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ENVIRONMENT-CHILE: Activists in Santiago Look to Bogota

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Aug 18 2003 (IPS) - The Chilean capital could make as much or even greater headway against air pollution as Bogota was able to make by reorganising its public transport system, but that would require political will, according to the former mayor of the Colombian capital, Enrique Peñalosa.

During his three-year term as mayor of Bogota, which ended on Dec. 31, 2000, Peñalosa implemented the TransMilenio public transport system, comprised of modern buses coordinated by a central satellite-based system, and modern bus stations that replaced the precarious bus stops of the past.

The new system, which also included the creation of tree-lined pedestrian-only streets and bike lanes, led to a 32 percent reduction in mass transit travel times in Bogota, a 24 percent drop in particulate matter emissions, and a 44 percent reduction in concentrations of sulphur dioxide, while the number of muggings and robberies on buses was cut in half.

Peñalosa, an environmentalist, joined a caravan of cyclists and recommended the creation of green spaces and bicycle lanes during his Aug. 6-8 visit to Santiago. He was invited to the Chilean capital by Ciudad Viva (Living City), a coalition of grassroots organisations from four neighbourhoods along the Mapocho river.

The former mayor of Bogota, who is currently a visiting scholar at New York University and an international consultant on urban development, conversed with IPS after the launch of his book ”Muévete, por tu ciudad” (Get Moving, for Your City), which focuses on ”rationalising” urban transport.

Santiago activists look with envy towards Bogota’s success in fighting pollution through its plan to restructure urban transport, because this Southern Cone city of 5.4 million suffers notoriously high levels of air pollution, due to its location in a valley whose geographic characteristics make it difficult for smog to disperse.

Under Santiago’s pollution control system, states of environmental alert, pre-emergency and emergency are declared when the concentration of pollutants climbs to pre-established levels.

During those periods, anti-pollution measures are put into place, including limits on which cars can circulate based on licence plate numbers, the temporary shutdown of certain factories, and the restriction of traffic on certain highways and major thoroughfares to public transport vehicles.

The worst part of the year in terms of air pollution is the southern hemisphere winter, from June to September. This year, five pre-emergency days and 19 environmental-alert days have already been declared since Apr. 1.

Under Peñalosa’s leadership, the Bogota city government improved the city’s sidewalks and public spaces, planted trees, and built 300 kms of bike lanes, which improved the quality of life of the city’s 6.4 million people and helped save at least 2,000 lives a year, according to a study by Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.

”It is one thing to have reached the conclusion that the best way to administer most of society’s resources is as private property, and another thing for that to mean that we have to let everyone do things with their own interests in mind,” Peñalosa told IPS.

”There are much nicer ways to organise society within a market economy, by setting certain limits, especially when it comes to urban design,” he said. ”If we restrict the use of cars at rush hour, for example, that forces people not to live too far from their workplaces, and to make greater use of public transport and the bicycle.

”In Bogota, we close 120 main roads for seven hours on Sundays, and we have more than one and a half million people out jogging or riding bikes,” said the former mayor, who also pointed out that 17 kms of 15-metre-wide tree-lined pedestrian streets were built in Bogota.

Rodrigo Fernández, a civil engineer who specialises in public transport, mentioned the urgent need to adopt similar measures in Santiago, instead of building more and more roads to serve a continuously growing number of cars.

”In 1989, there were 500,000 vehicles in Santiago, a total that had increased to one million by 2002,” he noted.

”In order to make sure there is enough room for all the cars, the capacity of our roads must double every eight years. In other words, if Alameda (the main avenue in Santiago) is 10 lanes wide, it would have to be 20 lanes wide eight years from now,” said Fernández.

”Things can be done better here than in Bogota,” said Peñalosa.”You have a marvellous city here, and I really believe that the issue is a political one. It is neither technical nor economic, but simply political; it’s a question of deciding how you want to live.”

Lake Sagaris, in charge of communications in Ciudad Viva, said that in Santiago it was possible to reproduce, and even improve on, Bogota’s experience. ”This country is not at war like Colombia, and we have a much larger Gross Domestic Product, and better economic conditions,” she underlined.

”The big problem is that mass transit is not a priority for our political leaders today in Chile,” she said in an interview with IPS. ”We have good academics, good technicians and experts, but the politicians have not opened their eyes yet.”

Ciudad Viva emerged in the mid-1990s as an umbrella group made up of 25 organisations opposed to the construction of a freeway that was to run through the neighbourhoods of Pedro de Valdivia Norte, Bellavista, Patronato and La Vega, located along the Mapocho river in central Santiago.

The organisation continues to work on questions of urban transport and environmental and cultural heritage issues on the north side of the Mapocho River.

Jorge Olivares with Mercado Vega Chica, one of Ciudad Viva’s grassroots member groups, took part in the meetings with Peñalosa. In remarks to IPS, he described the recycling programmes promoted by his organisation, which is made up of small fruit and vegetable vendors.

The Movimiento de Ciclistas Furiosos (Furious Cyclists Movement), which was created seven years ago, also met with the former mayor of Bogota to learn more about the construction of bicycle lanes, with a view to incorporating that aspect into TranSantiago, the government’s plan to restructure urban transport in the Chilean capital, by creating, for instance, exclusive bus-lanes.

”What Enrique Peñalosa created in Bogota is a unique example, because it was carried out in a very economically depressed Latin American city that has major crime problems, and it brought Bogota up to European standards virtually overnight,” César Garrido, an activist with Furious Cyclists, told IPS.