In the last ten years, Peru has had a sustainable growth in its economy. This is due to economic policies determined by the government, in addition to the momentum and promoting of the private investment. But Arequipa is not an alien to this growth; during the 2013 Arequipa posted growth in Gross Domestic Product of 6% [1] , quantity above the national average.

This growth is also reflected in the increment of the population [2] , at the end of the 1990s and 2000, appeared in Peru a social aspect called centralism¹. This is why the government applied a strategy for decentralization, which entailed and generated a regional centralism in the major cities of Peru, Arequipa and Trujillo, that now represent important economic growth. Nowadays Arequipa receives immigrants from different parts from the south of Peru, like Tacna, Moquegua, Cusco and Puno; being approximately one million habitants as we can see in Table 1, becoming the region with the highest number of habitants after Lima and Callao.

Arequipa increases their economic growth thanks to the development of different sectors such as mining,

Source: INEI National Institute of Statistics and Informatics.

trade, construction, and services which promote employment generation, economic stability and improvement in the quality of life. Because of this, many citizens took advantage of this “economic boom” to invest in capital good, buying homes, cars, etc. This created serious problems due to the increase of the automotive park [3] (Table 2). The Regional Government and the District Governments had to take the initiative to redesign and rebuild many main roads, to facilitate and decrease the traffic congestion that was reflected by these problems [4] .

One of the main roads is the vial exchange of the avenues Venezuela and Daniel Alcides Carreon, which are parts of the first road ring in the structure of the Master Plan of Metropolitan Arequipa. This is because both avenues will become a quick way to achieve a fluidity in the vehicular transport and particular mass urban. This vial exchange is located in the Arequipa City, in the following coordinates (16˚24'44.1"S, 71˚32'07.3"W) as shown in Figure 1.

Venezuela avenue is part of the first ring in the structure of the Master Plan of Metropolitan Arequipa [5] ; along it there are already 4 exchanges vials, the same that were built in different periods, and therefore were not planned on a holistic basis. These avenues should already be on the fast track to achieve a fluidity in the vehicular

Source: MTC Ministry of Transport and Communications.

transport and particular mass urban. The oldest one of these exchanges is the av. Venezuela―av. Alcides Carrion, subject of this study and where the “Arequipa Bus” will circulate, along the corridor exclusive of transport.

Venezuela avenue is part of the first ring in the structure of the Master Plan of Metropolitan Arequipa 2002-2015. The sharing road is called “Palomar”. The exchange Palomar was designed in anticipation that the Av. Venezuela becomes, in the future, on a fast track (“zanjón”). It has three levels: an underpass crossing, a bridge―roundabout at the ground level―and another bridge at high altitude for the Exclusive Broker. The work in av. Alcides Carrion―Venezuela is valued at approximately 17 million 347 thousand soles. The municipal authority announced that the three road interchanges would require four months; however, only El Palomar, according to initial studies, would require up to 7 months for its execution.

This research seeks to analyse the perception of the population of the city of Arequipa with respect to the infrastructure works to study, by determining the level of satisfaction of the population as a percentage.

We surveyed 384 people between the ages of 18 and 65 years, of which 185 are female, representing a 48.2% and 199 are male representing a 51.8%, all of them citizens of Arequipa which often pass through the exchange of the avenues Venezuela and Daniel Alcides Carrión. The frequency of transit and/or use of this exchange vial is quite high as you can see in Figure 2 and Figure 3, a 47.66% of the population passes between 1 to 5 times, from Monday to Friday, while a 64.06% on the weekends.

In order to the reason for which people pass through the interchange road, we can observe that the most salient

and important are: working with a 27.20%, followed by commercial centers 19%, universities or research centers 12.6% and medical centers 8.5% (Figure 4).

The perception of the population regarding to the impact of these public works infrastructure in their quality of life, the 65.10% believes that the impact is positive, while only the 14.06% thinks that it is a bad thing, on the other hand a 20.83% is indifferent to the impact or influence generated by this vial exchange (Figure 5). Another significant result is the impact on travel times using this fast track, where a significant 69.27% responded that this fast track reduce traveling time from one place to another, on the other hand a 12.76% said that the time has

increase and 17.97% of the remaining population believes that the travel times remained the same (Figure 6).

As the most important result and giving response to the objectives of this study, we discovered that the perception of the population of the city of Arequipa regarding to public works in the exchange vial executed in the avenues Daniel Alcides Carrion and Venezuela is the following: the 52.86% is satisfied and 7.28% felt very satisfied with this infrastructure work. However the is a percentage which is very dissatisfied and unhappy as you can see in Figure 7.

In addition to the descriptive processing, we did a correlational analysis using the test of Kendall Tau-b. The results show that there is a strong correlation between people who frequently travel through the exchange road from Monday to Friday with the people passing on weekends; we can say that they live nearby. Another interesting result that present the study talks about travel times in connection with the satisfaction and subsequent recommendation to use the interchange road, because with lees time for transfer, higher degree of satisfaction, presenting a correlation of r = −5.24 and with less time for transfer, greater recommendation of the service, with a correlation of r = −0.431. Both results are significant and offer moderate inverse correlations. We can also say that to a greater degree of satisfaction, grater recommendation and when the traffic follow is better, the transfer time decrease, having a correlation of r = −0.454. To conclude we can say, in order to the results presented, that the degree of satisfaction and the potential recommendation to use the vial exchange are related to several factors, mainly on the fluidity of the traffic and the time to transfer. See Table 3.

Arequipa is a city with great economic growth, above the average country; however this growth is mainly driven by the private sector. We can see more shopping centers, businesses, factories, industries and mines in the region, which generate employment generating an economic cycle. But this economic growth is not supported by the public sector; we do not have the infrastructure or the support of airports, terminals, ports, roads and avenues to support and collaborate with this economic growth. Therefore we can conclude that while it is true Arequipa is having an economic growth; we are still far from being able to talk about social development.

By observation we can see that the perception of the population in relation to a public works is always negative, before and during the execution of the project, but the results of this study show that once a project is completed, the perception of citizenship is good, demonstrating satisfaction levels quiet high. In conclusion we can say that it is important to invest in access roads to the city of Arequipa and thus contribute to the growth

^*p < 0.05; ^**p > 0.01.

¹Centralism in Peru: economic activity concentrated in the capital Lima.

²Presupuesto, M. d.-O. (s.f.). Ministerio de Transportes y Comunicaciones. Obtenido de www.mtc.gob.pe

[1] Central Reserve Bank of Peru (2013) Report on Economic Growth. www.bcrp.gob.pe

[2] National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (2013) Population of Arequipa City. http://www.inei.gob.pe/media/MenuRecursivo/Cap19022.xls

[3] National Institute of Statistics and Informatics (2013) Population and Vehicle Fleet of Arequipa City. http://www.inei.gob.pe/estadisticas/indice-tematico/economia/

[4] Ministry of Health (2013) Population of Arequipa City according Districts. http://www.minsa.gob.pe/estadisticas/estadisticas/poblacion/poblacionmarcos.asp?04

[5] Provincial Municipality of Arequipa (2013) Project Profile. http://www.muniarequipa.gob.pe