Sustainable City - Bogota, Colombia

Posted in Uncategorized by fedwards on June 28th, 2007

Another world-renown sustainable city is the capital of Colombia, Bogota. Sustainable transport is its key to fame with 329 km of bike paths criss-crossing the town. Sonia Edith Parra from the S-Dev Geneva 05 website has written about Bogota’s sustainable transport features below.

This transformation started in 1976 with the creation of “ciclovias”, a network of bike paths that are open on Sundays and holidays, between 6 in the morning and 2 in the afternoon. On these days, 121 km of the main avenues and streets are closed to cars and invaded by two million bikers, skaters, joggers and walkers. The residents embraced this concept and it became such a success that an official construction project for a permanent network of bike paths was initiated. Today, in a city where over 900,000 cars circulate on a daily basis, Bogota has a network of 329 km of bike paths that allow nearly 182,000 people to circulate everyday.

The ciclovias have already become an integral part of the town’s identity that up to now was characterised by chaotic and not very efficient urban traffic, which took up 95% of the roads and which was responsible for 60% of the pollution. Bogota has undertaken serious urban works that aim at improving public areas and encouraging the use of bikes to go to work, school or simply as a leisure activity, thus reducing car and bus traffic which in turn creates economic benefits concerning health and the environment.

The master plan for bike paths (Plan Maestro de Cicloruta – PMC) has been scheduled over a span of 9 years, under the direction of the Institute for Urban Development. Maintenance (conducted in connection with the National University of Colombia), construction, safety, signs, and follow-up of the alternative bike path transport system (Sistema de Transporte Alternativo Cicloruta) is conducted in association with the inter-establishment committee on mobility, which meets twice a month and in which the Bogota aqueduct company, the Institute for Leisure and Sports, and Transmilenio (the new public transport service) participate – the secretariat for mobility and for transports as well as the city’s environmental department.

The project is under construction at present. 25km of additional paths are being built to enable citizens to access all twenty of Bogota’s municipalities in an efficient manner. The mobility programme guarantees network maintenance, preservation and promotion within the scope of policies on sustainable urban development.

Bogota’s residents are more than willing to use their bikes. Moreover, this means of transport provides the city with the impression that it has been renewed and has won over the young and old alike, the workers and students as well as businessmen, who travel on a daily basis in between the sidewalks and the roads.

Safety’s lacking on the bike paths
The bikers, who are after all in the best position to talk about this issue, are complaining about the lack of safety, bike garages and traffic lights on these paths. Existing lights don’t suffice and people don’t really pay attention to them. In the first quarter of 2005, 19 bikers lost their lives in comparison to 91 in 2003. Likewise, the number of injured has fallen from 2525 last year to 366 in the first semester of 2005. Despite this decrease in the number of accidents, these numbers remain high and require the implementation of awareness campaigns and educational programmes.

Bike path responsibility is essentially up to the bikers themselves and consequently the police can issue tickets, conform with traffic regulations, to people who run traffic lights or who don’t respect the regulations concerning the use of bicycles. The sanctions are educational and include a fine.

Additional services
Despite the present boom in the use of bikes as a means of transport, the district’s administration has realised that network use is not at its optimum. An awareness campaign and educational programme have therefore been launched to increase the population’s use of the bike paths.

The “safe routes to schools” programme was set-up in collaboration with the National Federation of Shopkeepers (FENALCO). It consists in giving bikes to disadvantaged middle school students to instigate these youngsters to use this means of transport. The idea is to work with school groups to determine the safest routes, to incite the local authorities to ensure the students’ safety and to define paths and times for escorts.

In addition, the first bicycle garage is to be opened at the end of the year. It’s intended to be a signpost or crossroad for cyclists and will offer additional services including repair workshops, banks, cafeterias, telephone booths, Internet terminals and a post office.

Today, in the Patio Bonito municipality in Kennedy, a very poor neighbourhood, the first agglomeration bike path is operational. It’s a traffic corridor that has been reserved exclusively for bikers and which is linked to the main network. This path was built by the Committee for community action, an organisation that comprises the community’s residents.

On the flip side
The increased use of bikes has led to the appearance of other transportation solutions such as ” bicytaxis “, which transport people within a 3km perimeter.
But the flip side of the coin is terrorism. Amongst the repeated terrorists acts in a country where internal conflict has been the norm for the last 50 years, several Transmilenio buses have been burned and recently an explosive-loaded bicytaxi was placed in front of the headquarters for reinserted paramilitary men in Bogota.

These events, however, have not discouraged the different organisations that are dedicated to promoting the use of bikes. Indeed, they just started a series of actions including the recycling of bicycles which are repaired and then given to the most disadvantaged. Activities that are both fun and culturally oriented have also been organised (for example bike trips). These actions are backed by schemes that are already in place and which have been adopted by the residents, such as a ‘day without your car’ which takes place on a work day, or ‘night time ciclovia’ in which the network is opened once a year between 6pm and midnight, as well as ‘Bogota by night’ which consists of monthly visits of the city’s centre.

Bogota and its residents have already covered an important and tough part of the road towards becoming a city with sustainable human development, but there’s still a lot to be done. The bicycle must become an ally to public transport in order to reduce the impact of individual vehicles as much as possible. The competitiveness of these two means of transportation is not the only thing that needs to be strengthened, making them complementary is of equal importance. This goal can be reached through educational campaigns and by developing a sense of citizenship, which is perhaps the biggest challenge that the district’s administration has yet to face.

Tags: Transport
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