Infrastructure & Cities

Bogotá bucks the trend

November 10, 2010

Global

November 10, 2010

Global
Our Editors

The Economist Intelligence Unit

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Traffic in developed world cities has usually developed gradually over time, which has given policymakers more time and resources to creatively solve problems. Traffic problems in many developing cities are a more recent phenomenon, brought on by expanding economies and a rapidly-growing middle class. Solving them presents more of a headache.

Few developing cities have the resources of, say, Beijing, which has invested almost US$50bn in expending its subway system. But some smaller-scale developing-world transport incentives are proving inspirational for cities at all stages of development.

Between 1991 and 1995, the number of cars registered in Bogotá, the Colombian capital, increased by 75%, accompanied by massive increases in traffic congestion and road accidents and a drop in air quality. The city's solution, TransMilenio, a bus rapid transit (BRT) system, has transformed its transport landscape. Covering 84 kilometres, it already moves about 1.7m passengers per day, a volume not achieved by any other bus system worldwide. Moreover, at just US$10m per kilometre, the system was extremely cheap to develop and build, and took less than three years from idea to implementation.

TransMilenio differs from ordinary bus systems in several ways. First, the high-capacity, centrally-controlled buses have a dedicated road that is segregated from the rest of the traffic and that no other vehicle can use. Second, the system has stations where passengers pay before they board, increasing throughput. With bus stops that look more like subway stations and freedom from interference from other forms of traffic, the system operates more like an underground transit network than a bus service.

TransMilenio has demonstrated what was once thought impossible—a bus system able to accommodate extremely high volumes of passengers. "The textbooks told us that to carry more than 10,000 passengers per hour, per direction, you needed a rail system," says Dr Dario Hidalgo, TransMilenio's former deputy general manager. "TransMilenio is able to carry 40,000 passengers per hour, per direction, in buses and on the surface."

The system has attracted attention globally by being the first transport project able to tap into the climate funding through the Clean Development Mechanism, one of the measures in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. "The most striking result of TransMilenio and other mobility policies is that over the past decade the city has been able to maintain its share of transit, increase the share of bikers and pedestrians and reduce the percentage of car users," says Dr Hidalgo, who is now senior transport engineer at EMBARQ, the World Resources Institute's Center for Sustainable Transport, "whereas in many other developing cities there is rapidly increasing car use."

A detailed cost-benefit analysis of TransMilenio is yet to come, but other cities around the world are taking notice, including Johannesburg in South Africa, Guangzhou in China, and Ahmedabad in India. Even New York is reportedly considering a cross-town BRT for Manhattan.

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