THE FAILURES OF TRANSMILENIO A CASE AGAINST THE TOP-DOWN APPROACH DANIELA CAROLINA GARCÍA ROJAS Master in Urbanism, Landscape and Planning dcgarciarojas@gmail.co - danielacarolina.garciarojas@student.kuleuven.be Strategic Spatial Planning - Spring 2020 Department of Architecture - Faculty of Engineering Science - KU Leuven Abstract: This article aims to analyze the institutional framework, planning and operation of TransMilenio, the BRT system of Bogotá, Colombia. It put emphasis in the historical context in which the system appears, by the end of 1990’s, representing a shift in the management of the public transport. After recognizing it successful points, this research addresses the shortcomings that have led the system not being sufficient for the transport demand of the city. Here, the investigation put emphasis on the lack of long-term vision, poor articulation with other government institutions and private actors, and the coming back to a top-down approach when creating an integrated public transport system to cover the peripheries. Then, the socio-spatial impacts of TransMilenio, as well as the public policies that have been formulated with the goal of counteracting negative impacts are analyzed from the strategic spatial planning and social innovation perspective. Finally changes proposals and concerns for future research are proposed in the frame of social innovation and sustainable development.
Keywords TransMilenio, SITP, public transport, democratization, strategic spatial planning.
Figure 1. TransMilenio Infrastructure. Taken https://www.flickr.com/photos/oskam/6253700043/ (Oscar Amaya 2011)
from
Research question 1.
2. 3.
Why has the complex managing of TransMilenio, the core system of Bogotá´s mobility, been highly delayed regarding the socio-spatial changeprocesses of Bogotá? What was the planning process that led to the building and operation of TransMilenio? Which are the socioeconomic implications of the management, organization and planification of the public transit system in Bogotá?
buses with the Affiliating companies and then they paid a monthly fee for being allowed to operate on the company’s routes (Ardila 2008).
Methodology: The goal of this work is to critically answer the questions mentioned above through the analysis of the strategic spatial planning and social innovation on the mobility framework. Therefore, this research has a study case approach. To do this, institutional technical reports, historical statistics, and quantitative data relating to the operation of TransMilenio are combined with primary resources and press releases. Finally, the information of the study case is contrasted with the literature review regarding strategic spatial planning and innovation for public transport policies. 1. Introduction: Bogotá, a patient in intensive care The public transport before TransMilenio The 1990’s in Bogota were framed by significant transport problems such as the low speeds registered in the main axes of the city, the high level of congestion and the increasing of the operating costs. The average speed in 1997 was 10 km/hour, reaching 5 km/hour during the peak hours (Lefèvre 2008). Thus, the public transportation system, which by that time consisted of traditional buses without specific stops, was inefficient and highly pollutant. This, due to the fact that most of those buses had been operating for more than 20 years by that moment. That bus service (TPC) was institutionally organized as shown in Figure 2. There was a government authority at the city scale, the Secretariat of Mobility, that was overseen by the National Ministry of Transport. The Secretariat of Transit delegated service provisions to private actors, known as Affiliating Companies, by issuing operating permits for a determined route between specific origin and destination points. However, the government was rarely able to monitor and enforce good quality standards. Additionally, the government did not require the Affiliating Companies to own the bus fleet needed to provide the routes service. Instead, other private investors purchased buses. Those bus owners paid a fee to affiliate their
Figure 2. Organization of TPC. (Based on Ardila 2008)
The inadequate management of the routes by private Affiliating Companies generated a strong concentration of buses only on the mobility axes where the higher demands were located, leading to poor coverage in the rest of the city. In addition, there was no such thing as a ticket. The passenger had to pay for each journey by cash to the driver. Likewise, other symptom of the inefficiency of the system was that the salary earned by the bus drivers directly depended on the number of passengers handled on the bus. Therefore, the Affiliating Companies and bus owners institutionally fostered an unfair and risk condition for the drivers. This situation, known as ‘Guerra del Centavo’ was a price war in which the bus drivers competed between them to pick up an extra passenger anywhere on the route. This resulted in irresponsible driving speeds and, consequently, traffic accidents which aggravated even more mobility. Average travel time at peak hours was around two and a half hours per day (Liliana 2010). This was not only due to the low speed, but also by the spatial segregation of the city. Most of the work centers were located extremely far from residence enclaves, particularly for the poorer classes, which are the main users of collective transport (Lefèvre 2008). In this panorama, it was clear that the bus routes had become a commodity, because the Affiliating Companies were
exploiting the transport system, which is a public good, without paying anything back to the city. In short, the public transport system did not just contribute to the increase of air pollution but also affected passengers and drivers’ comfort and safety, in addition to the excess of buses but low coverage in geo-spatial terms. In sum, the main economic benefit of the Affiliating Companies were their routes. Then, with their economic power they lobbied the authorities to obtain as many routes as possible so they could associate many buses as well. With more routes and buses, its economic and political power kept growing in a vicious circle. The result was extreme competition in the market between buses from different companies and even between buses from the same company (Ardila 2008). By 1997, this chaotic and critical situation led the Municipality to take control over the transport system service. Hence, it was necessary to move the power from the Affiliating Companies to the institutionalism of the State. With the advice of international consultancy firms, the need to establish a formal, functional, and integrated system was deemed necessary. In order to be innovative, this new system should had electronic payment collection, a flat rate, formal contracts with fixed wages for drivers, guarantee of quality and safety for the passengers, and State control over the planification and operation of the system (Butzin and Rabadjieva 2018). Due to the already collapsed mobility of Bogota, the implementation of a new and renovated system needed to be immediate. With these ideas, TransMilenio started to be planned and its construction began in 1998.
2. TransMilenio saved Bogota (for a moment): Planning and early operation of the system TransMilenio is a massive transport system that during its first decade achieved the highest capacity and speed in a BRT1 system worldwide (Hidalgo and Yepes 2005). It uses a relatively simple technology: articulated buses of high passenger capacity that circulate in exclusive lanes. The passengers pay the fee at the entrance of the bus stations, as in a metro system. Those stations have automatic doors in both ways, which are automatic
1
Bus rapid transit
and are coordinated with the doors of the buses. This, due to a satellite control system that follows the entire system in real time (Ardila 2008). Despite of the simplicity of this technology, even in that times, it was innovative in the Latin American context and its results were impressive: the first three lines were planned, built and started to operate in 26 months. By the end of 2002, TransMileno transported 780.000 passengers per day and the average transportation time had decreased by 32% (Lefèvre 2008). By the moment of its implementation, TransMilenio achieve three greatest successes: (1) a fast process of construction and start of operation, (2) an institutional shift in the way the mobility was managed in Bogota, and (3) a large increase of the capacity/cost ratio for the city. This last one due to the fact the infrastructure and vehicles were much cheaper than a metro system. Then, considering the budget limitations of a developing country, TransMilenio was the best system Bogota could afford. 2.1.
Institutional success vs. operational fails
In this section I will explore the immediate success of TrasnMilenio solving a great part of the public transportation problem in Bogota, not just because of its innovation in both technological and operational terms, but also by an institutional shift. Although the positive achievements of the system must be recognized, it is important to show that while TransMilenio is internationally recognized as a successful BRT system, it is bad perceived by its users. 2.1.1.
Institutional success
From an institutional perspective, the TransMilenio system meant a radical shift of the managing paradigm of the transport service in Bogota (Figure 3). Unlike the top-down approach of the TPC, the government of Bogota aimed to implement a competition for public transportation market. Thus, Transmilenio S.A. was created as a city-owned company in charge of managing the overall system. TransMilenio S.A. issues competitive bids to define the companies that own and operate a some of the buses for a defined period, under a concession contract (Ardila 2008). As aforementioned, the buses operate in exclusive lanes. These lanes are part of the city infrastructure. Therefore, they are refurbished with public funds. The Operators are required to own the bus fleet, operate it, and maintain it in the terms specified by with
Transmilenio S.A. A third party, Recaudos Bogota, collects and centralizes the fares. The fare box goes to a trust fund that pays the operators according to the instructions of Transmilenio S.A. Initially, operators are paid according to the distance logged by their fleets (Ardila 2008). However, the contracts prescribed a commercial risk to the operators that consists in increasing the payment if more passengers use the system (Baquero 2004). Also, Transmilenio S.A. plans the routes, service provision and monitor the satellite system.
