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Marina Sánchez moved to Bogotá from Spain four years ago. He assures that buying a bike was one of the best decisions he made. “Besides, if I can walk, I will.” In Bogotá, in every elevator (and in the traffic jam itself) it is customary to talk about the weather and the traffic jam. For this reason, Sánchez was not surprised that the Colombian capital ranked sixth in the ranking of the world’s least trafficked cities, according to the INRX Global Traffic Scorecard study. “It’s a very bad situation, especially at rush hour and from one end of the city to the other,” says the 33-year-old. 3,700 kilometers away, in Monterrey, Mexico, Gladys Bañuelos Gonzalez, 32, doesn’t seem surprised by eleventh place in her city. “I’m looking for a strategy to avoid important hours because a 20-minute drive takes me an hour.”
The study, published in mid-January, using a sample of more than a thousand cities in 50 countries, used mobility data to calculate the time citizens lose to traffic and congestion, and the economic costs that these mobility effects impose on the average driver and citizenship. In the case of Monterrey, for example, it is estimated that someone who uses the car regularly loses 116 hours a year. Almost five days. In the case of a citizen of Bogota, it is 122. According to the Tomtom traffic index, the average speed at which a car moves in this city during rush hour is 2 kilometers per hour, even slightly slower than the step of a citizen
For the second year in a row, London in the UK is the metropolis where its citizens waste the most time in traffic congestion. The indicator, published since 2016, estimates that the average driver spends 156 hours on it. Next come Chicago, USA, with 155. And Paris, France, with 138. This situation cost the United Kingdom $81,000 million last year and about $12,000 million. Such figures are not available for Latin America and the Caribbean.
Although this data is alarming, it shows the reality of only 20% of citizens owning a car in the region. For the vast majority of Latin Americans, the only means of transportation they use is public transportation. And it’s not usually a service they get a lot of breast out of. According to Harvey Scorcia, head of Habitat and Urban Mobility at the CAF Development Bank of Latin America, they are being built in the region’s cities “because it is necessary” and not “because it is preferred”.
According to a survey published a year ago by the Bogotá Cómo Vamos organization, the most common means of transport used by Bogotanos is the TransMilenio (29%), followed by the bus (25%) and private vehicle (18%). 44% of citizens were dissatisfied with the medium used. Juana Téllez, a 28-year-old anthropologist, is one of the most critical neighbors. “The Transmilenio is the worst thing that happened to us. It’s a slow, expensive service and with a very complicated charging mechanism,” he says. Although the Bogotá woman admits to being in a privileged situation “compared to people with more precarious working conditions”, she regrets spending an hour on these buses on journeys that were not supposed to last more than 20 minutes. “It’s a huge stress to use. I swear I feel like years are being taken from my life. This city doesn’t care about us,” he laments.
Familiar with the inconveniences of some transport services, CAF’s Scorcia regrets that mobility decisions are “usually made without speaking to users”. There is also criticism that the use of cars is not discouraged, as in other model cities such as Amsterdam. “It’s time to raise parking prices, check which polluting cars are driving into the center or not… Unfortunately, in Latin America, using a car is only worth the price of petrol.”
For Bernardo Baranda Sepúlveda, director for Latin America at the Institute for Transport and Development Policy (ITDP), one of the most effective measures to discourage private car use would be “to charge motorists more for using and parking on the streets and places provide these resources to improve public transport systems”. For this reason, they celebrate measures such as the Car Free Day that took place in Bogotá last Thursday.
The frequency increase or better accessibility of buses or subways are part of the solution. Resolving the general insecurity of these services, mainly for women, is essential to make public transport an option (even for those who can travel by car or taxi). For Angie Palacios, also a Habitat and Urban Mobility executive at CAF, thinking about how women move is crucial. “When it comes to optimizing transport services, we need to talk about the reasons why they, the main users, stop using them. Harassment is a constant and a variable that needs to be put on the table.” Customers like the Mexican bañuelos reflect this. “I used to use public transport, but because I felt restless I decided to take the car. It hasn’t improved at all since I’ve had one.”
Going to work costs a third of salary
Transport price is another variable to consider. According to international standards, it is ideal not to spend more than 6% of the family budget on daily transfers. But in Latin America, according to Baranda, that percentage is sometimes over 30%.
The figures of the INRX indicator, which make the Colombian capital the busiest city in the Latin American region, show a scenario that has deteriorated as it ranked eighth in 2021. In South America, Medellín (91), Quito (70), Cali (66) and Belo Horizonte (65) follow, according to the US company for mobility data analysis. In addition to loss of time, negative effects such as delays and environmental pollution are increased by traffic jams. While this report doesn’t measure this directly, it does ensure that these factors are “reducing the quality of life around the world.”
The pandemic has changed the way we move
Covid-19 has significantly changed the way and when we move. Hybrid models and telecommuting took their toll on the 2020 and 2021 measurements. However, public transport usage is still below 2019 levels, although bus ridership has recovered faster than bus ridership. Cycling has increased.
“Teleworking has changed the paradigm, but only for educated workers,” explains Palacios. “For example, for the thousands of domestic workers who live on the outskirts of Bogotá but work in the north, the situation is stagnant. The lower classes continue to be hardest hit. And he concludes: “We give a lot of space to the car, which is mainly used by men, and the negative impact is for the people who use public transport, who are almost always women.”
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