Long branded as one of the world's most dangerous cities, Bogotá, Colombia, has won plaudits for cutting its murder rate by more than 70% during the past decade. But this city of 7 million people has received far less attention for a dramatic decline in a more common danger that plagues urban areas everywhere: traffic-related injuries and deaths.
With a combination of innovative education campaigns, an overhaul of its public transportation system, strict law enforcement, and redesign of streets and highways, Bogotá has made moving from place to place safer and more efficient. "In 1997, everything was a mess and we were losing the battle," says Dario Hildalgo, a transportation engineer from Bogotá who is now with the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C. "To solve the problems, we needed a miracle. The miracle happened."
Mark Rosenberg, the former head of injury prevention at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, says Bogotá is a model for the world. "Bogotá is not unique in having this problem, but it is unique in solving it," says Rosenberg, who now heads the nonprofit Task Force for Child Survival and Development in Decatur, Georgia.
In a 2004 report, the World Health Organization and the World Bank blamed 1.2 million deaths and some 50 million injuries each year on road crashes. For people between the ages of 10 and 24, traffic injuries are the leading cause of death worldwide. The report projected that without major changes, deaths and injuries would increase 65% by 2020. "We have interventions that work, and we know how to bring the rates down," says Rosenberg. "There's no other opportunity like this in public health. It's as good as the best vaccines. But we need the resources"--and political will.
Silent treatment. Bogotá used mimes to shame traffic violators.
PHOTO: COURTESY OF EL TIEMPO; SOURCE: ROAD ACCIDENT PREVENTION FUND
Rosenberg, Hildalgo, and others laud the aggressive and creative efforts of mayors Antanas Mockus and Enrique Peñalosa, who alternately ran the city from 1995 to 2003. Mockus, a former mathematician and philosopher, famously painted zebra stripes at intersections and employed mimes to shame bad behavior, pretending to pull on vehicles, for example, that blocked crosswalks at red lights. "The city was a very funny place," says Francisco José Fernandez, head of the Road Accident Prevention Fund, a private group supported by a special tax on car insurance. But Mockus had serious aims and some decidedly unfunny interventions. For one, he fired approximately 2000 traffic police. "The police department that was working on traffic was very corrupt," says Fernandez, who served as secretary of transit when Peñalosa took over in 1998.
Peñalosa, an erstwhile journalist, built on Mockus's efforts. Bogotá hired an army of 1000 to confront pedestrians who ignored red lights, cracked down on drunk drivers, built bicycle-only lanes, installed new signals, and restricted each car's access to the city center to 2 workdays a week.
Perhaps most important, Peñalosa championed a new bus rapid transit system modeled after the widely celebrated one in Curitiba, Brazil. At the time, Bogotá relied on several bus companies that clogged the roads and vied for passengers. Peñalosa oversaw development of a bus rapid transit system called TransMilenio that has dedicated lanes. He also forced companies to work together by bidding for contracts and sharing revenue. Although Peñalosa met strong resistance, Hildalgo, who worked on TransMilenio, says the mayor told the bus companies, "I'm doing this with you or without you." When Peñalosa's term ended in 2001, Mockus was reelected and continued the traffic reforms.
Today, TransMilenio has only about 25% of its projected 388 kilometers in operation--funding shortfalls have slowed completion--but accounts for 18% of the transit trips in the city and moves 1.3 million passengers a day. The $750 million system has shaved about 15 minutes off the average trip, according to TransMilenio data, and has reduced emissions by replacing 1500 obsolete buses with a new fleet.
Fast lane. Bogotá reduced traffic injuries and deaths by replacing a chaotic, competitive bus system with TransMilenio, which moves more rapidly and pollutes less.
CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
TransMilenio is one element in a broad push to improve traffic safety. Along the TransMilenio route, injuries plummeted from 18 a week in 1998 to four in 2002, notes Hildalgo. In Bogotá at large, accidents and trafficrelated injuries and deaths all steeply dropped between 1998 and 2006 (see table, above).
Bogotá proves that even cash-strapped cities can improve traffic safety, Rosenberg says: "Traffic deaths are not an essential consequence of growth and development."
Elsewhere, Sweden has paced the field with technologies--such as road dividers made of Mylar--and traffic-slowing strategies as part of Vision Zero, a project launched in 1997 to eliminate traffic deaths and injuries in that country. Traffic deaths, which already were low by international standards, by 2006 had dropped by 20%. "Probably the most important measure for bringing down the death rate is to build safer roads so when people make mistakes in driving they're not penalized with their lives, and they did this in Sweden," says Rosenberg. Norway and Australia now have similar programs.
In April 2006, the World Bank launched the Global Road Safety Facility to help low- and middle-income countries reduce traffic-related injuries and deaths. The fund hopes to spend $30 million per year, but to date, donors have contributed just $12 million. "It's nothing," complains Rosenberg.
As much progress as Bogotá has made, it, too, faces costly obstacles to further improving its traffic safety. The new mayor, Samuel Moreno Rojas, has promised to build a traditional rail system, an idea that the public likes but that some transportation experts worry will inevitably delay the completion of the much cheaper TransMilenio routes. And although use of private cars has dropped, motorcycles are increasingly popular and now are involved in 51% of all fatal crashes. "Motorcycles right now are a nightmare," says Fernandez. Improving motorcycle safety, he says, will require intensive courses for riders, more complex licensing tests, and stepping up enforcement--all of which cost money. "Bogotá is much more friendly now than it was 10 years ago," says Fernandez. "But there are a lot of things to do."