I love riding all three of my bikes – the road bike (Trek 520); the hybrid (Cannondale); and “ride around town bike” (a 1960 West-Ender pictured here) – none of which are going with me when I move to Rotterdam in August. One of the first items on my to-do list will be to buy a used Dutch bike – an “omafiets”!
This fascination for bicycles led me to choose Bogotá Columbia as the subject of one of my research papers for the “Cities and Sustainability” class that I attended this past fall. Bogota has embraced bicycles as a sustainable mode of transportation, as evidenced by the introduction of “Ciclovía” - the closing of certain streets to motor vehicles on Sundays to make room for bikes and pedestrians. Ciclovía has been a tradition in Bogotá since 1974, when the local government decided to support bicycling as a transportation mode. Every Sunday, the city closes over 150 kilometers to cars, turning these streets into one giant block party. It has been so successful that major cities throughout the world have adopted their own version of the Ciclovía, by closing streets on a regular basis to allow bicyclist and pedestrians to take over.
Not only does Bogotá have a well-developed bicycle network, it also has a mass transit system that is the envy of many large cities, moving millions of passengers a day since the 1990’s. In spite of those numbers, the city struggles with air pollution and traffic congestion, having been named one of the world’s most congested cities in 2019. It also struggles to reach those who need mass transit the most – lower income workers living on the edge of the city who often commute over 4 hours a day to their jobs in the city center.
How does a large city like Bogotá over these obstacles and inequities while becoming more sustainable? When writing my paper, I learned that Bogotá has implemented a variety of interventions, from the use of solar-powered gondolas in those areas of cities with steep hillsides, to the rezoning sections of the city to encourage job creation close to where people live.
The path to sustainability is complex, controversial and looks completely different from one city or country to the next. It is often a combination of small changes and larger ones, with the goal of creating a place that is livable for all residents, today and into the future. During my stay in the Netherlands, I hope to learn more about sustainable solutions, how to implement them and how to assist communities around the world in reaching their goals.
Here's a link to my research paper:
Sustainability Plan for Bogotá
And a link to a podcast I created about Bogotá:
No comments:
Post a Comment