Bogotá Public Bikes Back in Park

Public bicycles in Santiago, Chile: Not coming to Bogotá anytime soon.

Bogotá's public bikes, promised so many times, are back in park once again.

The administration of Mayor Enrique Peñalosa, who is known as a bicycle advocate, looked to be in the process of issuing a contract to the Chilean firm which operates the public bicycle system in Chile's capital - until it wasn't.

Santiago's public bicycle system, Bikesantiago, has reportedly generated many complaints about the service's quality and costs. But complaints are inevitable, and Bikesantiago is in fact expanding quickly, suggesting that something is going right. But Bogotá officials concluded that the company didn't fulfill its minimum requirements for a public bicycles contract and canned the deal. (Nevertheless, Bikesantiago is being purchased by a Brazilian company, which presumably will make an offer to operate a Bogotá public bicycles system.) (A Chinese company, Mobike, has also started a dockless public bicycle system in Santiago.)

There's a fundamental problem is Bogotá's multiple and futile attempts at creating a public bike system: the city's refusal to susbsidize the system.

City Councilwoman Maria Fernanda Rojas, of the Alianza Verde Party, expressed it well: "The city's idea of not injecting public money in this project is an error," she said.

She pointed out that Santiago's system, which did not recieve public money, is troubled, while that of Medellin, Colombia, which does operate on public funds, has succeeded.

In fact, all over the world, public bicycle systems either receive public subsidies or have deep-pocketed private sponsors, often banks. In Bogotá, no such private company has stepped forward.

And Bogotá does subsidize other - and highly polluting - transport modes, including huge subsidies in cheap gasoline and free parking for private cars.

Peñalosa's predecesor, Mayor Gustavo Petro, issued a contract for a public bike system which was economically unrealistic and apparently corrupt. It went nowhere.

Bogotá needs to see public bicycles not as a business, but as a benefit for the city, in cleaner air, less traffic congestion and better transport and health for residents.

Meanwhile, this month Cali, Colombia started a modest system with 100 bicycles for university students to get to the express bus stations. That's not much, but it's more than Bogotá has.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Bogotá Public Bikes Plans Rolling Forward?

Public bicycles in Monteria, where they receive government support.
(Photo: La Razon)

El Tiempo reports that Bogotá's public bicycle program is actually moving forward - and shoul be rolling forward next year.

With luck, the public bike system will actually happen this time, after pilot projects which got nowhere and even a contract issued during the Petro administration, which from the start appeared viciated by corruption and unrealistic economics.

Unfortunately, Peñalosa's plan doesn't look so realistic either. He promises not to provide any public subsidies for the bicycle system, even tho they do receive such subsidies in many other cities, including even much wealthier ones than Bogotá.

That's because the bikes are conceived of as a public service, which pays back the city in benefits in health, reduced traffic congestion and less pollution.

In those cities where public bikes do not receive subsidies they do have wealthy corporate sponsors, often banks, such as Citibank in New York and Barclays in London. And those are also much wealthier cities than Bogotá, which receive many more tourists, who provide income for the system.

Besides all of that, cities subsidize bus and train systems, as well as private cars in many ways, such as subsidized gasoline. So, what's wrong with pitching in for public bicycles?

A Trashy Public Bikes Contract?

Cyclists on Bogotá's Sunday Ciclovia.

This Monday, Bogotá postponed bidding for its long-planned public bicycles program - for the third time. It's not difficult seeing why. 

Only two 'temporary unions' bid to manage the system, supposed to start out with almost 1,500 bikes. The first 'union' consists of the Jiangsu Home Technology Co Ltda. y Cartagüeña de Aseo Total ESP. A Google search found no trace of the home tech company, which presumably is based in the Chinese coastal province. 

Used, disfunctional garbage trucks imported by
one of the bidders for Bogotá's public bkes program.

In contrast, Cartagüeña de Aseo Total's malfunctioning website states that it was founded in 1993 to collaborate effectively in the solution to the problem which the capital's inhabitants were suffering due to non-opportune collection of garbage, which was causing epidemics and environmental contamination.' That apparently was in 1994. As anybody can observe, Bogotá's trash troubles haven't changed.

According to the website Laotracara.com, Cartagueña de Aseo is owned by Óscar Salazar Franco, the same man who sold Bogotá 60 used garbage trucks imported from the U.S., only 13 of which were usable. Also according to Laotracara, in 2004 Salazar Franco was involved in a corruption scandal in the city on Neiva, in which he was sentenced to 54 months in prison for allegedly bribing officials to award his company a garbage collection contract.

The other 'temporary union' consists of Transporte Masivo en mi Bici SAS, Gestión y Consultoría Integral SAS, Inversiones y representaciones Vásquez and PBSC Urban Solutions America Inc.My Google searches did not produce any record of any of those companies having done anything. However, Laotracara that Urban Solutions is associated with companies which operate public bike programs in the United States, Canada and Britain.

A bicyclist on Carrera Septima, squeezed by buses.

One would think that the Urban Solutions group would be the clear favorite. However, Laotracara reports that Salazar Franco's bidding group offered the city a much larger - and apparently unrealistic - percentage of their projected revenues. 

It seems to me that there's a fundamental problem here. Mayor Petro, an ex-guerrilla leader with little love for capitalism, seems particularly challenged when contracting out city projects. Why haven't more respected companies with real experience running public bike programs expressed interest in running Bogotá's system? (Read Laotracara's article for details of the economic challenges.)

Of course, there are many reasons to question the success of a public bikes program here, including crime, air pollution, rain and vehicular chaos, which will frighten away many potential users. But if it works in cities like Santiago, Mexico City and Medellin, then why not here?

Bogotá leaders have for years talked about creating a public bikes program. But the idea has stayed in park, while other regional cities, including Santiago, Chile; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Mexico City; and even Medellin have created them. Around the year 2000, Bogotá was seen as a leader in urban cycling in the developing world, but has since fallen behind. A successful public bikes program would be a big boost for the city's cycling and its quality of life generally. But this contracting process appears to be steering toward disaster.

If that happens, it'll be a big black eye for Bogotá and cycling here in general.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

A Modest Proposal - Make Bike Lending Useful

Waiting in the rain. Public bikes await riders by Virrey Park.

Give Bogotá's Institute for Recreation and Sports, the IDRD, credit for doing something good. Over the last 45 days or so it's added two more bike lending locations: on the National University's campus and in Virrey Park in north Bogotá.

But if only the program were all it could be. 

Yesterday afternoon I visited Virrey Park, where the 40-odd free lending bikes were mostly sitting still - understandably, in the chill and rain. City workers told me that they lent about 40 bikes on a typical day - which is nice, altho it's an expensive way to get people pedaling, considering the wages of the eight employees I counted, plus all the other costs. 

Meanwhile, on the program's Carrera Septima corridor, the bicycles are getting steady use. 

Bikes in the National University campus.
Hop on - but only if you study art or engineering.

In contrast, on the National University's campus, most of the bikes appear to spend their days parked, despite the Nacho's flat terrain and many thousands of students. Today, I learned one reason why. It turns out that, for incomprehensible reasons, the IDRD arranged the campus bicycles program with individual university schools rather than the central university administration. So far, only two of the university's eleven schools, arts and engineering, have taken the trouble to sign up. 

So, if you're an artist, then grab a bike. But if you study nursing, political science or chemistry, then you're out of luck, unless you registered for the bike program on your own.

But the program has a larger shortcoming. The IDRD's mission is to promote recreation. But the great majority of the bikes' borrowers use them for transport, albeit for short distances. But, frustratingly, users are only permitted to use bikes within each of the three lending areas, but not to pick up a bike from one area and drop it off in another. 

Riders on public bikes on Carrera Septima in central Bogotá.
But don't think about riding them to one of the
other lending sites.

A program employee agreed with my complaint, but explained that the IDRD's mission is not transport, and worried that bike users could suffer a flat tire or other mechanical problem at a spot too far to walk back. However, the IDRD's mission does not exclude transport. And surely mechanical issues could be resolved with a phone call and mobile mechanical assistance for a small fee. 

With Bogotá's long-promised public bicycles program stuck in idle, the IDRD could step in and do both the city and cycling a great favor by making its program a practical commuting option. 

A bicyclist on the Carrera 11 Cicloruta passes public lending bikes in Virrey Park. Public bike users could take this bike lane to downtown - but leaving the park is against the rules.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Lending Bikes on La Jimenez

This morning, the city inaugurated a new line of its bicycle-lending program, along part of Jimenez Ave.

The expansion, overdue as it is, is an advance. (About two months ago, they created a line in El

Virrey Park in north Bogotá.) However, the line is so limited that it's almost more frustrating than anything else. The bikes will only be available between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., the hours during which Mayor Petro has shut down TransMilenio bus service on La Jimenez, for god-only-knows what reason.

While the bikes are intended to partially replace the buses, they aren't available on San Victorino Plaza, which is the final working stop during the mid-day hours. Also, unlike Ave. Septima and El Virrey, which are flat, Jimenez has a grade, altho an uphill one.

This tiny additional bicycle service is also a reminder of the city's inaction on a long-promised city-wide public bicycles program. Recently, the deadline for placing the program out for bid passed without action.

Bogotá, once a pioneer in cycling in Latin America, is falling farther and farther behind cities such as Buenos Aires, Santiago, Chile and Mexico City.

Ready to ride? Public bikes in front of the San Francisco
Church, at the intersection of Ave. Septima and Jimenez.

