Colombian mayor shares Bogota’s experience.
By Joe Hirsch
joehirsch@yahoo.com
Photo by Adam Liebowitz
Enrique Penalosa, the former mayor of Colombia’
s capitol, outlined the ways his city reduced car traffic at a meeting of activists from Hunts Point and elsewhere.
What if riders were able to hop on a bus on Hunts Point Avenue and cross quickly over to the Grand Concourse, without stopping for lights or being bogged down in traffic along the way?
The former mayor of Bogota, Colombia sees that as a real possibility, and outlined his ideas for a new kind of bus service in New York for members of several Bronx organizations in February.
Members of Hunts Point-based Sustainable South Bronx and The Point, along with several other Bronx community organizations, crowded into a cozy conference room in a downtown Manhattan office on Presidents Day to hear Enrique Penalosa speak about the benefits a rapid bus transit system would bring to the five boroughs.
Penalosa, who served as Mayor of Bogota between 1998 and 2001, was invited to speak by a coalition of community organizations called COMMUTE. The recently formed coalition of community organizations, including Sustainable South Bronx, Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice and The Point, is pressing for improved mass transit for underserved neighborhoods.
Penalosa has won international praise for advocating alternatives to cars, and for championing the rights of cyclists and pedestrians. To relieve congestion and pollution in Bogota, he implemented a world-renowned rapid bus system known as El Transmilenio, patterned after a similar rapid bus line in the city of Curitiba, in southern Brazil.
The silver-haired former mayor lamented the way people get around in cities across the world today, calling cars inefficient and economically unjust. Modern city planning, he said, favors drivers over pedestrians, and less affluent people who can’t afford cars bear the brunt of such one-sided planning.
New York has made plans to create one rapid bus line in each of the five boroughs, as part of Bloomberg’
s PlaNYC 2030. Rapid buses would travel in a dedicated lane that would be off-limits to cars and would continue moving while regular traffic is stopped at red lights. Passengers would pay their fare at bus-stop stations fare before getting on, thus speeding up the boarding and unloading process.
Elena Conte, formerly of Sustainable South Bronx and now an organizer of public policy campaigns for the Pratt Center for Community Development, said that Bloomberg’s proposal, while important, doesn’t go far enough to resolve traffic and pollution problems in the Bronx.
“One rapid bus line per borough isn’t sufficient,” Conte said. “We want them to go farther for the Bronx so that people can feel the difference in their lives.” Bloomberg’s plan calls for a Bronx line that would run parallel to the BX55 route, which runs north-south through the Fordham Road area. Conte thinks it would be crucial to add an east-west component. Some local residents agree.
“It should connect the east side of the Bronx to the west side,”
said Tatiana Echevarria, who was part of a group of Hunts Point high school students that traveled to Albany in February to present their ideas on alternative transportation at a workshop at the statehouse.
From Hunts Point, “it takes a train down to Manhattan to take another train to get to the West Bronx,” Echevarria said. “Distancewise, it doesn’t make any sense.”
Penalosa said it would be wise for New York City officials to introduce one rapid bus line done well, rather than more done haphazardly. He said sidewalk improvements, tree planting, and enhanced street lighting around the new bus line would help win over skeptics.
“It’s possible that in 200 years, people will say ‘What a horrible system those people lived in!’” Penalosa said of today’s car-dominated cities. “We have only belatedly started to make cities that are more humane.”
“It’s possible that in 200 years, people will say ‘What a horrible system those people lived in!’” Penalosa said of today’s car-dominated cities. “We have only belatedly started to make cities that are more humane.”
Saying that traffic accidents account for the death of 200,000 children across the world, he told the advocates,
“Cars now are to children what wolves were to children in the Middle Ages, except that more kids now are killed by cars than were eaten by wolves in the Middle Ages.”
Penalosa said that car culture favors the wealthy and middle classes, because the poor often can’
t afford to own cars in the city. He insisted that government should take the non car-owning public more carefully into account when designing urban landscapes. Instead of continuing to make massive investments in highways, he argued, governments need to invest more in libraries and parks.
Conte thinks the opportunity is there for New York City politicians to act on rapid bus service, but that they need to seize the time.
“This is an extremely crucial moment,” she said. “They really shouldn’t let this one go.”
Echeverria is worried about the future of the city, if something is not done soon to relieve congestion.
“New York City has to be prepared to handle millions more citizens,” Echevarria said. The mayor’s plan is based on an estimate that New York will grow by a million new residents by 2030.
If that happens, the city will need new ideas for coping, Echevarria believes. “We’re not getting any bigger.”