms of
publicising and making them aware of the subject, which is only
achieved over time.
The initial situation was characterised by the great lack of
rationality in the use of transportation: excessive protagonism for
the use of private vehicles by one user. The modal shareout was the
following:
| Mode | N. workers |
| Public transport | 22 workers |
| On foot | 6 workers |
| Shared vehicule | 8 workers |
| Private vehicule alone | 83 workers |
| Total | 119 workers |
The proposal was aimed at transferring the journeys by car alone
towards public transport, company transport (the shuttle services)
or shared car trips, thereby offering a more rational distribution
of the journeys:
| Mode | N. workers | N. cars |
| Public transport | 6 workers | |
| On foot | ||
| Shared vehicule | 44 workers | 22 |
| Private vehicule | 5 workers | 5 |
| Bike | 1 | |
| Company transport | 73 workers |
6. Sustainability
The objectives planned were materialised using a number of
measures, which allowed the following power savings to be achieved:
Savings produced by the Mobility Plan
7. Lessons learnt
This Alternative Mobility Plan is a pioneering experiment in Spain,
although these practices have already been put into practice in
other countries from where some of these working methods have been
transferred. At Kanguros the methodological principles have been
followed but adapted to the specific problems of the workers at
this company.
So, they have applied the experiences in shared cars developed in
California (USA) with the coming into force of the Clean Air Act
(1980), or the system for renting bicycles from Holland. Other
measures have been taken from practices that were normal in our
country at other times but which are being abandoned as a result of
the use of private cars, this is the case of the routes or the use
of public transport.
8. Transfer
This Alternative Mobility Plan for Kanguros may be transferred to
other companies either completely or by applying some of the
measures that are proposed. Although it is true that a Plan has an
exclusive nature, in this case it is possible to apply isolated
initiatives which allow satisfactory results to be attained.
As was explained above, this Plan forms part of an undertaking with
the IDEA to develop 5 pilot experiments. In the rest of the Plans
carried out (GESA in Palma de Mallorca, Geographical Institute
in Madrid and AZKAR-GUIPUZCOANA-TDN-GOMEZ in Barcelona) only some
of the measures have been developed, without putting the whole of
the proposal into practice, though also having positive results.
References
Ruiz, José (1998) "The Trade Unions "CC.OO" and "UGT" present a plan
as an alternative to the excessive use of private cars" ( National
newspaper "YA". February 20th, 1998)
| 1998 Spanish Best Practices selected by the International Jury > http://habitat.aq.upm.es/bpes/onu98/bp453.en.html |