And is it indeed true that this approach may not only the only way in which Bogota itself is ever going to be able to offer its citizens full, efficient and socially just access within their community -- but also that it may be the only conceivable model on the horizon of city transport organization that offers the ghost of a chance for reducing the air emissions and other critical pollution and resource factors that are threatening the planet?
Let's put this in another way. Given the present emphasis on meeting the Kyoto agreement and pollution targets, is it possible that the only way to meet these targets would be by engineering a wholesale shift of ALL our city transport systems to something along these lines? It is, quite possible, that this is indeed the case. And if it is, the need for putting this whole approach into much higher international relief becomes all the more important.
Bogota is of course not the first city in the world to begin to make a major break with the old patterns of uncontrolled and excessive automobilisation. But with these latest developments it has quickly taken a strong international leadership position. All this is however part of a much broader continuing process, which traces back to early work and achievements of others much of which began to get underway in the second half of the nineteen sixties as the insufficiencies of the dominant car-based model began to be understood and countered here and there.
It is said in science and society that one generation stands on the shoulders of those who went before, and this is certainly the case in Bogota. What is going on in Bogota today builds on the perceptions and achievements of transport planners, politicians and community groups in places like Zurich, Amsterdam, Curitiba, Singapore, Gothenburg, Toronto and increasingly of late literally hundreds of European towns and cities that are finding their own way to better, fairer and cleaner transportation systems cityscapes. Without the early work and achievements in such areas as Wonerf development, traffic calming, transport demand management, pedestrian projects, parking and access restraint, special handicapped transport schemes, community buses, line taxis, paratransit, activity clustering, public transport priority, and more recently things like car sharing and car free days, there would have been no Bogota Project such as we can see it unfolding it today.
We hope you will find the extensive materials presented here useful by way of background to whatever it is you have to say or propose. Before sharing your observations with the others we would certainly suggest at least a quick look through the Background, the Bogota Project, and the Results sections, which between them do a pretty good job of setting the stage for a full understanding of what is going on and in process.
The referendum put forward to the people of Bogotá on October
29 and which builds upon the recent successful Car Free Day, is
probably one of the most daring and far-sited initiatives to stem
the rate of motorisation and reduce automobile use in cities ever
conceived. The fact that this initiative should come from Bogotá, a
city about which the international media seems only to report
negatively, is inspiring.
Throughout recent history there have been a number of positive
models of urban change that have led to radically better city
environments. The international community now holds these models up
as beacons of hope in a world so desperate for good news. . .
Bogotá has a chance to become another beacon of hope for the world
as we enter the most problematic century for transportation that we
will ever face...the sunset century for conventional oil, with its
accompanying rising oil prices and physical shortages, and all the
trauma this will cause across the planet.
You have all the right motives for your venture. You have the
integrity and well-being of your city and its citizens foremost in
thought. Please, for the sake of all cities, carry this bold
car-free initiative into the future, not just for yourselves but for
all of us. You will not lose. You will draw enormous positive
international attention to yourselves that will have many positive
spin-offs. You will create a place for your city in history as a
community that led the way, as other cities have done and who have
reaped untold benefits for themselves and others. Getting the car
under control is of great symbolic and practical import. You have
already started. Build on it.
Congratulations for undertaking this historic referendum
for a carfree Bogotá. For too long cities of the South have aped
the model of Los Angeles, California, my home town, in devoting
most of their surface area to the care and feeding of automobiles.
The effects have been devastating. Countries that can ill afford
it have seen the export of much of their foreign exchange to
acquire cars and petrochemical products. For the vast majority of
the population who go without cars, this has meant nothing but
hardship. They suffer decreased safety, noise, pollution, interference
in their mobility, with no corresponding benefits.
Locally, the infrastructure required to support automotive transport has
eaten up farmland, forests, fisheries, devastated whole landscapes, while
pollution has spoiled water, earth, and air. In view of the gross
inefficiency of motor vehicles for urban transport, these costs are
especially inexcusable. Nor would matters be improved in the southern
countries if everyone could drive cars, as is the case in the US.
The United States puts between 25 and 45 per cent of its total energy
(depending upon how one calculates this) into vehicles: to make them, run
them, and clear a right of way for them when they roll, when they fly, and
when they park. For the sole purpose of transporting people, 250 million
Americans allocate more fuel than is used by 1.3 billion Chinese and Indians
for all purposes.
The model American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car.
He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches
for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly
installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and
tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering
his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time
consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals,
traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or
attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next
buy.
The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7,500 miles: less than five
miles per hour. In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people
manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate
only 3 to 8 per cent of their society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 per
cent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor
countries is not more mileage per hour of life-time for the majority, but more
hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and
unequally distributed by the transportation industry.
By embracing the carfree city, Bogotá will be taking a leap into a more
humane future for all humanity, a future that all countries must
inevitably follow if we are to have any future at all.
With its innovative two-prong approach of deliberately phased private car restraint on the one hand, in parallel with a massive infrastructure and operations restructuring program (the Bogota Project), and now with the simple fact and the excellent results of its successful referendum, the City of Bogota has emerged as a world leader in demonstrating the new transportation model of the century that we have just entered. This is no small achievement since the old mainly car-based model, still dominant in almost every city of the world, is not only serving many citizens extremely poorly but also threatening the well-being of the planet in many ways.
Introduction: Why Bogota is so important!
The purpose of this closing section of this special cooperative Vote Bogota 2000 edition is to encourage and assemble comments, ideas and reactions from transport and city planners, policy makers, students of political science and social change, and concerned citizens and NGOs around the world in order to round out this important milestone in the drive to more sustainable transportation arrangements not only in Bogota but in towns and cities around the world. What we would now like to encourage is a free-wheeling international expert dialogue on these accomplishments from two main perspectives:
How this section works
This is where our informal international assembly can contribute by putting our best thoughts together in order provide useful guidelines and counsel for the city in the next important stages of work on their great and demanding project. The fact is that the Bogota project, while an exciting and creative one with a fine team behind it, is nevertheless in need of additional counsel, perspective and orientation. Which is exactly what we are now targeting here.
What exactly does the Bogota experience mean to the rest of the world? Is it just some isolated series of events that apply only to that one hyper-stressed city "2600 meters closer to the stars"? Or is it an example of a major pattern break, a shot whose sound is going to make itself heard and felt around the world? This is a message which we should be helping to get out. It risks to change many things in the world of city and transport policies and practices.
Mechanics of participation
With the results now in, we invite public international discussion of both the program behind the referendum and the results as follows.
Eventual topics for group discussion and comment
The following is intended to help spark the exchanges. It is certainly not intended as a limiting list of topics.
Back to top
Selected CommentaryFrom: Dr. Jeff Kenworthy, Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, Murdoch, Australia
From: Guy Berliner, BSEE, software engineer, San Diego, California
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Updated 5 November 2000