The Rolling Chimney Hack

If one day soon you see one of those ubiquous 'rolling chimneys' - buses, trucks or cars which belch out greasy smoke every time they move - sporting a sticker proudly announcing that it is a 'chimenea,' it's probably not because the driver is proud that he's poisoning us.

More likely, the vehicle is a victim of this blog's hacking campaign, which turns highly polluting vehicles into involuntary rolling billboards denouncing pollution.

A typical Bogotá Sitp bus on Carrera 10 this afternoon. 

An improved bus.

Did you notice it?

'I am a chimney'

Another rolling chimney on Carrera 10 today.

Now, helpfully labeled.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Making Bogotá a Walkable City?

Pedestrians walk down the Eje Ambiental in La Candelaria.

This week, Bogotá hosted a conference, called Walk 21, of city planning experts keen on creating more walkable cities. The hope is to make walkng safe and pleasant, and make public spaces areas where a great variety of people mix.

La Salle University students paint a pedestrian area on Calle 11 in La Candelaria.

 Truly promoting walking will mean reducing crime and harrasment of women, as well as making one of the alternatives - driving polluting vehicles - less convenient and more expensive. In other words, a London-style congesting charge, which Bogotá officials have repeatedly talked about, but never implemented.

The conference was held in the Jorge Eliecer Gaitán theatre on Carrera Septima.

However, Bogotá's chronic traffic jams, like this one in La Candelaria,
can make walking unpleasant and even dangerous.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

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

Who's Sabotaging Colombians' Health?

'In less than 20 years, half of Bogotá's residents will be fat.' (El Tiempo)

The media reports that obesity in Colombia is growing to North American proportions.

Use of both legal and illegal drugs is rising among Bogotá youth.

And a recent survey of students found that use of both illegal drugs, like cocaine and marijuana, and a legal one: marijuana, is rising sharply among youth.

But both vices and drugs - legal ones, at least - have powerful lobbies to protect their right to poison their customers. Intense lobbying recently defeated legislation in Colombia's Congress which would have required companies to label foods high in sodium, saturate fats or sugars. (As if it would make any difference, judging by the rise in consumption of cigarettes, whose boxes carry big warnings.)

Perhaps televisions, cellphones and video games should carry warning labels, as well, because of the way they promote a sedentary lifestyle and waste our time.

Young women market Camel cigarettes near high schools and universities.

A young woman smoking.

What's the solution? Make these harmful products expensive, inconvenient to get and uncool. That won't be easy. But a good first step would be to actually enforce the law prohibiting the sale of loose cigarettes - which goes on on every streecorner and corner shop.

Cigarettes and candies for sale by a street vendor.

Who's sabotaging Colombians' health? Everybody, including themselves.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Respite for Bogotá's Breathers?

A TransMilenio bus belches its way thru central Bogotá
recently. How much cleaner will the new buses be?

In a small victory for clean air, Mayor Peñalosa increased the advantage zero-pollution buses will receive in the bidding for a new fleet for TransMilenio from 50 to 400 points.

Unfortunately, I can't discover anywhere how many total points we're talking about: Are we talking about 400 points out of a thousand, or 400 points out of a million?

But apparently the 400 points are significant, since Peñalosa promised that thanks to them many of the 1,000-plus new buses will be Euro 6: basically electric or naural gas powered.

That will be a relief for us breathers, since many of the older TM buses are veritable 'rolling chimneys' because they've exceeded their planned mileage and obviously have neither been maintained or equipped with filters.

Electric buses, at least, can never pollute, no matter how old they get or how badly they're neglected. (And, because Colombia's electricity is mostly hydroelectric, it generates relatively little greenhouse gas.)

The clean buses will cost more to buy, (altho less to maintain), and they will also require the installation of new infrastructure in TM statiions. So, they'll be expensive up front, but will save Bogotanos untold amounts in health expenditures and human suffering, as well as the economic benefits from increased tourism and businesses' willingness to move to a cleaner, more pleasant city.

But that makes me ask: If City Hall is willing to go to that expense and effort to make TM cleaner, why not bother to sanction monstrosities like this bus I saw yesterday belching its way up Calle 19?

Or this truck I spotted smoking away today along on Calle 13 near the train station?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Innumerable Oxxos

An Oxxo about to open in Las Aguas, beside the Plaza del Periodista.

Get your junk food fix here: An Oxxo
window on 19th street.

Beside La Plaza del Periodista, a new Oxxo appears. There's already one on the other side of the plaza, as well as another down 19th St., as well as a half-dozen more around La Candelaria.

