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Project name:
Bogotá Car Free Day (within the New Mobility Agenda)
Project number: 84
Category: Environment
City: Paris
Country: France
Web address: newmobility.org
Description of our project:
The city of Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia's capital, organized the first Car Free Day in a major Third World city in cooperation with The Commons (EcoPlan) on February 24th, 2000. The project was supported by the international network and capabilities of The Commons @World Car Free Day Consortium at http://www.ecoplan.org/carfreeday/.
Up and running since: 1994
Brief project summary:
Bogotá is a fast growing city of some seven million inhabitations, a delicate ecosystem, already many more cars than it can handle, and in dire need of a new transport game plan. It was the first major Third World city to give this concept a try. The project was organized by the office of the Mayor of Bogotá, working hand in hand with The Commons (http://www.ecoplan.org) and the international community of scholars, thinkers and practitioners who have spent years in developing our collective understanding of these issues.
The core of the project was a work plan first proposed and developed in 1994 by The Commons and supported by their WWW site since that date, for which details are available at http://ecoplan.org/carfreeday (click Planning your Day). On the 24th of March, 800,000 cars stayed in the garage in Bogotá, and for the first time in years accident and pollution levels dropped hugely. The project was judged by more than 80 percent of the inhabitants as a great success, thanks to the international cooperation and joint work that was possible thanks to the new technologies and organizational forms offered by the Information Society.
It is this process of innovative international interaction and cooperation across borders, and language barriers, using the tools of the Information Society which lies at the base of this application.
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The first accomplishment of this project has been to use the Information Society as a means for providing a firm and flexible base of international support and technical assistance to a local sustainability project which, in an earlier age, would have been destined to struggle around on the basis of locally available information, most probably repeating mistakes and ignoring the many lessons of international experience. This already is a formidable accomplishment, and all it takes is a rapid visit to the project support site at http://www.ecoplan.org/carfreeday/ to see the extent to which this has already worked.
The immediate results of the Bogotá Car Free Day: (1)
The following summarizes materials which are reported on in full detail in the supporting World Wide Web site at http://www.ecoplan.org/carfreeday. For further information and explanation contact e.britton@ecoplan.org.
This city of 7 million went about its business as usual on Thursday, 24 February 2000 - with the exception that between 6:30 in the morning and 19:30 in the evening an estimated 800,000 private cars stayed at home.
Bogotá is normally one of the most polluted cities in the world, standing fifth in the Latin American league after Mexico City; Santiago, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
- People got around on the 24th by a combination of walking, skating, running, cycle, other two-wheel transport, and public transport, including 55,000 taxis and around 25,000 small buses (colectivos).
- More than 250 km. of special paths were reserved for bicycle use on the day.
- Fines for illegal car use in target area totaled 406 over the day (This compares with average of 930 on the usual 'alternative odd/even days - 'Pico y placa' )
- Traffic Accidents: 27 reported accidents (on an average day this number is around 100)
- Traffic deaths: 0 (On an average day this is in the area of 2-3. First time in four years that no one died in traffic)
- Traffic injuries: 24. 8 of which slight accidents involving cyclists (Average day - 70-80)
- Hospital emergency services: Reported 20-30 percent decrease in usual admissions
- Environment agency reported 8 percent reduction in nitrous oxides
- 22 percent reduction of carbon monoxide levels
- 21 percent reduction in particulates
- School absences: Average day reported by each of 20 administrative centers for the region (a poll of El Tiempo reported normal attendance levels in schools and universities across the city)
There were indications of dissatisfaction by some local businesses, though no unusual problems of employee attendance were reported. (This is surely an area in which further consultation and fine tuning is needed.)
One month of planning, consultation, preparations and media campaigns were carried out to prepare the Car Free Day, under the direction of the Office of Mayor, with the cooperation of all concerned local, regional and national organizations. (Some fine tuning was required during the day to adjust for specific problems as they occurred.)
More than one hundred international experts and political figures were brought together by The Commons and EcoPlan in support of all aspects of the Day over the month of preparatory work and consultation. The International Guest Book was signed by more than 70 leading figures in the transport and environmental fields, including Ministers, Secretaries of State, European Commissioners, Members of Parliaments, professors, consultants, and others (see the Bogotá Guest Book under The Commons site at http://ecoplan.org/carfreeday/)
The preparation for the event and the Day itself were covered by radio and television, more than 100 articles appeared in the national and international press, and two WWW sites were set up to support the planning and implementation process (go to http://www.ecoplan.org/carfreeday/ for both).
