Why buses represent democracy in action


“An advanced city is not a place where the poor move about in cars, rather it’s where even the rich use public transportation.”
"If car use is to be limited, cities must have quality public transport."  
“We humans are pedestrians. We need to walk, not in order to survive, but to be happy.”
Enrique Peñalosa is an international consultant on sustainable urban planning. As the Mayor of Bogotá, from 1997 to 2001, he built over 300 kilometers of bike paths, more than 100 kilometers of pedestrian-only streets and greenways were created, including frequent citywide Car Free Days and Bicycle Sundays. 

Some examples are Porvenir Promenade, a 24-kilometer pedestrian-and-bicycle-only street through the city’s poorest neighborhoods, and Juan Amarillo Greenway, a pedestrian street that connects the richest and poorest neighborhoods of the capital. 

Inspired by Curitiba, Brazil, he created the TransMilenio public bus system. Buses travel on bus lanes, stations are placed in an elevated position relative to the road section and the passengers wait for the public transport to the safety guards, whose doors of access to the roadway will open automatically when the bus stop, allowing so even greater security.

This system has served as a model for many other cities and is now considered the best bus system in the world.



TransMilenio
 Porvenir Promenade, a 15-mile (24 km) “highway” restricted to pedestrians and bicycles.

A “highway” for pedestrians, bicycles, and transit on Jiménez Avenue in Bogotá, Colombia




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