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

Car-Free Day

The street behind the Paloquemao market, normally congested and chaotic.

Yesterday's car-free day was a success - if you measure it by the number of cars removed from city streets. Many streets and avenues were bereft of private cars, enabling traffic to flow faster, and reducing pollution.

Calle 26, usually a perpetual traffic jam, was given over to cyclists.

bicyclists abounded.

This year's car-free day was dedicated to pedestrians.

City workers show off information on the benefits of walking.

Still, the day was far from pollution-free. Here was the view from the upper end of La Candelaria at 8:30 a.m.

At 8:30 a.m. a grey haze blanketed the city, as seen from La Candelaria.

And, if cars were restricted, 'rolling chimneys' like this bus still abounded.

One of the car-free day's goals is to motivate car-aholics to try car-free ways of commuting. However, many workplaces make that goal mute by shutting down for the day.

Lots of places just shut down. The Ministry of Technology had its workers telecommute yesterday.

And Paloquemao Market was nearly deserted.

Paloquemao market's usually-crowded parking lot.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

11th Street Gets Humanized

Dining and dog walking on the street.

Calle 11 in La Candelaria has a new, human aspect these days in La Candelaria. It's not quite Paris, but a city experiment in the use of the public space, to see how people respond. So far, they appear to be responding well. The street is busy with tourists and locals walking, walking dogs and even eating. Artists offer their works. And you don't have to worry about evading cars or breathing fumes.

Officials seem to have realized, finally, that street artists are an asset, not a problem.

Hopefully, the city will decide to extend and expand this experiment. Bogotá has enough congested, noisy avenues, and officials have long talked of pedestrianizing the increasingly gridlocked La Candelaria neighborhood.

Art for sale on the street.

Pedestrians on the car-free street.

Giant chess on the street.

 

A painted street. Much of the street art is allusive of novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquéz.

Paris in Bogotá?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Bogotá's Elegant New Pedestrian Bridges

Bridges frame the church atop Monserrate.

As part of the eternally-unfinished TransMillenio extention to the airport, the city built several of these elegant pedestrian bridges over 26th Street/Carrera 3a above Parque de la Independencia, near the Universidad Jorge Tadeo. (The area has no distinct name).

Anyway, the bridges strike me as elegant additions to the neighborhood, even if they don't seem to be heavily used - yet.

Meanwhile, the TransMilenio line, already more than two years behind schedule, is still far from completed. The replacement of Carrera Septima's bridge over 26th St. received lots of attention and was completed efficiently months ago. But the expansion of the Carrear Quarta bridge has received much less attention and seems to be dragging. That job is necessary to extend the 26th St. TransMilenio line to La Candelaria.

Meanwhile, construction has not even started on the last two kilometers of the line to the airport. That piece is supposed to be completed next year, altho a connector shuttle is running.

A bridge points toward the Colpatria Tower, Colombia's tallest building.

Expansion work on the bridge over Carrera 3, necessary to extend the TM line to La Candelaria.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Street Life on La Septima

As part of a school project for the private and elite Los Andes University, which to its credit requires its students to go out into the real world and do things, these students did an art project today about the history and future of Ave. Septima.

Fortunately, la Septima, thanks to its recent pedestrianization, has no shortage of authenticity and characters.

This young woman was hip hop dancing for tips.

Nearby, older men whiled the afternoon away on Las Nieves Plaza with a tinto.

A man sold fake, home-made rats.

He had a trick of scaring people by flinging the fake rats at them.

A few blocks down the street this man was selling tiny cardboard whistles.

The whistles sold fast, and cheap. But I couldn't get mine to work.

Three children wait on Las Nieves Plaza for their mother, who was gluing posters on walls.

Vendors on a sidewalk. The man on the left is selling snail slime, which is supposed to be good for skin problems.

A clarinetist plays in front of the Jorge Eliecer Gaitan Theatre.

The street reflected in one of the Gaitan Theatre's windows.

Pedestrians see the world's wonders in stereoscopic viewers.

Buttons for sale.

The sidewalk as art gallery.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours