Don't Hold Your Breath

'By 2040, only electric and zero-emission cars will operate in Bogotá.' (El Tiempo)

The story never changes: Just wait, and Bogotá will have clean air (and a clean river). But whether

Does anybody care? A SITP bus belches
away in central Bogotá.

it's five, ten or fifteen years away, that dream never feels any closer.

The city's latest plan is that after 2025 all new TransMilenio buses must be zero emission, and after 2036 (only 18 years away) all new SITP buses must be zero emission. (A portion of the new TransMilenio buses which Bogotá will buy next year are to be low or zero emission, which is progress.)

But, even assuming that the politicians actually stick to the plan, the dirty old buses we have now will stay on the road. And, meanwhile, the city will fill up with many thousands of additional cars and other vehicles, whose pollution will add their poison to the air.

Don't expect relief soon.

Why don't authorities try something novel and different? Penalize those rolling chimneys we see belching away unmolested every day?

That would bring our throats and lungs some relief, not in 2036 or 2025, but tomorrow!

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

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

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

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

Tell TM to Stop Smoking Us!

Watch out! Poison gas coming!

TransMilenio is in the process of making a momentous decision, which could affect Bogotanos'

Run, run, away!

quality of life for decades to come. The bus rapid transit system is preparing to purchase some 1300 new buses to replace existing ones, which have outlived their planned life expectancy of 12 years.

But, what kind of buses will TM buy?

City officials say they plan to purchase mostly Euro 5 buses, which should be less polluting than the current ones. That, however, will depend on how they are maintained. And, judging from the smoke-belching quality of some of the current buses, the maintenance leaves lots to be desired.

Clean alternatives include hydrogen, natural gas and electric buses.

Why the city has apparently not seriously considered the first two is beyond me. Those cleaner

A 'clean, green' low-emission bus
purchased recently by TM.

engines may not have the same accelaration power as diesel, but I've seen electric buses charging up steep hills in San Francisco, California. And most of Bogotá is flat. Bogotá HAS considered electric buses, and even has one operating as a test vehicle. From what I've read, its disadvantages are mostly cost. Electric vehicles cost more to buy, and the infrastructure for supplying sufficient electricity and charging the buses would be costly.

Mayor Peñalosa also says that electric versions of the long, bending buses which Bogotá plans to buy simply do not exist.

Transmilenio's sole electric bus. (Photo: http://bogota.gov.co/temas-de-ciudad/ambiente/primer-bus-electrico-de-transmilenio-en-bogota)

However, electric vehicles suffer fewer breakdowns and cost less to maintain, so Bogotá could save money in the long run. And then there are all the health costs from pollution, and all the companies which decided not to locate here and tourists who decided not to come here because they didn't want to breathe smoke.

A trollebus in Bogotá. The last clean trollebuses left Bogotá's streets in 1991, leaving us with belching diesel vehicles.
(Photo: Barry Blumstein)

The old is new again: A historic electric bus in San Francisco, California.

A modern zero emission electric bus rolls up a hill in San Francisco, California.

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

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 Stiudents' Strange Ceremony

This strange ceremony, mixing chicha, fire, a monster and indigenous dancing, was staged yesterday evening by dance and art students from the Antonio Nariño University, as part of their year-end project.

What it meant was not clear, and left open to interpretation, a student named Brayan told me. But it also had something to do with the injustice of the 1948 assassination of populist leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitán on a nearby sidewalk, Brayan said.

The police, however, evidently did not recognize the artistic genius in the event, rather seeing it as more of a public nuisance, located between two TransMilenio lanes and in the middle of busy Carrera Septima - not to mention the smoke billowing into Bogotá's already-noxious air. The cops hurried the students away, and later fined their teacher under the Nuevo Codigo de Policia.

That all seemed wrong to Brayan.

"It's just an art project," he protested. "It's not like we were here burning things all day long."

Evidently, artistic smoke is not bad for you like regular smoke.

But Brayan saw an elegance in the episode. "We were memorializing injustice," he observed, "and now we've been met by injustice."

Brayan was collecting donations in a hat to pay his teacher's fine.

Certainly, in their zeal for public order and protecting our air, the police might think about going a few blocks north or west and citing the vehicles belching black smoke all day long.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours