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

Better Late than Never for Renewable Energies

Checking out a windmill's blades.

Colombia has a tiny but growing and enthusiastic renewable energy sector. They were on display this week at an exhibition at the Colombian Engineers Association, in La Candelaria.

Colombia's renewable energy sector is tiny: wind and solar combined total only 0.1% of the energy supply, altho 86% of Colombia's electricity does come from relatively clean hydroelectric power. But renewables are growing, in part thanks to new regulations, including one enabling generators to hook up to the grid and even to sell their surplus energy there. And next January the government plans to receive offers to purchase ten-year contracts for renewable energy.

The country also has some large potential projects, including one planned for land along the

Deinpro's plans for a solar farm
along the Magdalena River.

Magdalena river by the Bogotá-based Deinpro Global. A company official told me the project is to power some 1.5 million homes, but that they still need financing - which might come from the Andean Development Corporation or the Chinese Development Bank.

Another company, which works with solar panel and wind projects, told me that Colombia's best winds are in coastal regions, including the La Guajira peninsula, where farms are already operating and another large one is underway.

A solar panel model.

Some Colombian companies are also benefiting from the international market in climate change bonds, which pay companies for installing renewable energy generation. The money comes from climate change gas-generating industries in industrialized nations which want to compensate their pollution.

However, this enthusiasm shouldn't distract from the fact that Colombia is an important producer of coal and petroleum and plans to produce as much fossil fuel as it can during the next years. Altho almost all of those fossil fuels are burned overseas, they pollute the air and alter the climate of the whole planet - including Colombia's.

And to give just one example of the dire straits the planet is in, airline travel is expected to keep growing by an incredible 7 or 8 percent annually, and CO2 generated at high altitude produces much more potent cliate chaging effects. And Bogotá recently expanded its airport - and plans to build a second airport.

And lots of renewables won't do much good for the planet unless they actually replace polluting energies, instead of being additions to them.

The expo.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Beautiful - and Fantastical - Future Bogotá

A hiking trail through Bogotá's Eastern Hills.

Last year, the Museo de Bogotá (located on Carrera 4 and Calle 10, in La Candelaria) put on this exhibit about Bogotá's fantastical future - clearly a vision of the administration of current Mayor Enrique Peñalosa. And it's a nice visition, with a fully developed multi-modal transit system (subway, expanded TransMilenio, cable cars to hillside neighborhoods, and bike lanes), green corridors, high-density neighborhoods and other wonders.

Inside the Museo de Bogotá.

It's a beautiful vision for a city with lots of problems with chaotic development, lack of green space, danger for cyclists and walkers, terrible traffic jams and pollution, and on and on. Naturally, the vision fits technocrat Peñalosa's ideas about low-cost bus rapid transit and the democratizing effects of pleasant public spaces.

'The capital of the bicycle.'

What could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately, human nature. Will the city actually fund such projects, or will the money be stolen by corrupt functionaries or designated for projects which are more populist but have dubious urban impacts, such as highways or sports stadiums. And, while Bogotá debates such projects thru succeeding mayors, with varying priorities, the city will continue growing, legally and illegally, individual residents paying little attention to the mayors' visions. Meanwhile, the number of cars will continue exploding, gridlocking the city's avenues, poisoning its air and increasing pressure to pave over even more land.

A clean, green, sustainable city? A nice fantasy, tragically.

Walking on a map of Bogotá.

Checking out a city map.

A historical map of Bogotá.

Environmental corridors.

The city's 'environmental corridors.'

'Revoke Peñalosa'

Inside the Museo de Bogotá.

Map of the first line of Bogotá's subway.

A bicyclist pedals past the Museo de Bogotá.

Transmicable.

The network of TransMilenio routes.

Transmilenio.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Of Trash and Traffic Jams

Homeless men pick thru garbage outside the
Las Nieves fruit market.

Bogotá has two severe and worsening problems:

Too much trash, and too much traffic. We've all seen the huge piles of garbage on corners, which may have decreased, by haven't disappeared now that the city has supposedly got a new company collecting its waste.

And, just a few days ago, Bogotá's traffic congestion was ranked the second worst in all of South America.

A huge -and routine - traffic jam on Calle 26
in central Bogotá. Wluld a congestion charge help?

Bogotá has attempted futiley to address both crisis with a simple formula: Provide more space. It has expanded the Doña Juana landfill, and even talked about establishing a second one. And, it has spent many billions of pesos expanding urban avenues and intersections, only to have thousands of additional cars crowd those new spaces.

Unfortunately, increasing supply of something only generates more production, leaving the problem as bad or worse.

In the case of Bogotá's garbage, residents who toss trash onto corners and sidewalks have no limit to what they dispose of and no incentive to reduce the waste they produce.

The city's perpetual entreaties to recycle have accomplished little. And recycling is a poor solution compared to not producing the garbage in the first place.

Carrying plastic bottles - which will be used once and discarded - to a store.
Would a deposit keep them out of the landfill?
Would it discourage their use in the first place?

Bags of organic waste. How about paying flower growers to buy them and turn them into compost? That would save space in the landfill while also reducing greenhouse gas pollution.

Tires discarded behind the Central Cemetery. In many places, a deposit paid when a tire is purchased pays for its later reprocessing into something else.

And, in the case of traffic, studies have repeatedly shown that increasing road space only lures more drivers onto the roads.

A garbage truck painted with a slogan urging people
to place recyclables into white bags.

In both cases, the city shoulds employ economic incentives to motivate residents to change their behavior.

An obvious one is a deposit on tires, bottles and other disposable items, which would be used to pay
consumers to return those objects to be reused or recycled, and finance their reprocessing into something useful. The beauty of a deposit is that it also shifts the costs to the products' users instead of society in general.

Recycling sounds idealistic, but is much less environmentally sound than simply not generating waste in the first place. And, most of Bogotá's recycling programs are disfunctional, anyway. Take a peek into most recycling bins, and you'll see regular trash in all of them. And the trash collectors have only one place to dump the contents, anyway. The city urges residents separate recyclables from regular trash and place them in white bags. Nobody does this - and for good reason, since the trash collectors have no separate place to carry recyclables, anyway. And even if people did separate out their recyclables, dogs and homeless people would come by and rip open the bags and scatter the trash, anyway.

And the best way to reduce traffic congestion is to raise driving's cost, by hiking the cost of gasoline or introducing a London-style congestion charge for driving into the center of the city. Bogotá's Pico y Placa law, which prohibits cars from driving three days per week depending on their license plate numbers, has obviously failed to reduce traffic jams, and may even be making them worse.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Carification of La Candelaria

An apartment building goiing up with a parking garage.

A new kind of apartment building is popping up in La Candelaria: Ones with car parking incorporated. 

That might sound nice and convenient, but it means worse traffic congestion, more pollution and even worse health for the neighborhood. 

Until now, the minority who owned cars parked them in commercial lots and paid for the privilege.

A new apartment complex with parking garage:
Makes an ugly contrast with the neighborhood's
historic homes.

But incorporated parking changes the dynamics and economics. Now, by acquiring an apartment, you're paying for a parking space whether you want it or not. That means that those who don't own cars, subsidize those who do (as happens with all 'free' parking.) It also sends a signal: 'You should own a car, and use it for transport.'

The convenience of having a car at hand means that many residents will use them, even to go two blocks to buy some beers. That means even worse traffic jams, and less exercise for residents. It also hurts the local economy, since residents with cars are more likely to go across town to shop in some supermarket, rather than supporting a local shop. 

And, of course, more driving means less exercise and all the harm that causes. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Plastic Everywhere, and No Solution in Sight

Before the plastic bag tax: Carrying plastic bags (probably full of more plastic bags) home from the supermarket.

After the bag tax: the more things change, the more they stay the same: Carrying plastic bags (probably full of more plastic bags) home from the supermarket.

Sackss of plastic bags and other trash in the Plaza San Victorino.

Nobody doubts that plastic bags are a problem. They little streets, plazas and parks, trash up rivers and clog sewers. And a lot of them end up in the ocean, where animals swallow them and choke to death. And then there are all the petroleum resources used to manufacture the bags, and the pollution generated during the process. All to make something which is often used just once, for a short time, and then discarded.

So, give Bogotá officials credit for recognizing the problem. If only they would try an effective solution.

First came 'educational' measures for stores. Some neighborhood stores put up signs encouraging customers to bring their own bags - which almost everybody ignored.

Worth something?

Then, on July 1 a bag tax kicked in - of 20 pesos -  or 6/10 of one U.S. penny. Nobody bothers to pick a 20 peso coin up off the street, nor do people carry them, making this tax meaningless. So, unless the same customer uses five bags, he likely won't get charged at all. At the same time, I don't see any practical way the DIAN can monitor how many plastic bags a store uses. (Expect a black market in plastic bags). So, stores will simply pass on to all of their customers the tax bill for the bags they report using, eliminating the tax's incentive quality.

The tax didn't discourage this shopper from packing her
shopping cart with bags filled with more bags.

All of this makes about as much sense as Colombia's policy to reduce carbon generation, in which the country simultaeneously taxes carbon to discourage its use, and also subsidizes fuel consumption and encourages oil and coal production.

It's no wonder that plastic bag habits are tough to change. Not only are plastic bags convenient, but a friend points out that giving them out has become a 'social gesture.' I couldn't count the number of times that a seller has chased after me or literally cried out in protest when I rejected his or her offer of a completely useless plastic bag to carry home a single apple, a candy bar or a box of aspirin. But the bag came from somebody's heart.

Taxes have effectively reduced plastic bag use in Ireland, some U.S. cities, and other localesbcxi. But those places have stronger legal systems and lower rates of corruption and black markets.

Perhaps a bag tax would work here if the government either enforced it using sting operations, or actually taxed the newly-manufactured bags.

'Please bring your own bag.' This sign, in a shop in La Candelaria, was removed once employees realized that the pllastic bag decree wouldn't be enforced.

A sign in a shop implores customers to save the planet by bringing their own bags.
Notice the woman's hand giving a customer a bag.

City workers hand out reuseable bags in La Candelaria. They gave the bags to anybody willing to sign for them, whether they needed them or not.

A proud woman with her free bags.

This older woman scored two bags. But will she ever use them? Could she actually carry one full of stuff?

The La Panamericana stores seem to have taken real measures. Here, a sign at the checkout counter saying they no longer will give out bags smaller than 30 by 30 cms.

Canvas bags for sale in La Panamericana.

The bag rule doesn't apply to neighborhood corner shops and traditional markets like this one.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours