Draft
Public Transport Systems in Buenos Aires and Bogota
Report of the Transport Portfolio Committee's Study Tour to Argentina and Colombia 26 April- 7 May 2006
1. Introduction

1.1 The Transport Portfolio Committee sent a 5-member delegation to Argentina and Colombia to study the public transport systems in those countries, and particularly in the respective capital cities of Buenos Aires and Bogota. The delegation also included, at the request oftl1e Committee, a senior member of the Department of Transport with a view to sharing information and assessments both during and after the study tour.

1.2 The provision of safe, affordable, accessible, inter-modal public transport is envisaged as a key objective in our major policy documents, notably: Moving South Africa: The action agenda (Department of Transport, May 1999). In the view of the Committee, despite earnest efforts from the side of government, insufficient progress has been made in South Africa since 1994 in realising these objectives. The concerns of the Committee in this regard are highlighted by, amongst other things, the comprehensive National Household Travel Survey of 2003 which was tabled in Parliament in 2005. The survey reveals high levels of household dissatisfaction with public transport, including serious safety, access and affordability issues.

1.3 Buenos Aires and Bogota were chosen for their potential relevance to our own South Afucan challenges. The city of Buenos Aires has a population of some 3 million, but the greater metropolitan area has a population of 12 million. Bogota has grown rapidly over the last decades, from less than 1 million in the late 1940s, to more than 7 million at present. Both cities are characterised by considerable social inequalities, with a significant minority of private car users and a majority more or less entirely dependent on public transport for mobility. In both cases, until fairly recently, public transport was dominated by individually owned buses grouped together in associations and operating in a relatively lawless and sometimes violent manner, pursuing what was called the "war of the cents" - that is, competition, on the road itself for passengers. One bus company owner in Buenos Aires told us: "A generation ago we would come to our bus association meetings armed".

1.4 While in both cities buses have been the historically dominant public transport mode, Buenos Aires has an extensive commuter rail system (including one of the oldest subway systems in the world). The restructuring of its rail system in the early 1990s used to be cited favourably in earlier World Bank studies and has also been referred to favourably in some South African documents, among them the recent Development Bank of Southern Africa's The DBSA Infrastruclure Barometer 2006. Economic and Municipal Infrastructure in South Africa. Given the presence of important rail infrastructure and commuter rail services in most of our major cities, this was an additional reason for selecting Buenos Aires and for seeking to assess the success of their rail restructuring.

1.5 In the case of Bogota, its Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) TransMilenio project, which was begun in 2000 and is already providing 1,5 million passenger trips daily, has been widely heralded internationally, and is being emulated, with adjustments to local realities, in 15 other cities in Colombia itself: and also throughout Latin America, in Eastern Europe, China, South Korea and many other cities in the developing world. In Africa, Dar es Salaam is developing a BRT and Lagos is also exploring a similar project. Bogota's TransMilenio was the prime motivation for the proposed Klipfontein Corridor project in Cape Town. This was the general background against which the Committee selected Bogota as part of our study tour.

1.6 While the technical systems in evidence in the various public transport systems of Buenos Aires and Bogota were of great interest, the Committee's principal focus was on the institutional arrangements, the inter-face between public and private sector entities, the regulatory frameworks, the funding and business plans of the respective public transport operations, and the place of public transport within the wider context of integrated planning and development.

2.Buenos Aires
2.1 In Buenos Aires the Committee met with the President of the National Senate Committee on Transport, Mr Celso Jaque, and other members of his committee; Minister Ernesto Selzer and the Ministry of Planning and Public Works of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires; the National Government Under-Secretary of Railway Transport, Mr Tito Montana and the President of the National Transport Regulatory Authority (CNRT), Mr Pedro Ochoa Romero; CEAP - the Passenger Transport Vehicles Chamber of Commerce (the chamber of private bus companies/owners); the President of the Chamber of Compressed Natural Gas, Mr Alessandro Carlo Evi and members of his Chamber; and the Director General of the Commission of Transit and Transport of the Legislature of the City of Buenos Aires, Mr Luis Gomez.

2.2 In.J.Q2.§ the City of Buenos Aires became an autonomous city, with a constitutional status more or less equivalent to that of a province/federal state. The City of Buenos Aires is, however, located within the Province of Buenos Aires, with its capital at La Plata, which is part of the broader Buenos Aires conurbation. We were told that these overlapping political realities were complicating the effective planning and regulation of public transport.

2.3 In the broader metropolitan area of Buenos Aires, the modal split in terms of passenger usage is roughly 70% buses; 20% trains; and 7 to 8% subway. There are also some 38,600 sedan metred-taxis operating within the City of Buenos Aires, and there has been a recent growth of mini-buses, running chartered services for upper middle-class gated communities on the distant peripheries of the city. There are around 10 million passenger trips per day on buses; just under 3 million rail passenger trips per day; and 1 million subway trips.

2.4 The subway system, involving some 50km of rail, has suffered from jurisdictional challenges. Political and transport officials remain committed to extending and improving the subway rail system, viewing it as the safest, fastest and least polluting. We were told, however, by the public entity responsible for regulating the subway system that "our problem is that we have had too many transitions from a national to a local jurisdiction and back again". Some 80% of the subway's underground stations were developed during periods in which it fell under local jurisdiction. Periods of national jurisdiction have tended to coincide with relative investment stagnation. The system is in need of expansion, especially to ensure that there is networking between lines that are still essentially radial in character. In 1994, when the system fell under national jurisdiction, the subway operating company was privatised and it has taken 15 years to complete a mere 3,5 km of an envisaged 15km rail extension. The subway system is subsidised by some 30 to 40% of its operational costs.

2.5 Privately-owned buses operating within companies are, as noted in 2.3 above, the major mode of public transport in Buenos Aires.

2.5.1 This sector also suffers from jurisdictional challenges. Some bus companies are registered within the Province of Buenos Aires, while others are registered in the City, yet they are all operating essentially within the same public transport system.

2.5.2 Over the past two decades, the bus companies have undergone significant transformation, from loose associations of owner-drivers controlling routes often through strong-arm methods, to formal companies of owners (and now, increasingly, simply of share-holders) with each company operating a tendered contract for a specific route. There has been a continuous process of consolidation, with smaller operators either being swallowed by larger firms or dropping out of the business.

2.5.3 Public entities (either provincial or federal, in the case of the City) regulate the bus operations, stipulating frequency (one bus every three minutes at peak times is the norm), quality of vehicles, and a six-monthly vehicle check. Inspectors are deployed daily onto the networks. Under the City of Buenos Aires jurisdiction there are at present some 16,000 buses within 143 bus companies each operating their own designated route. There are public bids for different routes, and each concession is awarded for 10 years, with automatic renewal (subject to performance). The bus operators stressed the importance of an automatic renewal because this made re-investment flows into their operations logical and feasible. In some other Argentine municipalities where there was not automatic renewal serious under-investment was liable to occur.

2.5.4 Interestingly, in the light of South African discussion around the feasibility of a national electronic ticketing system, the Buenos Aires bus companies had begun to migrate to such a system within the metro, but soon realised that this would present many practical difficulties. In particular, it was difficult to provision card-dispensing units with adequate tickets and small change in outlying stops, and early morning commuters found it very difficult to purchase tickets. Currently, tickets are sold at larger bus-stations, but mainly on-board buses.

2.5.6 While there is public regulation, operational management is in the hands of the individual bus companies, which allocate frequencies and the rotation of times and shifts between different owners. Non-complying owners find their buses have reduced allocations, or that they are even excluded from the company. CEAP (the Chamber of private bus companies) leadership told us that this system of internal
competition acted as a positive incentive "because everyone wants the best vehicle, because greater efficiency leads to a greater share of work and profits."

2.5.7 Historically, bus companies were self-financing, deriving finances directly from fares. Since the Argentine financial crisis of 2002, and the devaluation of the peso, the national government has frozen all public service fees including public transport fares. However wages have been allowed to escalate and the bus companies are now receiving a subsidy which the bus-owners insist is not a subsidy but "compensation" for delays in tariff increases based on costs.

2.6 Passenger rail.

2.6.1 Although our principal focus in Argentina was to look at public transport in Buenos Aires, the challenges o long-distance passenger rail inevitably featured in our engagements. This is partly because, for historical reasons, most long-distance passenger rail services are radial systems ending up in Buenos Aires and connecting it with the rest of the country.

2.6.2 Rail operations in Argentina, both freight and passenger, were run by a publicly-owned company, Ferrocarriles Argentinas (FA). In the 1980s, owing to a series of national economic crises and resulting under-investment in the rail infrastructure, FA's custom base declined to 15% of passenger-share in the greater Buenos Aires, and 8% of freight and long-distance passengers nationally. In the early 1990s the government carried out a privatisation programme of the rail system, concessioning out infrastructure and operations to several different private companies.

2.6.2 There is now a major and generally critical re-assessment of this process. In particular, the senior government officials we spoke with felt that there had been insufficient appreciation that concessioning-out often requires stronger not weaker government involvement. One senior official told us that the state was "too absent" in the process. "You need to have very clear rules, a lot of control and clearly defined sanctions for non-compliance." The private rail concessionaires tended to "cherry pick" - investing in the most lucrative of lines, while allowing less profitable routes to fall into disuse.

2.6.3 The privatisation programme has had a particularly negative impact on long distance rail passenger services. On lines in which these services are still offered, the private sector operators tend to prioritise freight movements, forcing passenger trains into long delays. There has been a fall-off in passenger usage as a direct consequence. Other long-distance passenger services have disappeared, with problematic overall knock-on effects. We were told that "with the closing down of long-distance passenger services, many inland towns and cities have lost a sense of integrity, of belonging to Argentina. Some rural towns have all but disappeared."

2.6.4 There have also been major job losses in the rail sector over this period. In the early 1990s there were some 100,000 employees. Now there are around 20,000. Private sector concessionaires went for capital-intensive solutions, down-sizing their labour force. According to the senior officials we spoke with, this has sometimes had a negative impact on the commercial operations of the concessionaires. "Before privatisation personnel were needed at all stations, now there are skeleton staff deployments, sometimes there are no staff at all", we were told. "This has caused serious problems of theft from freight trains."

2.6.5 It was clear that there is still considerable debate within government circles on how to address all of these challenges. Most officials spoke of a more mixed approach, with greater public sector involvement in non-commercially viable operations, while applying more effective regulatory control over private sector concessionaires. One official told us that "the model did not fail, but state control did". There was, however, agreement that in seeking to foster greater state engagement one of the more serious challenges will be capacity. "Since 1991, as a result of the way in which we ran the privatisation programme we have lost a lot of knowledge in the field."

2.7 General impressions of public transport in Buenos Aires

Despite the many challenges confronting public transport in the greater Buenos Aires, the Committee believes that the city has a much more effective public transport system than any to be found in our own major cities. This is partly because, while it is a vel)' large city, its settlement patterns are considerably more compact than those typical of South African cities with their low-density suburban sprawl and marginalized townships. The back-bone of their public transport system is the private buses, which are relatively well regulated and operate relatively efficient services round-the-clock.

3. Bogota
3.1 In Bogota the Committee met with the Colombian national minister of transport, Dr Andres Uriel Gallego and senior staffers in his department, Lina Mano Sierra and Andres Baquero; Felipe Castro, technical director in the transport and transit department of the City of Bogota; senior management of TransMilenio; Dr Oscar Diaz, Latin American Regional Director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy; and former mayor, Dr Enrique Penalosa, who was instrumental in driving the TransMilenio project in its inception phase. The Committee also travelled on the TransMilenio system and cycled around poor neighbourhoods on the extensive dedicated bike- and pedestrian-ways that are an integral part of Bogota's public mobility infrastructure.

3.2 All of our Colombian interlocutors were at pains to underline that the TransMilenio BRT system should not be seen in isolation from a much wider perspective, a "fundamental paradigm shift" in the approach to urban planning and infrastructure in a third world city. In the words of Dr Penalosa: "In a market society you cannot have income equality, but we can strive for other equalities, like quality of life especially for all children." In this context, the City of Bogota set about building accessible and safe public spaces, reclaiming the city for pedestrians and cyclists. This has involved at least three major interventions:

3.2.1 Pedestrian and cycle friendly infrastructure.


There has been restoration and/or construction of public spaces throughout the city, including in poor neighbourhoods; the construction on 50 km of interlinked bicycle tracks (now used by some 400,000 people daily); and the extensive use of bollards to prevent side-walks iTom being colonised by parked cars. To ensure effective non-motorised mobility and accessibility, the City of Bogota is also seeking to ensure a relatively compact city is maintained without the urban sprawl characteristic of many US (or South African) cities.

3.2.2 Traffic demand management to discourage car usage.


Before the TransMilenio project was begun, 30% of Bogotan households had a car, and around half of them (15%) used cars to get to work. Despite being a minority, car commuters used an estimated 42,15% of the city's transport infrastructure, while public transport commuters (the great majority) only used 25,9% - a situation our informants described as "modal inequality".

There were also some 5000 road fatalities every year in Bogota, many of them attributable to cars. "More pedestrians and cyclists were killed in car accidents than people killed annually in our civil war", we were told. (Since the completion of the TransMilenio project there has been a 40% reduction in fatalities). Excessive car use also caused extensive grid-lock during rush-hour and severe pollution problems in a city on a high plateau bounded by the Andes on two sides. There have been several interventions to discourage and limit car-usage. Every car is restricted on two days of the week from using the roads in peak hours.

The particular days vary according to the licence number of the vehicle. There is also a car-free working day once a year, and car-free holidays. These measures were overwhelmingly supported in a popular referendum held by the city. Several of our interlocutors made the point that in the developing world people often erroneously associate car-ownership with the height of modernity.

Our interlocutors argued that, on the contrary, some of the most effective cities in the developed world have relatively low levels of car usage. Felipe Castro, the technical director in the Transport and Transit Department in the City of Bogota, pointed out that in a city like Zurich some 50% of trips were non-motorised (i.e. pedestrian or cycling), 27% were in public transport, and only 22% involved private cars. Dr Penalosa also cited the example of Zurich, as well as those of Paris and New York. "In New York", he told us, "only 10% of people use cars to go to work."

3.2.3 The development of a mass transportation system.


The back-bone of this mass transportation system is the new TransMilenio Bus Rapid Transit system which we outline more fully below. This BRT system is seen as an integral part of the other endeavours noted above, and they, too, are linked to it. The tendency in most cities for public transport systems to deteriorate, and for the areas around major stations to become dilapidated was noted. "The best way to vaccinate an area around a station", Dr Penalosa said, "is to ensure that there are good public spaces around it." Likewise, the bicycle and pedestrianways in Bogota are connected to the TransMilenio system. The Committee, for instance, had the opportunity to visit an extensive bicycle lock-up facility in one of the major terminal stations on the TransMilenio system.

3.3 The TransMilenio Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system

3.3.1 The TransMilenio BRT is one of83 BRT systems that have been developed recently in cities throughout the world, notably, but not only cities in the developing world. The pioneering BRT system was developed in Curitiba, Brazil (starting in 1973), but the Bogota BRT has now become a new bench-mark, partly because of its scale and because of the complex socio-economic situation in which it has developed. BRTs are, essentially, bus systems that borrow many of the infrastructural and operating features of commuter or subway rail systems. However, the infrastructural costs are estimated by the World Bank to be some 70 to 100 times less than rail infrastructure. The relative flexibility of bus systems compared to rail systems is also a major advantage in cities of the developing world with rapidly growing populations. The buses run along dedicated lanes and bus stations usually feature ramps and platforms that are level with the bus floor for safe, easy and rapid embarkation and disembarkation.

3.3.2 The TransMilenio system is a closed BRT system with pre-paid enclosed bus stations at each stop. Closed BRT systems are able to achieve higher capacity and operating speeds compared with open BRT systems where buses are not confined to the system, but enter and exit it at different points. TransMilenio uses a "median" system, with dedicated bus-lanes, running in opposite directions located on the inner lanes of multi-lane roads. Bus stations are located in the centre of roads, and are connected by bridges and pedestrian-ways to the surrounding areas. Bus-stations tend to be about 500 metres apart. Disabled friendly ramps lead up to platforms. Buses typically run every three (sometimes less) minutes apart. Passing lanes at stations are provided for designated express buses that stop only at major stations. The buses are articulated and carry 160 passengers.

3.3.3 A remarkable feature of the TransMilenio project is the speed with which its first phase was completed. Within three years (2000-2003) its first phase had been designed, built and was operational. Using pre-fabricated light metal parts the average bus station is assembled within two or three days. Bridges typically take one month. This makes for a flexible system, and infrastructural costs are extremely low relative to comparable rail systems.

3.3.4 TransMilenio has succeeded in achieving very high levels of ridership, higher than had been anticipated, with 1,5 million passenger trips, including some 10,000 persons with disabilities using the system daily. Just before TransMilenio became operational, there were approximately 30-35,000 buses operating in the city, and because of a breakdown in regulation, many roads were over-crowded with buses, many of which were only partially occupied. The trunk/feeder system of the first phase of the project consisted of three corridors, and resulted in the number of buses operating in the respective corridors being reduced dramatically, from 650 buses per hour per direction on the heaviest line down to 270. Because the new buses are much larger and speeds faster, the system's total capacity is around 45,000 passengers per hour per direction. Before TransMilenio the average operating speed of buses was 18 km/h, and often much lower. After the introduction of the system average speed has risen to 26 km/h.

3.3.5 Institutional structure
3.3.5.1 A public company, TransMilenio S.A. owns the infrastructure, and focuses on planning and management of the system. The company is not allowed to be an operator, and nor (since it is a beneficiary) does it set tariffs. This is done by the City's Transport and Transit Department. Ownership of TransMilenio S.A. is shared among various metropolitan public entities - including a 70,05% share owned by the City of Bogota itself; and a 19,97% share owned by Metrovivienda (the city's social housing and planning agency). The company has 280 staff, of whom 180 are deployed out on the road monitoring bus punctuality, cleanliness, road-worthiness and driver conduct, etc.

3.3.5.2 Bus-operating companies - these are private companies that won tenders to operate on the trunk lines of the BRT system. Before the time of the TransMilenio the bus system in Bogota consisted of thousands of individual, informal owner-operators who "rented" routes from five powerful families who controlled government-issued route licences. Although these five family groups were nominally bus "enterprises", they did not own or operate any buses themselves. TransMilenio tendering contracts ensured that eligibility criteria for bidding required minimum working capital and incorporation as formal sector businesses.

This forced these family "enterprises" to become formal sector bus companies. At the same time, the bidding contracts required that each consortium should agree to scrap old buses. This forced the bus "enterprises" to give individual, informal bus-owners equity in their new companies in exchange for acquiring their old buses so that they could be scrapped in compliance with the bidding rules. The tendering system also required bidding consortia to establish international partners to access technology. In phase one of the project, 20% of the operating companies was made up of small owners, this figure has risen to 30% for phase two, and it will rise to 40% in phase three. Some 7000 former small bus-owners are now shareholders in the TransMilenio operating companies.

Typically two companies are awarded contracts to operate on the same trunk line, with the share of bus kilometres to be run determined on a weekly basis by TransMilenio S.A. Revenues are allocated for contractually agreed bus kilometres travelled, regardless of actual passengers transported. Strict monitoring and regulation of operations takes place, including through satellite tracking of bus movements, and companies are fined for any infringements - including such detailed matters as a bus exceeding the stipulated safe maximum distance between bus and platform at a station, or a driver talking to passengers.

The bus companies are responsible for the purchase and maintenance of their bus fleets. Although there are now several different bus companies operating on the TransMilenio system, there is no visible difference between the buses or operating methods of one or another company. All of the buses operate with identical colours and TransMilenio InSIgnIa.

3.3.5.3 Fare collection - fare collection and ticketing is handled by another set of private companies (winners of the relevant tenders for phases one and two respectively). A Trust Company then distributes the revenues according to contractually agreed percentages among the various participants in the system. TransMilenio S.A. the public company owning the infrastructure receives 4% of revenue. Senior management at TransMilenio S.A. indicated that 4% was a very low percentage. The return to the public company had been deliberately set low to encourage the private sector to enter into the project, in a context in which there was originally considerable scepticism about its commercial viability. We were told, however, that in practice the private operating companies are making significant profits. In the other BRT systems under way in other Colombian cities, it is anticipated that the public company will be able to stipulate a higher percentage of revenue returns for itself

3.3.5.4 No operating subsidies required - Ticket prices are extremely low - a flat rate of 1 ,200 pesos (around R3,00) for a single ticket that can take you anywhere in the system, regardless of distance. The price of the ticket also covers bicycle lock-up facilities. Despite the low fare, the system operates extremely profitably and no operating subsidies are required whatsoever. The public subsidy came in the original infrastructure construction, 70% of which was covered by the national government, and 30% was provided by the City.

3.4 General Lessons from the TransMilenio BRT
3.4.4 The committee believes that there are very many valuable lessons that can be drawn from the TransMilenio project. It is important, however, to realise that a particular BRT system cannot be transposed mechanically from one city to the next. Even within Colombia, future BRT projects, while applying similar institutional and regulatory arrangements, are having to adapt the infrastructural and operating methods to their own specific conditions. Indeed, many of the institutional and regulatory innovations of the TransMilenio project could feasibly be applied to integrated multi-modal public transport systems in South Africa (including rail and minibuses).

3.4.5 From a South African point of view, it is also important to appreciate several realities about the city of Bogota that may not apply to our own cities:


All of these factors have contributed to the success of the TransMilenio BRT. However, with due adaptations, we believe that it is possible to learn from the TransMilenio project, especially in regard to its approach to institutionalisation and regulation.

3.4.6 The TransMilenio project is an invaluable example of effective complementarity between the public and private sectors in providing safe, accessible, affordable public transport systems. The approach to integrating a large informal sector into a modem public transport system, and to breaking the power over access to routes by private bodies with illicit links to municipal licensing authorities has an obvious resonance with our South African reality. Well planned infrastructure for public transport and non-motorised mobility, and effective and continuous public sector monitoring and regulation, have helped to build a system that is profitable for the private sector bus-operators and safe, affordable and efficient for the citizens of Bogota.

4. Acknowledgements. fu addition to the many Argentine and Colombian interlocutors mentioned above, the Committee would like to acknowledge Dr Walter Hook of The Institute for Transportation and Development Policy for the detailed background information he provided on BRT systems; and South African embassy staff who helped to arrange and plan numerous meetings in Buenos Aires and Bogota.