For Santiago Malagon Restrepo
The recently announced plans by Claudia López for the Corredor Verde of Carrera Séptima have aroused countless adverse reactions, especially due to the reduction to a single lane of the north-south corridor to make way for a pedestrianized thoroughfare, bicycle path and a system of buses that operate with the same Transmilenio system (trunks and exclusive lanes). This mediocre and mistaken approach to the Green Corridor is not only doomed to be a failure in terms of mobility and urban planning, but it will also damage the perception of pedestrianization as an urban policy in the Bogota electorate.
The Green Corridor can muddy the perception of pedestrianization in Bogotá
Image: Green Corridor Plant. taken fromhttps://www.septimaverde.gov.co/estudios-tecnicos
The administration of the green burgomaster seeks to emulate the leadership in environmentalism and transport of Paris and Barcelona, the mayors Anne Hidalgo and Ada Colau. The two cities have implemented ambitious programs to reconfigure the urban grid for humans, not cars. This has implied a radical rethinking of the central role that private transport plays in the two cities and, therefore, a particularly strong emphasis on promoting mass public transport as a tool to recover public space for pedestrians.
Although Claudia López's vision superficially rescues pedestrianization, it does not have a solid proposal for automobile transport to receive the flow of automobiles that seeks to discourage Sadly, the Mayor's Office has clung to the maintenance and expansion of a technologically inferior public transportation system, managed to privatize profits and socialize losses. The BRT (Bus Rapid Transit), known as Transmilenio in the Capital, was never conceived to serve as the backbone of a mega city like Bogotá and is technically inferior to rail transport, therefore, to carry out a remodeling of the transport system of Bogotá towards a new pedestrian paradigm, a true mass public transport system is required to replace the BRT.
Image: Render green corridor, National Park.taken from https://septimaverde.gov.co/concepto
Unfortunately the BRT that now also wants to be implemented in Carrera Séptima must be adjusted to the existing surface roads. This forces it to compete for the tracks with cars and stop at traffic lights, while the underground metro must not compete for its tracks and is not limited by the existing urban layout. BRT can increase the number of buses in the system or lengthen the size of the buses to meet the growing demand, but doing so congests the roads and slows down the boarding operation at the stations. On the contrary, a subway system can have multiple parallel boarding platforms in one direction and each train has a much higher capacity (the Transmilenio BRT system can carry 30,000 to 40,000 passengers per hour per direction, while a Metro train can carry between 450,000 and 650,000 passengers per hour per direction). And finally, the BRT is highly polluting, emitting a large amount of CO2 particles, disposing of tires at an unsustainable rate, and its buses are used for 5 to 10 years, while the subway cars are electric and can last between 30 and 45 years.
Claudia López has sought immediate results and has perpetuated the failed BRT system because it has a shorter construction time, although the system is already saturated due to its low capacity and efficiency. When the new Green Corridor is plagued by traffic jams, overcrowded buses and increasingly long boarding times, will Claudia López dare to say "this bus line was saturated in three years from its construction, now let's build rail transport" ?
También vale la pena destacar que para implementar proyectos de peatonalización en Barcelona y París primero They have redistributed their urban facilities such as schools, universities, hospitals and libraries in a strategic way so that they are accessible on foot from any point in the city in 15 minutes. On the contrary, in Bogotá a polycentric redistribution of access to facilities has not been formulated to avoid long journeys and promote traffic over shorter distances on foot or by bicycle. Such distribution with an emphasis on proximity and walkability is essential to generate genuinely vibrant and crowded urban spaces that can benefit significantly from pedestrianization.
To confirm the intention of Claudia López's mayor's office to preserve the BRT we can look at her plans for Avenida Caracas, where Until now, his conception of the elevated metro does not intend to replace the Transmilenio, on the contrary, it seeks to insert a low-capacity elevated line while the Transmilenio continues to operate underneath. This plan aims to maintain the BRT as a feeder system. In this way, a means of transport that can never serve as an efficient alternative to private transport is being entrenched for several decades.
The mayor and her advisers lack the vision to plan for 30 or 40 years, they only move according to the budget and the short-term political impact, and ignore the real need for a city that does not revolve around the car. Sadly, the City Hall's green turn toward pedestrianization is clouded by its short-term clinging to BRT and appears more like a superficial gesture than a politically coherent urban vision.
Obviously the defense of automobile transport will be one of the main banners of the right in the next mayoral election the capital, already on the lips of politicians like Enrique Gómez, who would undoubtedly try to improve Bogotá traffic with archaic recipes and refuted by urban discipline such as the construction of more bridges and the expansion of lanes for automobiles. Without a solid approach that prioritizes public transport and polycentric redistribution, the measures to encourage transport on foot and by bicycle and discourage the use of cars will produce an impulsive rejection in the electorate and will promote the return of the right._cc781905-5cde- 3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_
December 21, 2022