Poll showed a high degree of citizen satisfaction. 87 percent of those polled indicated that they agreed with the idea of a Car Free Day. 88 percent also indicated that they thought that such days should be organized more regularly, half of whom suggested once a month.
The longer term results: The ultimate test of a car free day lies in learning from the experience and then in beginning to make all those many changes that are needed to create a more sustainable access system for the city and its inhabitants. This is the next important step of the Bogotá Challenge.
Selection of International Press Coverage (from more than 50 known to us):
- "Drivers give up their cars -- for a day -- in smoggy Bogotá", Miami Herald, Friday, February 25, 2000, at http://www.herald.com/content/today/docs/016589.htm
- "Bogotá breathes easy on a car-free day", ENN News,
- Thursday, February 24, 2000, http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2000/02/02242000/carfree_10365.asp
- "Autofreier Tag in Bogotá, taz Nr. 6078 vom 26.2.2000 Seite 8 Wirtschaft und Umwelt 73 Zeilen, http://www.taz.de/tpl/2000/02/26/a0052.fr/searchTextBox?Name=ask22992aaa&Start=0
- "El día sin carro", Semana, Bogotá, Marzo 18, 2000, http://216.35.197.109/929/actualidad/ZZZRL21TU4C.asp
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Age group: All
Target group: Private-citizen
Geographical focus: Global
Number of users interacting with the project each month:
>100 000
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Objectives and innovation:
Bogotá's Car Free Day initiative was planned and carried out not only as an innovative, people-based participatory planning exercise which is intended first to benefit the people of Bogotá and render their huge city and daily lives more sustainable, but also as a generous pioneering example of cooperative action which is intended to encourage other cites in other countries, in the developing world and elsewhere, to give this idea a chance to function as an important step in the direction of a more sustainable world.
Let us remind you briefly of the state of thinking at the leading edge concerning the Car Free Day concept. A Car Free Day is properly viewed as a collective learning experience with a view to providing the people in that place with new visions of how their city or neighborhood could be organized. There is of course nothing new about a proposal for a car-free day. In addition to a growing number of small city center closure projects and pedestrian zones of varying sizes and sorts, over the last decades there have been literally hundreds of cases of cities that have banned car traffic for a single day, some special event, or during some particular (usually crisis) period. What these projects have in common is that in virtually all cases they are handled as once-off exercises. Typically they are done, endured and quickly forgotten; little effort is made to follow up or build on the experience in a systematic way. Nor are they planned for with any great precision.
The Bogotá Car Free Day project has taken a very different approach to what at first glance might appear to be the same thing. The achievement of the 24 February project has been to build on a process of careful prior study, extensive consultation and concertation, and meticulous monitoring and evaluation in order to develop a whole array of potentially valuable insights and support for future policy changes of perhaps a more permanent nature. The Bogotá team understood that their project had to be planned and undertaken with strong local support at a whole range of city and neighborhood levels. It directly addresses the complex challenge of how to make the city more accessible (which is vital for the local economy), while at the same time improving the quality of life of all who live, work and play there. While progress along these lines has been made in a few places as a result of strong programs and continuing attention over a period of years, this is still not the situation in most towns or cities.
And of course the situation in the Third World's mega-cities is especially hard on the people who live there. As time passes we are finding that it is easy enough to excite people to talk for a time about how nice it would be to have cities with less traffic, but a great deal harder to make any real progress in that direction. Even the occasional car free day or demonstrations, exciting though they may be for the moment, invariably accomplish little to advance these concepts into practical, daily reality. This suggests that new means must be found in order to break the policy bottleneck in the many places that need to introduce major changes in these areas, but which for one reason or another have failed until now to do so.
These were the means that were developed at the base of the collaborative effort that was the Bogotá Car Free Day. A critical element of the Bogotá Day has been the innovative way in which it uses elements of the Information Society to support its ambitious objectives. As you well know, the only way in the long run to render a city transport system sustainable in the 21st century is thorough copious and continuing applications of Information Technology to virtually all parts of the transport system, and to the other components of society and economy that underlie the need for moving around in the city. Here briefly are some of the IT elements that were put to work in this project:
1. Development of an innovative World Wide Web site and Open Platform approach in order to gather international support for and channel highest levels of expertise into the Bogotá Day and the team behind it. (This you can check out at http://www.ecoplan.org/carfreeday/)
2. Creation of a series of Web cams spotted around the city which will provide continuous feedback and images which will allow any one with access to the Net to see and compare 'before and after' images of how a Car Free Day works in actual practice.
