WE SUPPORT SUSTAINABLE PROJECTS
CHANGES THAT occur in the
Construction of the Bogotá metro is included in the January 2017 CONPES document.
9.6
trillion pesos: the national government contribution to the first line of the Bogotá metro.
PHOTO: Personal file
public domain condition and favor people’s behavior. Latin American countries have faced major challenges when it has come to improving the quality of life of their people, and one of those challenges has undoubtedly been mass transportation. Cities have had to face problems of air, noise and visual contamination, as well as service quality, maintenance costs, ticket prices, coverage and capacity, among other factors that hinder their development. In the case of Colombia, population growth and the increased surface area of cities have demanded that transportation systems be introduced that offer adequate mobility. However, this growth meant an increase in the number of journeys required, but at the same time led to an imbalance that had repercussions not only on the public service rendered but also on people’s quality of life. Long journeys on obsolete buses, inadequate frequencies, pollution, high accident rates, roads in a bad state of repair and a lack of pedestrian-friendly infrastructure are typical features of traveling around the country’s cities. Meanwhile, a city like Curitiba (Brazil) has now enjoyed four decades of evolution (since 1974) with its Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system, based on buses and stations that have platforms at vehicle level and where passengers pay for the service in advance. The system currently boasts frequency planning, electronic payment methods and unified fare collection. In other words, it is a project designed to meet collective transportation needs.
I n s pi re d b y t h i s mo d e l , Colombia drew up an urban public transportation policy (Law 86 of 1989) which guaranteed an efficient service and allowed for the orderly growth of cities. This Law was modified seven years later (1996), in order to establish that the construction of Passenger Mass Transportation Systems would be co-financed using funds from the Nation and its decentralized entities in a ratio of ‘minimum 40 per cent maximum 70 per cent’ of the servicing of the project’s debt. 28 years have now passed, and the country’s Comprehensive Mass Transportation Systems (SITM, in Spanish) have been transformed in line with people’s needs. The nation, meanwhile, co-finances those that have been introduced in cities with more than 600,000 inhabitants, involving a total investment of 8.3 trillion pesos, notable among these cities being Bogotá (4.8 trillion pesos), Cali (1.3 trillion), and Soacha, Ba r ra nqu i l l a , Buc a ra m a nga , Cartagena, Medellín and Pereira, where contributions of around 2.1 trillion pesos have been made. Similarly, Strategic Collective
Public Transportation Systems have been developed, providing organized, modern operations in cities with between 250,000 and 600,000 inhabitants like Armenia, Montería, Neiva, Santa Marta, Pasto, Popayán, Sincelejo and Valledupar, involving investments of 1.5 trillion pesos. The introduction of these systems has been one of the biggest challenges in terms of public investment and policy for the nation and for the municipalities themselves. In Bogotá, for example, Transmilenio has noticeably improved the public transportation system (number of passengers carried vs. time). In 2000, two million passengers were carried at a speed of 8 km/hour, whereas today the figure for a working day, including SITP, is 4.1 million passengers at a speed of 26 km/hour. This means that average journey times have fallen by 43 minutes. Transmilenio is undoubtedly the most outstanding mass transportation system in Colombia, bearing in mind that it was the pioneer and that it currently has the greatest coverage. However, the statistics for the six SITM,
JUNE 2017