system cannot be measured only according to its speed, but it must include the quality of the service it is offering (2014). In this sense, TransMilenio has not been that successful:to cover long distances in short times lanes should not be congested, which has led to a high crowdedness of the Transmilenio vehicles, even during off-peak hours. Therefore, the social unconformities are related to the service itself. The fact that both the stations and the vehicles stay full is not just an unpleasant situation but it foster vulnerability scenarios such as sexual harassment and robbery (El Espectador 2018). In sum, passengers use TrasnMilenio because regarding public transportation, speed is usually the most prioritize factor (Rodríguez et al. 2015), in spite of the system being unsafe and uncomfortable for the user. Figure 4 shows how user satisfaction with TransMilenio decreases each year.
Figure 3. Organization of Transmilenio BRT system. (Based on Ardila 2008)
In summary, TransMilenio has a “competition for the market” approach. This mode of competition refers to the creation of a new standard for the market dynamic, usually related with social and technological innovation (Geroski 2003). Thus, it was a successful institutional shift from the “competition in the market” of the TPC, which was a conventional view of the competition in a neoliberal context, where it was assumed that the socio-spatial problems had market solutions (Albrechts 2015). 2.2.2. Operational failures -
Speed is not necessarily quality
TransMilenio managers advertise the system as a successful generic formula for metropolises in developing countries. One of the main reasons they use to demonstrate their success is their efficiency in speed terms: passengers transported per kilometer traveled. However, as Kaufmann states, a transport
Figure 4. Percentage oz citizens satisfied with TransMilenio. Taken from https://www.fedesarrollo.org.co/sites/default/files/tc_co_comercial_1 90821_fedesarrollo_presentacionpropuestas_0.pdf (Fedesarrollo 2019)
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TransMilenio follows and reinforces the spatial segregation pattern of the city
The lanes of TransMilenio were designed to connect centralities. Nevertheless, Bogotá has a strong tradition in land use planning through zoning systems. Then, housing centralities are considerably far from jobs centralities. TransMilenio does not cover most of the periphery areas, and the ones that it covers have large distances between the stations. Therefore, the lanes are located over the main arterial mobility corridors of the city. As the infrastructure of TransMilenio is spatially highly demanding over the roads, it monopolizes the use of these and limits the
accessibility to other modes of public transport that reach other destinations not yet covered by TransMilenio. Taking this into account, TransMilenio does not articulate the centralities with their surroundings, neither promotes the creation of new centralities different than the traditional center of the system, where most of the infrastructure still concentrated (Liliana 2010). In short, the implementation of TransMilenio was inserted within a mobility model that tends to reinforce the pattern of concentrated development, while impacting with the intensification of land uses and activities. Figure 5 shows a map of the TransMilenio system in which is possible to evidence the centralization of the system towards the traditional center of the city. Also, it is noticeable that the peripheries are highly disconnected from each other.
future of Bogota mobility but the operational efforts focused on immediate solutions. Likewise, self-assessment and monitoring tasks were reduced to measuring efficiency in terms of speed instead of measuring the safety perception of the users. Thus, without realistic assessment there was no opportunity for improvement in this regard. The success of the institutional framework achieved by the National Government, the city hall, the public institutions of mobility and the private sector must be recognized. However, this institutional framework should also had included the public entities in charge of (1) environmental policies and of (2) land-planning. The former could had allowed to create strong air quality goals in relation to TransMilenio operation. And the latter, to design the system infrastructure responding to the territory and its activities. The lack of coordination with the Land-use Planning and Development Department reinforced the spatial segregation (Albrechts 2004). Furthermore, it also led the system’s design to not consider the spatial and population growth projections of the city. As consequence over the years, the coverage of the system has not been enough for a city that today has almost 9 million inhabitants (DANE 2018). TransMilenio could not cover the peripheries due to the limitations of the infrastructure itself. Thus, at the beginning it was not planned a disarticulation, replacement, or integration with the TPC. In the future years, this has represented the most serious problem regarding the Bogota’s mobility.
Figure 5. Map of TransMilenio. (Taken from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Trans Milenio_Bogota_Map.png)
3. Bogota returns to intensive care: An analysis of the planning and managing delays TransMilenio demonstrated to be a solution in its first years of operation. But soon, it was noticeable that it was a solution with limitations: The initial planning process of TransMilenio had a strong lack of long-term vision: the investment in the system was too large to be treated as a contingency measure. TransMilenio was, indeed, the opening to the
Figure 6. A TransMilenio vehicle. Taken from https://www.flickr.com/photos/carlosfpardo/3794673423/ (Carlos Pardo 2009)
3.1.
Impact of TransMilenio
TransMilenio did not replaced neither integrate with the TPC. Instead, they competed -and are still competing on the roads-. Thus, Bogotá currently has a bimodal mobility system which eliminates the benefits of “competition for the market” and, in contrast, puts the operators in the realm of “competition in the market incentives” (The World Bank 2002). The traditional buses and TransMilenio compete in the market due to the fact the TPC buses can stop anywhere in the street. Their routes do not have specific stops. Then, they are found nearby, usually less than 0.8 km from residential streets (Ardila 2008). That competition has affected both systems because the interest of the TPC is to keep the fleet size as large as possible, while TransMilenio does not have that incentive. Thus, it competes by its speed and higher frequency. Likewise, the available environmental data of Bogotá clearly shows that the conditions of air quality in the city represent a serious threat to the health and quality of life of its population (Franco 2012). I identified that the monitoring and assessment of the current contamination problems have been possible because thethe city has a modern air quality monitoring network. This network has been operated by the local authority on environmental issues, Environmental Secretariat,since 1997. Previous researchers suggest that spatial development planning is a socio-ecological field (Van den Broeck et al. 2019). Thus, in this case the air quality monitoring network has been an important tool in defining and assessing the measures that the local government must established to improve environmental conditions and polices in this matter. However, since the beginning of its operation, the monitoring network has reported every year concentrations of PM102 higher than the maximum permitted levels established by national regulations (SDA 2008). Figure 7 is a map of Bogotá that shows the annual concentration of PM10 in 2010. As can be seen in said figure, a significant percentage of the Bogota presents PM10 levels that exceed the standard of 50 µg/m3 indicated as the annual standard for this contaminant (MAVDT 2010). According to the Figure, the central and south western zone of Bogotá represent the geographical places with the highest annual levels of air pollution by particulate matter. Here, I identified that those areas coincide with the concentration of
2
Particulate matter with a diameter larger than 10 µm
TransMilenio lanes. In addition, the scientific literature about Bogota’s environment demonstrates that the PM10 concentration in the air exceeds the acceptable standard during 40% of the days of the year in the entire urban area of Bogotá since 2001 (Gaitán et al 2007). This coincides with the starting of the operation of TransMilenio.
Figure 7. Annual concentration of PM 2008. (Taken from Franco 2012)
3.2.
How the impacts have been addressed
Air pollution and congestion Due to the air pollution, Bogota implemented Pico y Placa in 2005, which is a public policy focused on private vehicles restriction (Rodriguez 2009). It is a transport demand management measure that consist of rationing the use of roads in the face of excessive vehicles. The concept of the restriction is simple: according to the car number plate, it cannot be on the road during a specific time. In its first years, the Pico y Placa stood just for private cars during peak hours. Then it was extended to public transportation vehicles as well. Nowadays the Pico y Placa stands during the whole day, based on whether the last plate number is even or odd
Here, I recognized the first attempt of coordination between the Environmental, Transport and Infrastructure local authorities. This, due to the fact that this policy aimed to mitigate the air pollution, the congestion and excessive wear of the routes. Nevertheless, that policy was not good received, especially for the middle- and high-class population, who mostly own cars. In fact, the people who could afford it, got a second car. This demonstrated a lack of incentives for the middle- and high-class population to use public transport as a consequence of it being bad perceived. This situation let me recognize that the topdown approach of the policy led to not fully solve the planning problems. In this case, the planning of Pico y Placa did not involve the citizens. Therefore, the policy makers could not predict the widespread behavior of acquiring a second car. As aforementioned, the Pico y Placa measure is still standing today, but the environmental and congestion issues persist. Democratization of the public transport system: Planning of SITP and temporariness In 2005, after 5 years of the operation of TransMilenio, it was evident that the system was not complementing the TPC, but competing with it. Thus, the local authorities envisioned a process of democratization in which the TPC could be replaced in the future by an integrated transport system. Taking this into account, the local government sought to be inclusive with the TPC owners that would go out of business. Thus, the government established a Mobility Master Plan in 2006 with the aim to protect these entrepreneurs and avoid conflicts in the future. In this plan a new system was designed: the SITP (Bogotá Integrated Transport System). This was the result of many attempts to integrate Bogotá's public transport modes, initially as a bimodal system, where only TransMilenio and new electric buses (that would replace the TPC) would coexist (Fernández 2018). But later, in an expanded scheme that could integrate any other mean of public transportation in the future, for instance a metro system. In short, the plan proposed to replace the old TPC buses for modern and less contaminant ones that could be articulated with TrasnMilenio, while including the TPC owners as private operators in the new institutional scheme.
Figure 8. An SITP electrical bus. Taken from https://www.rcnradio.com/bogota/estas-son-las-tres-nuevasrutas-del-sitp-que-ya-estan-funcionando (RCN Radio 2019)
It is possible to distinguish that the current situation of Bogota is highly different from what theoretically was addressed in the planning of the SITP. O'Donnell and Schmitter argue that democratization consist in a period of transition that occurs from a previous regime, whose main characteristic is the total or partial absence of participation of citizens and groups historically alien to political power, towards a new one (O’Donnell and Schmitter 2001). Also, Jaime Cárdenas describes it as a “process of devolution of sovereignty” to those actors and communities (2005). For this reason, the public transport system of Bogota currently cannot be considered democratized, as most of the members of the TPC have come out of the implementation process and tenders were given to large companies. The TPC buses owners did not survive to the democratization process due to the fact they were used to a very different economic model from the one that TransMilenio S.A. offered to them in the transition of the system. The new system consisted of financing and capital investment,in contrast to the TPC business approach in which the incentive was short-term income. In this old system, the bus owners saved their money in the cooperative in which they were affiliated, obtaining smaller credits, and maintaining stability economic without a high risk nor growth projection. In this situation is possible to recognize that the authorities of Bogota did the democratization of the SITP guided by a top-down model: they neglected what was happening, giving greater importance to the prescriptions contained in the statutes (in this case the Master Plan of 2006) and ignoring what the implementers of lower hierarchical levels can provoke by developing their respective tasks (Paudel 2009).
Furthermore, in the democratization process, two TPC Affiliating Companies went bankrupt, lost financial guarantees, and breached contracts. Despite that some of the new SITP buses started to operate in 2012, by 2015 the local Secretariat of Mobility had to create a contingency policy as consequence of the democratization failure and because a large part of the peripheries still uncovered by SITP buses articulated with TransMilenio3. It consisted of granting special and provisional permits to the traditional TPC buses for temporarily attending the demand for routes, on the condition that they should be administered by TransMilenio S.A. In the meantime, TransMilenio S.A. pretended to find new private operator willing to buy new SITP buses. The political decision of returning to the traditional buses, even if temporarily, was not well received by the citizens in general, considering the low popularity of the TPC. Also, by that moment the buses were extremely old, thus those buses were highly pollutant.