3. Creation of a local WWW site to inform the citizen's and institutions of Bogotá throughout the planning process and during the Day itself. (http://www.sinmicarroenbogota.com/)
4. Links between all of the above and more broadly accessible media including television, radio, the press, and other sources of information and support for the project.
5. As part of follow-up to the Day, we intend to work with the local sponsors to develop an all-mode traveler information system (portal), that in a first instance will be available over the Web, but linked to traditional media in order to increase outreach. (For an example of how it is intended that this ATIS will develop, see the pioneering work in Bilbao which is being taken by way of example and starting point: the TransBilbao Express at http://www.transbilbao.net
6. Using the Day in order to get exposure for and seek public feedback on a number of eventual information technologies and mechanisms that can work in the future to clear out some of the traffic and render the city a safer and more enjoyable place to live and work. Among these: telework, teleservices, and the application of things such as ITS where the technologies support not increased throughput of traffic (as is all too often the case) but rather less, *smarter* and more effective movement in and around the city.
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Number Of Partners:
100
Our Partner(s):
Our main partner was of course the Office of the Mayor and the Mayor (Enrique Penalosa) himself. Other local partners for the project included regional government, Police, Secretary of Health, DAMA (Environment Agency), Secretary of Education, El Tiempo, National University, Gimnasio Femenino, Yankelovich Acevedo y Asociados, and local government and agencies in all the surrounding communities and municipalities.
Our partner(s)role:
Other
The duration of our project:
< 1 year
Economically self sufficient:
Yes
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The project has been replicated/adapted:
No
By whom:
In a recent poll more than 87 percent of those interviewed suggested that it should be repeated, and more than 50 percent suggested at monthly intervals. Also there is international interest now in both Latin America and the United States for the first time. Finally, the Bogotá project has reinforced and energized the interest in Car Free Days in Europe.
The Bogotá Car Free Day experience offers a prototype for redrawing the transportation systems of cites that can be directly useful to cities around the world.
What you can learn from the project:
What they can learn is how to take this approach as a modest but potentially effective first step in the direction of creating a sustainable transportation system for their city. And is this approach transferable to other places. You bet it is. Indeed, as you will see if you visit the web site, this is one of the main challenges to which the entire planning and implementation effort is being directed. We are already, for instance, in discussion with a number of other cities about first, the usefulness of their following and learning from this experience. And then later in building on it to develop their own Car Free Days and follow-up programs, as part of this open, collaborative world-wide process that is now possible thanks to the advances in Information technology.
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Short history of the international support component behind this project:
Step 1 - 1988: EcoPlan sets up an informal international forum for developing and applying new ideas and prototypes for more sustainable transport systems in and around cities, at first called Cities without Cars and within months relabeled as the Access Program and from then to the New Mobility Agenda. (The full story of this program is available at the New Mobility Agenda Web site at http://newmobility.org)
Step 2 - 1992: The first Access program to go on to the Internet is developed and maintained in cooperation with the European Commission Telecommunications/ Telework Forum.
Step 3 - 1994: We propose to the first Ciudades Accesibles congress of the Spanish Ministry Of Public Work, Transport And The Environment (MOPTMA) in Granada a detailed work plan for using car free days as a planning and policy tool, in a presentation entitled Thursday. (Background information on this step is available at the @Access on the Web site, where you will also find the Granada Declaration which offers a more general explanation of the philosophy behind this type of experimental program.)
Step 4 - January 1997: Under The Commons, a special web site and support program is developed for the car free day concept, at http://www.ecoplan.org/carfreeday/
Step 5 - 21 September 1997: Subsequent to the first Level 3 Pollution Alert Day in Paris, we prepare a set of outline proposals for the French Ministry of the Environment in order to deal with pollution alert problems before they come up. One of these is a plan for a national program of carefully prepared and followed up Car Free Days.
Step 6 - 1997-2000: The Car Free Day site is steadily maintained and improved, evolving into the best world source of information and insight on its chosen topic. One result of this flow of information and expertise is contact with the city of Bogotá and its mayor and the agreement that we would work in the public interest in the support of the Car Free Day
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Company: The Commons
Address: 8, rue Joseph Bara
Zip Code: 75006
City: Paris
Country: France
Email: eric.britton@ecoplan.org
Telephone: +33 (01) 53 01 28 96
Facsimile: +33 (01) 53 01 28 96
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