Prospective concepts

INTRODUCTION

One of the big problems in Bogotá is the heavy traffic, every day we can see a mayor chaos around the rush from 7:00am and 6:00pm a average traveling time for an ordinary journey in Bogotá is 1 hour and 10 minutes.

Another factor that makes this problem worse is the poor condition of the roads with the fast growing of the city it is a critical to create a better publictransportation that can be accessible to the population in terms of mobility and price.

According to the “Departamento Administrativo Nacional de Estadistica – DANE” Transmilenio has a fleet with 1.080 buses that have transported 105,7 millons people in the period of april – june 2009; this number represents 26,0% of the total people mobilized in Bogotá(407,2 millions people). In the same periodregular buses, (5.330 vehicles in service), transported 125 million users; finally the minibuses with a fleet in service of 4.010 vehicles, are transporting 85,1millions of people[1].

1. Prospective Concepts in Public transportation in Bogotá

1. Trend

Nowadays in order to organize the public transportation in Bogotá the City Government is talking about an Integrated Public TransportationSystem (SITP for its initials in Spanish) This system already began this year (2009) in some areas of the city it’s implementation is going to be gradual and it pretends to integrate the buses and the minibuses with Transmilenio.

The main objectives of SITP in Bogotá[2] are:
• To guarantee a 100% coverage in the public transportation travels in Bogotá
• Providing an efficient and highquality service
• To define an integrate cost

This system has many advantages, for example, the users will change the Money for an intelligent card like the one today is used for Transmilenio; The buses and minibuses will have installed a device when the user uses the service in order to do transfers with every systems of transport in Bogotá with the same card so the users who take morethan two vehicles will reduce their costs because the price of the transfer.

Another advantage is that the users could only get on the bus in the exclusive sites as the whereabouts or bus stops and the ‘war of cent' will end.

2. Tendency

The public transportation in Bogotá with the SITP tends to incorporate the Metro and the Commuter Train two ideas of Samuel Moreno Bogotá’s Mayor.The Metro will transportate 7.28 times more passangers than Transmilenio this corresponds to a speedup of 7.28 times. It means that on average each passenger will need only a tenth of the wait time between the vehicle and reach their destination. And even the cost is much higher, increase worker productivity, improve quality of life and health costs are reduced because it would reduce pollution.According to Esteban Rodriguez Soto[3], consulting architect of Sener Spain and who led the design of the first subway line in Bogota is not possible that a city like Bogotá can plan their future without the Metro: “Despite the Pico y Placa and Transmilenio, the fleet has doubled, but vial growth was tiny. So the city must look after its public space and each system must be put in place”.Nevertheless the Metro will work if this system supple the needs in zones that the mobility is bigger by the number of people using the service.

The Commuter Train is an excelent idea because joins neighboring towns with Bogotá and this makes the demand for products and services in these populations increase, rising domestic consumption and thus increase national productivity.

3. Megatendency

This system pretends that in the future the people prefer to take a bus (Transmilenio, Metro etc) instead to take the particular vehicle and also thanks to the Metro the environment is benefited.

Considering that the great capitals of the world usually are coastal cities, which facilitates these countries the exchange of goods and services with other countries, Bogotá must have more...