Is there no limit to the market for the sort of refined, high-fat, high-salt and alchoholic fare which Oxxo specializes in?

Buy doritos!

Most likely, Oxxo's plan is to take away from the neighborhood stores this vice segment of the industry  - which I imagine is also the most profitable segment. Once they've lost their most profitable sales, the family-run stores will die, depriving the neighborhood of the healthy fruits and vegetables they sell, but which are too troublesome for Oxxo to bother with. This produces what in the U.S. is called a 'healthy food desert.'

But taking sales from the traditional stores can't be the whole story. The market for things which ruin

A family-run neighborhood shop, featuring
fruits and vegetables.

our health, like sugar, salt and fat-packed foods, tobacco and etc., must be pretty elastic. Push fat, salt, sweets and alchohol in people's (and particularly children's) faces and - surprise, surprise - they'll buy more of them.

Who wins? Oxxo and the junk food industry, and Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionare who owns the chain.

Who loses? Our health.

Across the plaza, another Oxxo.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Tell Me Something I Don't Know

El Tiempo ran this interview today pointing out - and who would have thought of it? - that diesel smoke is poisoning our air, and poisoning us.

The interviewee, Universidad de los Andes Prof. Eduardo Behrentz, is undoubtedly a really smart guy. But do we really need him to inform us that diesel is what's killing us? If Bogotá's citizens and authorities can't figure that out for themselves, then God save them!

A TransMilenio bus (pride of the city!) belches its way up Jimenez Ave. (which is also called the 'environmental axis).

Another bus belches its way along Calle 19.

Okay, okay. Now that we've finally figured out where Bogotá's air pollution comes from, can the city finally start doing something about it, such as removing these 'rolling smokestacks' from the road?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

What! Me Market Smoking to Kids?

Camel cigarette girls on the prowl today for young victims in La Candelaria.

I was cycling across the Plaza del Periodista this afternoon when we came upon this phenomenon: Four attractive young women dressed identically carrying marketing displays. But these weren't the cell phone or cable TV hawkers one often sees, but cigarette pushers offering Camel smokes.

Colombia signed the World Health Organization's global treaty on tobacco, which is supposed to end marketing to youth; and Camel manufacturer RJ Reynolds' own website boasts about its code supposedly safeguarding against marketing to people who are under 21, or utilizing models who are younger than 25.

So, why are these young women, whose very appearance associates smoking with youth, healthfulness, sex appeal and social success doing offering cigarettes, with their accompanying scourges of addiction, lung disease and heart attacks, in a neighborhood full of high school and university students?

Of course, the tobacco companies will swear that their marketing doesn't try to hook anybody, but only to make smokers switch brands. Who believes that?

Camel cigarette packs in a display case (which is NOT advertising)
beside candies on a Bogotá sidewalk.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Holiday Respite For Our Lungs

The holidays, when schools and businesses shut down and many Bogotanos leave town, allows a temporary respite for our lungs. El Tiempo illustrated this yesterday with dramatic side-by-side photos of Bogotá's air on a 'normal' (poisonous) day and during the holidays.

The Virgin of Guadalupe's normally hazy view of Bogotá is temporarily replaced by a clear one during the holidays.

The views from the intersection of Avenida Ciudad de Cali and Calle 13.

A bus belches smoke yesterday on Carrera Septima, near the Ministry of the Environment.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Split Mind on Smoking

'You could lose your baby by smoking.'

Colombia is renewing its graphic cigarette warnings, which is a good thing, and likely not to the liking of the smoking industry.

'The smoke you produce is fatal for everybody.'

'Are you willing to die this way?'

The existing warnings are also pretty dramatic, but replacing them's a good thing so that the public doesn't become jaded.

Today's warnings: 'Smoking causes impotence, addiction, cardiovascular sicknesses, etc.'

But why doesn't Colombia (or Bogotá) do the other thing which would reduce smoking - particularly by kids: Crack down on loosie sales? Such sales are illegal, but the law is a dead letter.

A man lights a loosie boiught from a street vendor.

The street vendors sell cigarettes alongside chips, candies and other kids' treats.

Cartoon cigarette lighters, obviously designed to appeal to kids.

Cigarette companies are prohibited from advertising - but they do so, anyway, by calling their ads 'display cases.'

The lighted case on the street vendor's stand shows off cigarettes.

Not very subtle: The huge case shows off Camel cigarettes, notorious for marketing to youth, which have just come to Colombia. So, celebrate!

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours