Highly Acclaimed Bus Rapid Transit in Bogota, Columbia

The TransMilenio Bus Rapid Transit system in Bogota, Columbia (population 8 million) is recognized worldwide as an outstanding success. The city has literally been transformed by TransMilenio.Since its launch, average commute times in Bogota have been cut from 90 minutes to 35 minutes, air quality has improved by 40%, and accidents have decreased by 81%.

There are currently 8 lines and buses arrive approximately every 2-3 minutes. An amazing one million people ride the system every day.. By 2016, the system will expand to 22 lines and will transport an impressive 5 million passengers a day.

Veolia proudly operates a portion of the Transmilenio system. Within a very short time, TransMilenio has revolutionized conditions for getting around the city. It has also contributed to an extensive urban renewal program.

Urban chaos prior to Transmilenio

Given that 80% of Bogotá’s residents depend on urban transit to get around, mobility is a key issue. However, until the end of the 1990s, no attempt had been made to organize the city’s urban transportation: 30,000 companies owned 28,000 buses with an average age of 14 years, which moved around at an commercial speed of 5–8 kilometers per hour depending on the neighborhood. Gridlock and the sound of horns were permanent features of the streetscape. Passengers spent an average of three hours a day going to and from work.

Little by little, people stopped traveling by bus, convinced that they would get snarled up in the traffic. By 1999, bus ridership had fallen to only 45%. The constant decline in transit system ridership caused an increase in the number of automobiles on the road, marking the beginning of a vicious circle. What’s more, over 3,000 road traffic accidents were recorded each year, causing the death of 800 people, and pollution was at a very high level. The lack of a structured, efficient transit system was threatening Bogotá’s economic survival and plunged the metropolitan area into urban chaos.

A complete overhaul of the urban transportation policy was needed. However, as is the case in many cities in developing countries, the construction of a subway starting from scratch involved too significant an investment, one which the Colombian government could not dedicate solely to the country’s capitol city. A lower cost alternative that could be built rapidly had therefore to be found.

This was the context within which TransMilenio was designed. It was to be an integrated bus rapid transit (BRT) system, part of a vast urban renewal program. Three objectives were set for the system: alleviate the heavily congested urban area, increase transit system ridership, and improve the system’s performance and image.

Transmilenio - A Massive Transit System

For Bogotá, the main benefit of the BRT principle was the lower implementation cost compared with that of building a rail-based system. It also presented an opportunity to organize and rationalize the city’s transit policy by considering bus services as a genuine system rather than a multitude of independent vehicles. TransMilenio is thus very different from the previous conventional bus services. It is characterized by a high frequency buses, operating in a bus-only corridor built down the median of main avenues and separated from other traffic by dedicated lanes.

The main TransMilenio routes operate as four lanes of high capacity trunk corridors, enabling two types of service: express bus lines that only stop at certain stations, and local services that stop at all stations. The elevated stations, no more than 500 meters apart and built parallel to the running way, are accessed by overpasses. As with other high-density systems, some of the stations enable passenger to transfer to feeder buses, significantly extending the system’s urban coverage.

TransMilenio has all the characteristics of a surface metro: air-conditioned, articulated buses with high floors at the same level as the station platforms; automatic sliding doors in main stations; onboard GPS; automatic real-time passenger information, and the like. Overall, it offers the efficiency and quality of service of a rail-based system, but with significantly lower capital costs.

Transmilenio’s Phased implementation

Construction of the BRT was divided into four phases between 1999 and 2016. The phased approach enabled the municipality to smooth the financial burden of the project and set specific implementation deadlines. During the first phase, from December 1999 to June 2001, 42.2 km of running way and 61 stations were built for an investment of $217 million. Paid by the District of Bogotá, with the help of a World Bank loan, this first investment phase represented an average cost of $5.5 million per kilometer, far lower than for a heavy transit system. The second construction phase was completed at the end of 2006. Two other major phases will be implemented through to 2016, each with specific objectives and deadlines.

To operate the system, the District of Bogotá decided in favor of operating contracts with no public subsidy. Following a formal tendering procedure, seven operators, at their own risk, are providing service based on the awarded number of buses they each operate. The operators financed and now own the vehicles. Veolia Transport holds a stake in four of the operating companies and operates around 22% of the fleet utilized on the system (250 articulated buses). Operating companies must cover a certain number of kilometers per week, calculated on the basis of the number of buses operated. Their remuneration is directly related to the fares taken across the entire system. The transfer of commercial risk to operators, made possible by the high density of passengers, is one TransMilenio’s fundamental concepts, as is the city’s full responsibility for the capital invested in infrastructure.

An Immediate Success

Brought into operation during 2001, TransMilenio was an immediate success both in terms of system performance and ridership. Within just a few months, the number of vehicles was rationalized (18,000) to meet actual mobility needs, the commercial speed of the buses tripled from 8 kph to 28 kph and the average journey time was practically divided by three from 90 minutes to 35 minutes. Some 900,000 passengers were carried daily, representing a higher capacity than many metro lines. Ridership increased from 45% to 95%.

These improvements were accompanied by a very high frequency of service: up to three buses a minute in each direction during the rush hour. Further improvements included better comfort for passengers in the vehicles during their journeys, and station furniture to add comfort to waiting areas.

Today, five years after being brought into operation, the system is just as successful. The BRT now covers 84 km and has 114 stations, with 857 articulated buses providing service. Daily ridership is in the order of 1.3 million passengers. The feeder network is now 477 kilometers long and has 57 routes on which 430 new conventional buses operate.

All in all, the implementation of TransMilenio has managed to transform a network of incomprehensible routes covered by unattractive buses into a well-managed system providing frequent, punctual, convenient and efficient service.

A tool for Sustainable Urban Development

There’s no denying that TransMilenio has radically changed the quality of life in Bogotá. By reducing traffic jams and road traffic, the system has contributed heavily to reducing atmospheric pollution by almost 40%. This is an important change in a city located at an altitude of 2,600 meters and where the impact of greenhouse gases is very obvious.

In addition to improved air quality, there have been some impressive results in terms of urban safety: 81% reduction in traffic accidents and 94% reduction in vehicle-pedestrian accidents; 72% drop in the number of injuries and 93% drop in the number of fatalities. Meanwhile, robberies have fallen by 60%.

In parallel with the core BRT program, some equally spectacular improvements have been carried out. These include building almost 250 kilometers of bicycle lanes, refurbishing 130 hectares of sidewalks and public areas, planting thousands of trees, restricting private automobile use at rush hour (by selecting license plate numbers), and removing pollution from streams and swamps. All these measures on the periphery of the TransMilenio project have also helped to improve the urban environment.

Lastly, TransMilenio is playing a significant role in reducing social exclusion by linking neighborhoods and opening up virtually the whole job market and urban resources to the population for an affordable fare. In this sense, it is the biggest social project ever carried out in Bogotá. On the basis of a daily return journey, based on a single ticket ($0.40 per trip), transportation costs amount to $16 a month, 6% of the average household budget. This pricing policy, affordable by the various segments of the existing and potential customer base, has had a positive impact on the social inclusion of all categories of the population and on the city’s overall dynamics. Moreover, Ciudad Movil, the controlling company of the TransMilenio system, pays its bus drivers an average monthly salary of around $480, far higher than the local average, making it one of Bogotá’s leading employers.

In 2016, at the end of the four planned extension phases, a complete bus rapid transit system, 380 kilometers long, will have been built in Bogotá, making it a showcase for sustainable urban development. At that stage, TransMilenio will carry 6.3 million passengers a day, illustrating that it is possible to design a high capacity transit system providing high quality service for a reasonable level of capital investment. Although initially a bus-based transit system, TransMilenio will eventually evolve toward a multi-mode system since the infrastructure already in place can be converted at any time to meet the needs of a surface rail-based transit system.

TransMilenio has become a model and many major cities are showing interest in it, especially in Asia, where cities have already launched or are preparing similar systems.