Now It's Official: Bogot� Can't Afford a Subway

Coming to Bogot�? Seattle was digging a car tunnel under the city, but the huge digging machine got stuck, obliging the city to dig this huge pit to reach and repair the machine. (Photo: Grist)

First, its price tag zoomed up to 15 billion pesos. Then, the price of oil, which once provided more than half of Colombia's export income, took a dive. And now, the national government has explained to Bogot� that it won't be able to ante up its traditional 70% of the project's cost.

A map of Bogot�'s proposed first subway line. 

And that's all before the inevitable cost over-runs, corruption scandals and other problems even start.

For decades, Bogot� has dreamed of building a subway, but never figured out a way to pay for it.

Bogot� leaders seem to want to have a subway more for reasons of status than of practicality. After
all, a subway is about the most expensive sort of mass transit and takes the longest time to build.

Bogot� wants a subway for two mistaken reasons:

    A) Bogotanos believe that a tunnel will cure its traffic jams.

A traffic jam on Calle 26.
A subway line won't solve this.

Perhaps they should visit capitals such as Caracas, Mexico City and Santiago, Chile, to see whether their subway networks have eliminated traffic jams there. (Bogot�, of course, would at most have a single line a decade from now.)

    B) Bogot� wants to be a world-class city like New York, London and Paris.

Perhaps Bogot� leaders would do well to see that being a world class city means much more than having an underground train. It means having a strong, varied, economy, world-class universities, impressive parks and architecture, great culture, science, little corruption, and on and on. Bogot� still has a long way to go.

Rather than recognizing that a subway is beyond reach, and focusing on faster, cheaper forms of transit, such as light rail, elevated rail or more bus rapid transit, Bogot� is scrambling for other financing formulas. The city will dig itself into a massive debt and have to suspend other, more pressing transit projects. By the time a subway line is finally finished - if that day comes - the city will be overwhelmed by car traffic and the streets gridlocked.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogot� Bike Tours