Riding up Jimenez Ave. Unlike the other where bikes are lent, Jimenez has a grade, altho a mild one.

No bikes for me. The municipal potentates arrived at the inaugural event in armored SUVs.

The Museo de Oro Transmilenio Station sadly shut down near mid-day. Buses and bikes can coexist.

Cycling down La Septima on public lending bikes.

Bogotanos line up for public bikes on Ave. Septima.

Blog by Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Public Bikes in Bogotá¡? (Chap. 43)

Cyclists ride down Ave. Septima on lent municipal bikes, Bogotá's only public bikes program. 

Bogotá just announced that the city will finally, finally, create a real public bike program next year.

This is approximately the umpteenth time that various city officials have announced that public bikes are coming, with few results. They even tried a pilot program, which was fairly successful, but hasn't been followed up.

Pedaling down 26th St. amidst traffic.
How many Bogotanos will dare?

Public bikes are coming, tardily, to a city once seen as a trailblazer for cyclists, with its bike lane network and Sunday/holiday Ciclovia. Other Latin American capitals, including Buenos Aires, Santiago, Chile and Mexico City - not to mention Medellin - rolled out their public bikes months or years ago. (Bogotá's existing public bikes lending program is limited to 25 blocks of Ave. Septima north of Plaza Bolivar. Bogotá's other foray into bike lending, on the National University's campus, died a quiet death after bikes were damaged and stolen.)

Bogotá's own public bikes program is supposed to start in mid-2014 and consist of almost 3,000 bikes and 280 stations. A study of bicycle use in the city concluded that Kennedy, Chapinero, Teusaquillo and Usaquen - but apparently not the city center - are the most promising neighborhoods to begin. That will leave out huge parts of Bogotá, making me think that the project's usefulness will be limited.

Perhaps paradoxically, I also wonder whether the project is too ambitious. After all, Medellin has just a

Will public bikes motivate the city to better maintain bike lanes?

couple of hundred public bikes, while New York started off with 6,000. Can Bogotá really get its act together enough to make 3,000 bikes work? This will require lots of parking racks, (and hopefully) new bike lanes and signage to get people to use the bikes, as well as software, bike transport and payments systems, not to mention security so that the bikes don't get stolen.

Hopefully, bike lanes will be expanded, maintained and kept clear of cars and pedestrians to make casual cyclists feel safe.

The rack modules are supposed to be autonomously powered and not moored to the pavement, making them easily moveable. I hope that theyve considered the danger of thieves loading a complete rack with bikes into a truck and driving away. The whole program is projected to cost 30 billion pesos, part of which is supposed to be pitched in by an as-yet unnamed private company. Users are to pay between 60,000 and 80,000 pesos, presumably per year, plus additional charges for holding onto a bike for longer than the alloted time.

A bicyclist pedals along Calle 26, which has a
practical sidewalk bike lane. He may be moving
faster than the congested car traffic.

I'm also waiting to see how the city handles the issue of helmets. The law requires their use, altho that rule is rarely enforced. If the city decides to require public bike users to wear helmets, I'm afraid it could kill the program, since many people don't want to share a helmet, and almost nobody carries a bike helmet around with them.

And Bogotá is not London, Paris or Barcelona, where I'm told that cyclists get respect from drivers. Will enough Bogotanos dare to jump onto bikes and brave Bogotá's rain, pollution and aggressive drivers to make the program succeed? If public bikes fail here, it'll be a big blow to cycling.

Meanwhile, Mayor Petro is fighting to stay in office. If he goes, the whole idea likely will, too.

Riding in the cold rain on Ave. Septima.
The Dutch don't mind doing it, but many Bogotanos do.

But let's have faith. In addition to creating more cyclists, my great hope for public bikes in Bogotá is that they will raise cycling's status here and motivate the city to improve conditions for bicyclists.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

New Public Bikes, Fewer Public Cyclists

Bogotá's new public bikes wait for riders.

An adjustment for one of the new bikes. 

With a bit of fanfare, Bogotá introduced new-style public bikes for its lending program on Ave. Septima. The new bikes -  which can only be used on the pedestrianized stretch of Ave. Septima between Plaza Bolívar and 24th - look solid and simple, with mud guards and baskets (and even a few tandems). They're not as sophisticated or expensive as the mountain bikes they used previously - but also less attractive to thieves - and perfectly adequate for flat downtown Bogotá. And, according to El Tiempo, the bikes are equipped with GPS tracking devices.

Weaving thru crowds blocking
La Septima's bike lane. 

But city officials also changed the registry system. Before, you just walked up and displayed your cedula and they snapped your picture. Impressively, the service has had little trouble with crime. Now, users must first register with the Institute of Recreation and Sports (IDRD), fill out a form and provide references. Predictably, use of the bikes has plummeted - from 300 per day to just 80, one worker told me.

"Many people come to downtown sporadically," he said. "They don't want to take the trouble."

The benefits of bicycling.

The new registry system might be useful when the service is expanded to other spots in the city. But for La Septima, the walk-up system worked fine, so why not continue? They could use both systems together.

Bogotá's public bike program is expanding with frustrating slowness - but in a way that's healthy. If they had instead started out with an ambitious but impractical program which had collapsed in fraud and scandal, it might have buried prospects for public bikes for a long time, as well as scarring cycling in general.

An employee told me they now have 300 bikes and plan to add new lending points in central and north Bogotá.

El Tiempo reports that during its first year the program were used 45,000 times.

The program is still free, and I wonder about its sustainability, especially after Mayor Petro leaves office (which might possibly happen soon, since they're trying to recall him).

By Mike Ceaser of Bogotá Bike Tours

Public Bike Prototypes at the National University

Discussing a yellow bike prototype.

Today, National University students exhibited prototypes of bikes designed for Bogotá's perpetually-promised-but-never-realized public bicycles program.

Bogotá officials' latest public bikes promise is to create the system next year - way behind Medellin, which is expanding its own public bikes program.

The students deserve plaudits for the bike designs, altho not all struck me as appropriate to be used as public bikes. A public bike should be inexpensive and sturdy, since many people aren't gentle with borrowed bikes. In a city with a theft problem, the bike should not be particularly enticing, and parts like wheels and chainrings should be unique, so that they can't be stolen for use on other bikes.

This model is designed to have a dynamo in its front wheel and
internal gears in back - too sophisticated and expensive
for a public bike. 

Most fundamentally, tho, Bogotá needs to make itself more bike friendly and give cycling real status if any public bikes program is actually to be used. The National University's own public bikes program, called BicirrUN, was shut down after many bikes were damaged or stolen. (Today, some students told me they hope to bring bicirrUN back.) Unfortunately, as long as streets are chaotic, as long as cyclists must swallow vehicle exhaust, as long as parked cars and homeless scavengers routinely block bicycle lanes, only a brave few will venture out on two wheels - as is the situation now.

The National University, whose walls are emblazoned with murals of leftist revolutionaries, is best known for protests and radical politics. But perhaps now it will lead a transit revolution.

Repairing a flat. Public bikes must be tough, because borrowers don't want or know how to make repairs. 

These simple, sturdy yellow bikes look like they could do the job.

Fenders are useful for Bogotá's frequent rains: but will anybody borrow bikes in the rain in the first place?

And the reality on the road for Bogotá cyclists:

But the reality for cyclists: a homeless squatter squats in this bike lane. 

And this man decided the bike lane, and sidewalk, were a convenient place to park his car. 

Bogotá's only relatively succesful public bikes experiment has been on the 20-block stretch of Ave. Septima which is closed to cars. 

Bikes are lent for free, but can only be used on this 20-block stretch of street. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Public Bikes for Bogotá II?

A cyclist squeezed by cars on Carrera 10.
How many non-cyclists will dare to pedal Bogotá's streets?

Bogotá's city government has, once again, promised to create a public bicycles system, this time before the end of next year.

Bogotá already made a trial run on two sites, which seemed to find real demand. But the trial was halted, while Medellin has launched its system and is expanding it.

A cyclis in the National University. A public bicycles
program here was ended after many bikes
were stolen and damaged. 

But, before setting up such a system, the city needs to look hard at issues such as crime, the wealther, how to charge and the city's cycling conditions. The only sustained shared bikes program tried in Bogotá was in the National University's campus. But even tho the campus is a closed area with guards at entrances and exits, the university ended the program after several years because many of the bikes were damaged or stolen. On campus, users simply picked up a bike to use and dropped it off at their destination.

One key difference with a municipal system, presumably, is that users will be identified and responsible for returning bikes in good condtion.

City employees lend bikes on Seventh Ave.
But the free program only covers a six-block stretch. 

Still, look at Bogotá's crime, chaotic streets and often-useless bike lanes, not to mention its hills and rain, and I have to wonder about this system's potential. A more mundane concern is the low rate of credit card/bank account use among Bogotanos, which will complicate charging systems.

If the system is tried and works, then great. It'll boost cycling, improve the city's chaotic transit, get people exercising and contribute to the city's image. Hopefully it'll also spur officialdom to improve conditions for all cyclists and drivers to give cyclists some respect. But if it fails, it'll be a black eye for cycling and mean more opposition to all cycling initiatives.

Somewhere on this sidewalk, probably underneath the cars, is a bike lane. 

A bike lane with a post in it. 

A homeless person found this bike lane to be a good camping spot. If he were blocking cars, the cops would move him. 

A bicyclist wears a facemask to protect himself from pollution.

A nice bike lane near the National Univesity. If they were only all like this one. 

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours