South America, that is. Transit wonks are familiar with the path-setting innovations of Curitiba in Brazil. Now Bogota seems to be setting the pace.
Tim Pawsey sends this link to a Streetsblog video on Bogota’s rapid transit. (Who would have thought we’d be going to Colombia to model a rapid-bus system for British Columbia?)
Well, I also think that British Columbia could (and should) learn some lessons from Mexico City.
I am one of the harshest critics of the policy transfer literature because I know that a lot of people think that policy proposals should only be transferred from Northern countries to Southern countries. That is a common misconception of the literature.
In Mexico, for example, community forestry is so much more advanced than it is in Canada and many other countries in the world. And I can tell you, indigenous people there didn’t learn from any Northern country! 🙂
As I argued in the link below, I am puzzled as to why Vancouver doesn’t have a transit system that is just as good as Mexico City’s. What is lacking in Metro Vancouver?
http://hummingbird604.blogspot.com/2008/01/provincial-transit-plan-and-mexico.html
There’s a lot to be learned from countries in the South.
I agree with Raul – perhaps the most efficient and impressive public transit system I’ve ever personally seen is in Mexico City. From the metro to the micros (mini buses, often older VW vans), there’s always the right sized vehicle going where you need to go.
I recall waiting ages for a bus in Curitiba. In the end, we just walked (and the inner part of the city is highly walkable, and enjoyable) or took a cab.
Brazil’s giant buses with their oversized bus stops — as I experienced them in Curitiba and Foz Iguacu — probably make sense on certain routes. But often they have to travel largely empty, or very infrequently.
The timing of this is remarkable. I was first wowed by Bogota’s TransMilenio in 2006 while travelling. Riding TransMilenio took me from laughing at BRT to seriously considering it as a very viable transportation alternative – if done correctly, which the Colombians have. I went back to Colombia just this past November to document and learn more about TransMilenio.
While I was there I encountered a group of South African planners, engineers and local government officials from Capetown who were on a study tour of BRTs in South America (Bogota, Periera and Guayaquil Ecuador). Capetown is hosting the 2010 World Cup and is looking to beef up it’s transportation options.
In today’s globalising world, anyone looking to set up a BRT system would be remiss to look over the phenomenal success in Bogota…. and I agree it would be well worth it for BC leaders to take a lesson from the South Africans and visit Colombia as well.
What’s sets Bogota’s TransMilenio aside? To me it was the stations. They feel like skytrain stations and and really take BRT from being a glorified express bus in it’s own lane to a “transportation system”. Sleek, modern, fully enclosed, permanent. Enough permanence that they have spurred on development like shopping malls (which many have said BRT could never do).
Readers might also be interested to know that the Bogota model of BRT has been successfully adapted to much smaller cities. Pereira, Colombia pop 500,000 has also implemented a Bogota-model BRT – it moves 100,000 people a day.
How frequent are buses on TransMilenio? Frequent – one arrives at the station every 30 seconds or so. How full are they? Full enough the system is nick-named TransMi-lleno (TransMi-full)… if anything a victim of it’s own success.