´Do As We Say, Not As We Sell´

'Get On the Bus', editorializes El Tiempo. But buy one of our advertisers' cars, first.

One of the huge, daily traffic jams on Calle 26.

El Tiempo, Colombia's largest newspaper, has long been part of the chorus calling for people to use mass transit instead of private cars. And I can't doubt their sincerity. After all, the evidence is there for all to see in the city's immense and ever-growing traffic jams.

But, while El Tiempo wants you on the bus, they clearly also want you to buy a car, whose propaganda constitutes much of the newspaper's advertising, including two weekly pull-out car magazines. (The editorial, in any case, is mealy-mouthed and consists mostly of cliches, while neglecting the only policy demonstrated to reducing car use - a congestion charge.)

El Tiempo's hypocrisy in calling for less car use while doing all it can to promote car sales, is an example of the contradictions in many of us, not least of all Bogotá's city government, which claims to want to reduce private car use. Until the government and others actually make their policies match their rhetoric, the traffic crisis will only get worse.

A lone cyclist weaves thru traffic near the National University.

One of the huge, daily traffic jams in La Candelaria.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The 'Miracle' Metro

A jammed Bogotá road. Is a subway the solution?

It will reduce commute times, traffic congestion, pollution - and even crime and health problems, while saving Bogotá millions of dollars.

Those are some of the claims made by backers of a 15 trillion peso Bogotá subway line in a recent study by the company Teknidata, hired by the city's Urban Development Institute, the IDU.

A Bogotá bus belches smoke. Has anybody
thot of enforcing emissions laws?

But many of those claims look dubious from a glance at Latin American capitals such as Mexico City, Santiago, Chile and Caracas, Venezuela, all of which have much more extensive subway systems than Bogotá could have for decades - and still suffer from horrific pollution and traffic jams.

The reason is simple: Induced traffic demand. Opening up road space, by either building more roads or taking cars off of the roads using mass transit, will reduce traffic jams....for a while. But new drivers, seeing that wonderful open asphalt, will decide to make more trips. So, traffic ends up just as bad, or even worse.

This is not to say that a subway's a bad thing. In fact, it's an excellent thing for the many thousands of people who use it every day to get where they're going quickly underneath the traffic jams.

Will Bogotá's metro look this good?

But the question for a cash-strapped city isn't whether a metro would be a good thing (a space port, after all, would also be a good thing), but whether it's the most cost-efficient way to accomplish the city's goals. And a subway looks rather like the most expensive way to maybe achieve its goals:

Reduce traffic congestion? Rather than spending trillions of pesos digging up the city for a subway, Bogotá could reduce congestion AND make money by creating a London-style congestion charge. Such a charge would raise the cost of and thus disincentivize driving. More people car-pool, take buses, ride bikes or simply don't make that unnecessary trip, and traffic jams are reduced (and so is pollution).

Reduce pollution? This one's almost too obvious to be worth explaining. Bogotá has a bad air pollution problem. Bogotá also doesn't bother to enforce emission laws. Wouldn't enforcing the law be a good first step toward reducing pollution, rather than pretending a subway will do it a decade from now - by which time the city will be inundated with many thousands more polluting vehicles?

As for reducing crime, the newspaper article doesn't bother to explain this, and I won't try.

Bogotá's leadership is fixated on building not only any metro but the most expensive kind; a subway. And not because it's the best transit option, but - it seems to me - because other big cities have subways, and Bogotá wants to feel important. Incidentally, subway construction will also mean huge, juicy contracts for infrastructure companies.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Missing Piece of TransMilenio

Trash and faded buildings on Plaza San Victorino, which is bordered by three TransMilenio stations.

Despite what its critics say, Bogotá's TransMilenio express bus system does move millions of people across the city relatively quickly and cheaply. If the system's buses are often overcrowded, it's also true that TransMilenio is way behind its intended expansion. 

But one thing which TransMilenio has not done is bring economic and cultural renaissance to the neighborhoods around many stations, as these scenes attest.

Bogotá's dream of building a subway depends heavily for financing on taxing projected increases in value of real estate neighboring the stations. However, the evident lack of property appreciation around TransMilenio stations makes one wonder whether a subway will have much of an effect, either. 

Of course, the city might do something about this, by subsidizing or providing tax breaks for renovations and new transit-oriented businesses and apartments near bus and, perhaps someday, subway stations.

Naturally, a more pleasant, safer-feeling environment around transit stations encourages more people to use the service.

Faded apartment/office buildings overlook the new San Victorino TransMilenio station on Carrera 10. They've shown no signs of rejuvenation since the station's opening.

Carrera 10, near the big, new Bicentenario TransMilenio station, is lined with pawn shops.

And roamed by prostitutes.

The busy Ave. Jimenez station hasn't done much to bring life to the adjoining Los Martires Plaza. 

Tagged walls face the Centro Memoria station on Calle 26.

An exit from the Bicentenario station leads to the notorious San Bernardino neighborhood.

Perhaps an exception: This apartment tower was just completed beside the Ciudad Universitaria station on Calle 26.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Now It's Official: Bogotá Can't Afford a Subway

Coming to Bogotá? Seattle was digging a car tunnel under the city, but the huge digging machine got stuck, obliging the city to dig this huge pit to reach and repair the machine. (Photo: Grist)

First, its price tag zoomed up to 15 billion pesos. Then, the price of oil, which once provided more than half of Colombia's export income, took a dive. And now, the national government has explained to Bogotá that it won't be able to ante up its traditional 70% of the project's cost.

A map of Bogotá's proposed first subway line. 

And that's all before the inevitable cost over-runs, corruption scandals and other problems even start.

For decades, Bogotá has dreamed of building a subway, but never figured out a way to pay for it.

Bogotá leaders seem to want to have a subway more for reasons of status than of practicality. After
all, a subway is about the most expensive sort of mass transit and takes the longest time to build.

Bogotá wants a subway for two mistaken reasons:

    A) Bogotanos believe that a tunnel will cure its traffic jams.

A traffic jam on Calle 26.
A subway line won't solve this.

Perhaps they should visit capitals such as Caracas, Mexico City and Santiago, Chile, to see whether their subway networks have eliminated traffic jams there. (Bogotá, of course, would at most have a single line a decade from now.)

    B) Bogotá wants to be a world-class city like New York, London and Paris.

Perhaps Bogotá leaders would do well to see that being a world class city means much more than having an underground train. It means having a strong, varied, economy, world-class universities, impressive parks and architecture, great culture, science, little corruption, and on and on. Bogotá still has a long way to go.

Rather than recognizing that a subway is beyond reach, and focusing on faster, cheaper forms of transit, such as light rail, elevated rail or more bus rapid transit, Bogotá is scrambling for other financing formulas. The city will dig itself into a massive debt and have to suspend other, more pressing transit projects. By the time a subway line is finally finished - if that day comes - the city will be overwhelmed by car traffic and the streets gridlocked.

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

Pity the Oppressed Private Car!

One fewer lane for cars? Caracas Ave. in Teusaquillo.

Yesterday, transit officials announced that, in response to protests over inadequate TransMilenio service, the city will take one lane in each direction from car traffic and give them to TM buses on Caracas Ave./Autopista Norte during rush hours.

A driver asserts his equal rights by occupying
nearly as much road space as a bus.

The decision produced the predictable crying and gnashing of teeth from car drivers, who say this change, supposed to happen beginning March 17, will make congestion even worse for private cars on this avenue. The drivers are right. But the measure will also open up much more road capacity for bus riders.

Asserting equal rights for cars by parking illegally
on a narrow street, blocking a bus from passing.

Still, private car users, who likely driver into and out of the city alone every day, didn't hesitate to wail. Take 'Arja', who left this comment on El Tiempo's forum: 'They're violating the fundamental right to equality for us drivers of private vehicles...that we should all enjoy the same rights, liberties and opportunities. The state will promote conditions for real and effective equality.' And commentator 'AlvaroIsaza' predicted that the next step would be prohibition of private cars. (If only that were possible!)

By 'equal rights' what these writers mean, it seems to me, is the right to drive anywhere anytime, no matter the impacts on the city. And god forbid that they, in their comfortable private cars occupying dozens of square meters of road space, should be 'oppressed' by those evil, bullying riders crowded into standing-room-only buses.

Oh, and a few other elements of the private cars' equal rights campaign include the right to park on sidewalks, belch pollution and blare one's horn at any hour of the day or night.

Taking lanes away from private cars is a positive step. But what Bogotá really needs is a London-style congestion charge to reduce car use and generate funds for mass transit.

Car drivers exercise their equal rights by turning Calle 26 into a parking lot.

Exercising equal rights for cars by blocking
pedestrians from crossing a street.

Comparing road space use by the same number of people in a bus, as pedestrians and in cars.  (Image:  Human Transit) 

This street vendor implored the people in the car to let him cross the street. They told him to wait in the rain and be patient.

An oppressed vehicle= A car parked on a sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to veer into the street, risking their safety.

El Tiempo's Motor section says the lane change means that cars are paying for TransMilenio's mistakes. But bus riders, pedestrians and cyclists pay every day for cars' impacts on cities.

As this photo from the same El Tiempo article shows, traffic jams are the fault of cars, not of buses.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

When the 'Solution' Becomes the Problem

When the city introduced those blue SITP buses last year they were to be the solution to Bogotá's chaotic, inefficient and very polluting public bus system - and they may yet be. But so far they aren't showing it.

Most of the SITP buses travel empty, or nearly so. That was supposed to be a start-up problem - except that after months of operation, their ridership has approved little.

A SITP bus takes off with a blast.

But, at least, officialdom promised us, these new buses wouldn't ignore emissions laws, as the regular buses and TransMilenio buses so flagrantly do.

'Really, honestly, cross our hearts, we're actually enforce the environmental laws this time.'

Except that, as these photos show, they haven't.



Anybody in there?

I can see right thru you.

The motor's on, but nobody's home.

Bogotá's ancient, dirty and chaotic private bus fleet certainly needs replacing - but are more polluting buses - which are also usually empty - the solution?

Should we have expected anything different? After all, the TransMilenio system - an icon of Bogotá - belches out smoke pitilessly.

False advertising? A SITP flyer protrays the bus as clean (tho apparently empty).

By Mike Ceaser, of

Bogotá Bike Tours