The Perpetually Provisional Polluting SITPS

Celebrate! Bogotá just extended the life of the city 'Provisional' Integrated System of Public Transit (SITP) for yet another year. Just translate 'provisional' as 'perpetual' and you'll have a better understading of the situation.

A SITP bus disappears
in its own smoke.

As terribly polluting as are many of Bogotá's cars, buses, trucks and factories, the provisional SITPs stand out as extraordinarily poisonous. It's hard to comprehend how a capital city supposedly concerned about health and air quality chooses to not only tolerate vehicles like these, but happily supplies them with subsidized diesel with which to poison all of us.

One might even ask why, someplace which is supposedly defending the public by cracking down on such terrible crimes as farejumping and the possession of small amounts of drugs, turns a blind eye to the violations of pollution laws which cause thousands of premature deaths in Bogotá alone.

A small start to improving things would be to retire the worst of the 'rolling chimneys' - if the city is willing to give public health more importance than private profits.

Quite a blast of smoke!

Pity the poor driver alongside this (non-provisional) SITP bus, and the suffering bicyclist behind taking pictures.

In Bogotá, green does not mean clean.

Provisional perpetual pollution.

A view of grey Bogotá from its Eastern Hills.

I cut out the high-rise buildings to show the bus's pollution in its full glory.

Wow! A factory couldn't be smokier than this bus!

Pity the poor cycllist stuck behind this (normal) SITP bus.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Sitp's 'Transition' to Nowhere

The Sitp bus system was supposed to improve, if not revolutionize, Bogotá's transit. The old 'battle for the centavo,' in which buses raced each other madly to pick up passengers, was supposed to end. Order would descend on Bogotá's streets as buses stopped for passengers only at designated bus stops instead of screeching to a halt wherever the passenger happened to be waiting. More efficient buses and routes would also reduce Bogotá's traffic jams. And, by replacing the dirty old buses with clean new ones, the city's air would improve.

Unfortunately, very little of that has happened. Rather than replacing the old buses, the city just slapped labels on them, declaring them 'transitional' Sitp buses, as tho those labels would have some magical transformational effect on the vehicles. And, years later, the perpetual 'transition' has no end in sight.

A Sitp bus broke down on Calle 26 -
apparently with a wheel or tire problen.      

Neither do the 'transitional' Sitp drivers, who presumably work under new training and instructions, seem to behave better than did the pre-Sitp drivers.

Meanwhile, even with all of these failings, several of the companies operating the Sitp buses are close to bankruptcy.

But this incident I witnessed the other day on 26th St., across from the Central Cemetery and the Centro Memoria, has come to represent for me the Sitp's failings.

But, lo and behold, another Sitp bus pulls up to take the stranded passengers.

Here we go!

And the new, 'good' bus takes off - with a blast of smoke. 

Yet another of Bogotá's 'rolling chimneys.'

The Sitp 'transition' rolls ahead.

 By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Motors Matter More Than Lungs

Straight out of TransMilenio's tailpipes and into our lungs.

Bogotá's Secretariat of the Environment just decided not to require TransMilenio and Sitp buses to use filters to reduce their pollution.

Anybody who traveles Bogotá's streets can see why many of those buses are called 'rolling chimneys.'
Air pollution causes thousands of premature deaths in Bogotá each year, as well as untold suffering for the aged and for people with asthma and other breathing ailments.

But the agency that's supposed to protect Bogotá's environment (and presumably our health) took the side of the bus owners, who claim that filters would damage their engines. That might come as a surprise in the many cities around the world which have required filters for years - and where residents breathe clean air. It's enough to make one suspect that the Bogotá bus owners' real agenda is to save money by sending their unfiltered filth belching into our atmosphere.

A SITP bus does what it knows best:
pump billions of diesel particles into our air.

Instead, the law instructs bus owners to select from a range of anti-pollution options, including valves, conventional filters, magnetic filters, etc. In other words, by giving the owners many alternatives, none will be enforced.

And even if the owners are right about the engine damage, it only means an additional cost - undoubtedly still much cheaper than the immense health and environmental damage caused by Bogotá's toxic air pollution.

Besides the medical and environmental impacts, how many companies have chosen to locate elsewhere because of the gray air? How many tourists have opted to spend their time and money elsewhere to give their lungs a break?

Putting the economic interests of bus owners first is a bad bargain for the city all around.

Bogotá's environmental agency has made it clear: Their motors are woth more than our lungs.

An afterthought: The polluters are shifting their costs onto cyclists and pedestrians in a very concrete way: by forcing them to buy the filters, to cover their own mouths.

Dressed right for Bogotá's air.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

New Labels, Same Smoke

Recently, in its desperation to expand its peso-hemorrhaging SITP bus system, the Petro administration has been slapping 'SITP' stickers on old buses and - like magic! - transforming them into new, modern, efficient, orderly and clean buses.

Except for the fact that they continue stopping in mid-block, running red lights and belching smoke.

Apparently, that sticker doesn't change anything inside the buses.

¿Why haven't any of the mayoral candidates made cleaning the air part of their campaign platforms?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Bogotá's Transit Reform - Still Stuck at Start

A bus stops at a green light, blocking Carrera 10, to let a passenger board.

Bogotá's much-ballyhooed transition from private, commercial buses to publicly-managed SITP buses started off this week so slowly you might not have noticed, if not for the headlines.

Between now and November, the city's thousands of privately-owned and run buses are supposed to either be retired or switched to public control and management and integrated into the SITP system. 

Perhaps that will happen - or perhaps before then the city will discover that it doesn't know how to operate a bus system which people actually want to ride. 

In any case, on the first days of this transition, I found the usual lack of a basic ingredient necessary for bringing order to Bogotá's streets: Law enforcement.

...another bus stops in the middle of the block and in the middle of the street to pick up a passenger.

The calibradores, who tell private bus drivers how far another bus on the same line is ahead of them, were supposed to disappear with the private buses. They're still at work.

A police post at the same intersection. The cops here protect against muggings, but turn a blind eye to transit violations. 

A bus belches diesel smoke. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Why the SITP is Failing, in 12 Photos

Anybody in there?

In the quiet Teusaquillo neighborhood this afternoon I came upon this long line of blue SITP buses. What was this army of buses doing on a slow Sunday afternoon in this drowsy neighborhood?

As the photos below show, the buses weren't doing much that was useful. Most were completely empty, while a few carried a couple of lonely passengers. This long row, I suspect, contained more buses than passengers.

Another empty bus.

What makes a company send out a fleet of buses even where there are no passengers? The bus owners aren't stupid, so it must be distorted rules and incentives. Are the SITP operators paid for each kilometer their buses travel, rather than the number of passengers they carry? Or, do their contracts require them to cover certain routes, no matter whether or not anybody actually wants to go there?

The SITP is the brainchild of Mayor Petro, and Bogotá badly needs a rationally-designed bus system with clean, efficient vehicles and respectful drivers. But it also needs to be rational and economically sustainable, and the SITP clearly is not that. Petro seems to believe that propaganda and wishful thinking can make things work. But we live in a world of profits and losses, and unless the SITP has the former, it won't last long.

And another empty bus.

Rather than rationalizing the SITP, Petro plans to apply the Pico y Placa rule to the traditonal buses, keeping them off of the road some days every week, thus driving more passengers to the SITP buses. That might work, but making the SITP system more attractive would be a better solution. More sensible, even, would be to take the highly-polluting buses, whether traditional buses, SITPs or TransMillenio vehicles, off of the road. Then, the city would be reducing congestion and also saving our lungs.

Yet another empty bus.

I think I see passengers in this one. Hallelujah!

A single traditional bus does have a few passengers.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The SITP's Empty Present...and Future?

Hello, is anybody in there?

I took these photos today of some of the first buses of Bogotá's much-vaunted and long-awaited Integrated System of Public Transit, or SITP. By having efficiently-designed routes and doing things like stopping only at official bus stops, the SITP is supposed to bring Bogotá clean, efficient and rational public transport by replacing the existing dirty, chaotic and inefficient private buses. (Unfortunately, however, I've observed that many of the SITP buses are also pretty polluting, despite still being new.)

But to accomplish those things, the SITPs will have to carry passengers. Every one I've seen has been empty, or nearly so. The main reason appears to be that the city has not retired the traditional buses which compete with the SITP's lines. (Altho that still begs the question of why so few passengers choose the SITP buses, which are presumably safer and more comfortable than the traditional ones.Also, you can always be sure of finding a seat!)

Is this yet another result of the bus companies' great influence over the city, which also appears to keep them invulnerable pollution and safety laws?

One good thing about the SITP - if it's actually implemented - will be the end of the murderous 'War for the Penny' in which those private buses race each other to pick up passengers for a few pesos. Just a few days ago a bus driver ran a red light, according to witnesses, and hit two children, killing one of them. Even tho the bus driver had millions of unpaid traffic fines and tried to flee the scene, police didn't jail him and he didn't lose his driver's license.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours