[sustran] Bogotá elections....

Carlosfelipe Pardo carlosfpardo at gmail.com
Mon Oct 31 09:45:45 JST 2011


Hi Rutul,

In his (18-page) government proposal Petro states that he will:

- continue building TransMilenio (he says he'll use hybrid buses, who 
knows where he'll get them)
- build cablecars in the outskirts of the city (hilly, low-income 
neighborhoods)
- Eliminate "pico y placa" (plate restrictions)
- organize "congestion zones" with park-n-ride
- Increase bikeways and enforce the exclusive use by bicycles.

But when asked for details, I have heard none. His advisors are very 
old-school transport engineers (predict and provide kind of things) . It 
is almost a rule that whatever the government proposal says, the first 
thing they'll do when they start is redevelop the whole thing into their 
government plan, which is what we should wait for.

The other issue, as Mike's blog notes, is that Petro has never had any 
management experience (Mike says that he did in the guerrilla, but not 
even then!). He has been a senator for a long time, as is our current 
mayor (now in jail for corruption/incompetence). and he was previously 
of his political party as well.

Finally, one issue that has happened in the last two mandates is that, 
whenever anyone proposes something related to sustainable transport, 
those ideas are seen by many as "Peñalos-esque" and don't have much 
support from government. This is a real pity because many ideas have 
been reduced to nothing (or plainly rejected immediately by government) 
just because of this perception of "bikes = Peñalosa", more or less... 
we shall see if the same immaturity reigns in this new government.

I hope it helps, and I hope to have more info soon. Any others who have 
other views are most welcome to provide their views. I am absolutely not 
the best or the brightest to provide my views on this, I know some in 
this list have even worked closely in Peñalosa's campaign and can give 
us other, more in-depth positions.

Best regards,

Carlos.

On 30/10/2011 07:19 p.m., Rutul Joshi wrote:
> Hi Carlos,
>
> Thanks for the post. For an outsider, it is difficult to understand 
> the ground situations in Bogota and why Penelosa lost even after (what 
> is being called as) the transformation of the city. It was indeed good 
> to attend your talk about what has happened after Penelosa's exit from 
> the Mayor office about 10 years back.
>
> It would be great if you can throw some light on what is likely to 
> happen? What are Petro's policies? This post doesn't portray a very 
> bad picture though: 
> http://mikesbogotablog.blogspot.com/2011/10/bogotas-next-mayor. 
> <http://mikesbogotablog.blogspot.com/2011/10/bogotas-next-mayor.html>html 
> <http://mikesbogotablog.blogspot.com/2011/10/bogotas-next-mayor.html>
>
> best,
> Rutul
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Carlosfelipe Pardo <carlosfpardo at gmail.com>
> *To:* Global 'South' Sustainable Transport 
> <sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org>
> *Sent:* Monday, 31 October 2011 4:16 AM
> *Subject:* [sustran] Bogotá elections....
>
> For anyone interested in Bogotá elections, Peñalosa just lost. Our next
> mayor will be Gustavo Petro, 1 Jan 2012-31 Dec 2015. In terms of
> sustainable transport, I doubt we'll make any more progress than what
> has happened in the past 7 years, which is not really positive at all...
>
>
> Best regards,
>
> Carlos.
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