Figure 9. An old TPC bus with the sign of SITP Provisional. Taken from http://www.12minutos.com/5c264306eff71/se-despideel-sitp-provisional.html (2018)
The temporariness of the SITP is a clear example of the failure of the top-down model, I which the authorities decided to implement a public policy without understanding the actors who, despite not holding the same bureaucratic hierarchy, are no less important. Currently, after 5 years of its execution, the “provisional” SITP persists, even though initially, it was a strategy approved for only 2 months (Resolution 518 of 2015).
The two companies that went bankrupt were supposed to be in charge of covering 42% of the SITP demand. 3
4. Conclusions from the strategic spatial planning and social innovation perspective The complicated situation of Bogota regarding mobility by the end of the XX century was chaotic, imminent, and urgent. Therefore, the public transport policy proposed for that moment, TransMilenio, was focused on giving immediate solutions. Here, in planning terms, the first great mistake of TransMilenio was that long-term implications were not taken deeply into consideration. Thus, the managing of TransMilenio has been complex due to the fact it is the backbone of an integrated mobility system for which its creation has not been finished. Despite the evident institutional successes in its planning and rapid implementation that were described in this work, the early operation of the system also had problems with self-evaluation and good quality service provision. Likewise, the Integrated Public Transportation System of Bogotá, seeking to be a policy that sought to revolutionize the quality of transportation, stalled due to failures in its implementation process under a topdown logic. This logic presents considerable shortcomings in terms of its prescriptive and rational content, being a permanent bias that the public authority must consider as a form of self-assessment. Even more if we consider that researches of the implementation stage in public policies have warned of these errors for several decades (Albrechts 2004). Therefore, after the institutional success of TransMilenio in its first years of operation, the overall public transport system has been delayed regarding the socio-spatial change-processes of Bogotá. This is due to two main circumstances: firstly, there is no articulation between land use and the transportation system despite the guidelines and goals established in the planning models of Bogota. As aforementioned in this work, the implementation of TransMilenio was inserted within a mobility model that tends to reinforce the pattern of concentrated development. In parallel, it impacts the intensification of land uses and activities, as consequence of the lack of articulation between the Secretariat of Mobility with the Spatial Development department. Secondly, the articulation of TranMilenio with other actors of mobility is weak. The development of the first phases of the system allowed to partially replace the fleet of public transport vehicles in the city characterized by its inefficient and highly polluting operation. However, most of the peripheries of Bogota are still depending on the
conventional mode of TPC., which is operated by private owners and not under a centralized public planning agency. This situation becomes one of the biggest obstacles for the correct implementation of new policies for the benefit of mobility and environmental conditions in the city. Thus, an Integrated Public Transportation System of Bogotá does not exist yet. On the other hand, the planning process that led to the building and operation of TransMilenio has been framed by the changes of the institutional approaches. Albrechts (2015) argue that there is not a single implementer, but rather a multiplicity of actors that plan, develop, and determine the course of a spatial public policy. At the beginning of the implementation phase of a plan, the great challenge is the coordination between the government and the other institutions involved in the policy implementation process (Healey 2009). Therefore, it is impossible that just the developer actor in charge of the spatial execution of the public policy acts on his own, since it needs to be embedded in an institutional frame with the other actors (Servillo and van den Broeck 2012). This is a theoretical explanation of what failed during the implementation phase of TransMilenio: misunderstandings of interests between the actors that pretended to integrate the public transport system of Bogota. As mentioned before, the first stages of TransMilenio demonstrated a good governance practice in institutional terms. But over the years, when the creation of an integrated system was necessary, it is evident that there was a lack of institutional coordination between the framing public entity Secretariat of Mobility and the Implementation Direction of TransMilenio S.A. In addition, the coordination issues were even more severe with the private operators of the buses; issues that currently persist. The democratization and temporariness of the SITP exemplify the shortcoming of the top-down model. The public policies that are governed under the top-down always tend to fail due to their desire to focus on theoretical prescription, but not on practice (Paudel 2009). Furthermore, during these 20 years of TranMilenio operation, its infrastructure has tended to concentrate the accessibility within the centralities whereas the access facilities on the south peripheries still limited. This situation shows the strong socio-spatial segregation pattern of the land use of Bogota: poor classes in the south, higher classes at the north west and real estate development at the north. The expansion of TransMilenio to the north has fortered
conurbation processes that affect the ecological structure of the region and oversaturate the transport system capacity. Thus, the model of TransMilenio is reinforcing an unfair and segregated socioeconomic urban development pattern. In summary, I consider that the early planning of TransMilenio left great institutional lessons that were ignored by the decision makers when the integrated transportation system was proposed. Bogotá was making a road towards justice, inclusion, and sustainability through the institutional frame of TransMilenio. Unfortunately the efforts to build a fair transportation system began to fade when returning to the previous system. The inclusion of the TPC was an irresponsible retake of corporate interests, where the planning was reduced to short-term measures that economically benefit the private actors with political power and the politicians with economic power (Metzger 2011). This situation has meant that transportation planning in Bogota cannot even contemplate social innovations beyond sustainability, because it continues to depend on an inefficient system in both institutional and service terms, while still being highly pollutant. Despite the good ideas that came with TransMilenio more than 20 years ago, today it is not a successful transportation system, due to the lack of strategic work between institutions and private actors,. This, as a consequence of being forced to be integrated with a makeshift system that was already inefficient 20 years ago. To conclude, at the end of the 20th century, a new Bogotá was imagined. If the decision makers of Bogotá articulate the socio-spatial priorities and make a collective effort to coordinate and integrate the spatial development with the transport planning of the city, we can not only re-imagine, but also build an strategic future for Bogotá. Thus, an integrated transport system for Bogotá, of which TransMilenio is the backbone, remains in a state of uncertainty due to errors in the implementation. Hence, the problem of mobility and public transport in Bogotá is still waiting for efficient and effective solutions. 5. Proposed changes to TransMilenio to achieve social innovation and sustainable development As it has been shown in this paper, delays in the implementation of the SITP keeps Bogotá tied to forms of diesel-based mobility from the past. These delays impact the quality of life of all citizens because it is not
only affected the way they move around the city, but what they breath. Atmospheric pollution is one of the greatest problems to solve to reach environmental justice in Bogota. To counteract the consequences of a transportation system that has been planned and operated with errors, it is necessary the joint work between the public sector, private actors, and researchers. These synergistic efforts must be oriented to a better understanding of the problems, but they also must build realistic strategies to achieve and implement the control and mitigation measures already proposed in public policy for these issues. The analysis in this paper led to conclude that it is fundamental to include and integrate the citizens in the planning processes to achieve successful deployments. Therefore, a participatory approach can create a better understanding of the problem, and subsequently, the formulation and application of public policies aimed to give solution for all the involved ones. If both the citizens and decision makers have more knowledge in this matter, it will lead to the promotion of strategies to achieve better health and quality conditions. Bogotá was internationally seen in the early 2000’s as a pioneer city due to the implementation of its BRT system, and recently it has started to be perceived as a city that carries out initiatives of sustainable processes. For instance, the Bogotá’s Bike Path Network is recognized as one of the best infrastructures to do urban cycling, being the only nonEuropean city in the ranking (The Copenhagenize Index 2019). However, beyond these international measurements and rankings, Bogotá faces environmental, mobility, and socio-spatial distribution challenges that require the political leadership of its rulers and a long-term planning strategy. However, in a recent press note, the manager of TransMilenio S.A called the citizens to be patient with TransMilenio (ElEspectador 2020). The public transport in Bogota, with TransMilenio at the head, faces an emergency almost like the one faced 20 years ago. The difference is that TrasnMilenio already exists and that its successes in the first years of operation demonstrate that it has the potential to be a transforming tool. Hence, the challenge today for all the actors involved in the mobility of Bogotá is to overcome the technocracy and the corporativism of the processes that led to the failure of the SITP, and begin to govern and make articulated decisions focused on citizens and longterms solutions. The question of how the social innovation as a strategic tool for the transport planning can work in the Latin
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