As mayor of Bogota, Colombia, Enrique Peñalosa accomplished remarkable changes of monumental proportions for the people of his country in just three years.

Peñalosa changed the way Bogota treated its non-driving citizens by restricting automobile use and instituting a bus rapid transit system which now carries a 1/2 million residents daily. Among other improvements: he widened and rebuilt sidewalks, created grand public spaces, and implemented over one hundred miles of bicycle paths.

TOPP Executive Director Mark Gorton discusses with Penalosa some of these transportation achievements and asks what the future could hold for NYC if similar improvements were made here.
<br>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[intro music]</font> <br>
</p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Enrique Penalosa:</i>
[00:12] The essence of the conflict today really is cars and people.
That is the essence of the whole discussion. We can have a city
that is very friendly to cars or a city that is very friendly to people.
We cannot have both. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Mark Gorton:</i> [00:40]
I’m here today with Enrique Penalosa, the former Mayor of Bogotá,
Colombia, who is one of the leading figures in the world in terms of
actually accomplishing changes on the ground that have made life better
for pedestrians, I mean in many different ways in the city, but his
policies are really revolutionary in terms of rethinking the way, you
know, transportation works and its relation to the city. You gave
a talk this morning and one of the things you said that was interesting
was this idea… when you say, when you talk about transportation, the
first thing you have to do is decide what you want. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Enrique Penalosa:</i>
[01:20] Before we know what the ideal transport is we have to work out
what city we want. But in order to know what kind of a city we
want, we have to know how do we want to live really, because a city
is really is only a means to a way of life. The least of the least
that a democratic society should have is public pedestrian space of
great quality. Sidewalks, pedestrian streets, plazas, sports facilities,
parks, even public transport, public libraries could be considered as
public space as well. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Mark Gorton:</i> [01:52]
So how did you decide for yourself?</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Enrique Penalosa:</i>
[01:55] We can see what cities have worked in the world. We have
had cities for 5,000 years. We have had cars for only about 80
years or so in significant amounts. So for 5,000 years all streets
were for people, were pedestrian streets. A child could walk ten
blocks without any fear of being killed. We should have cities
with very large network of pedestrian only streets. Not the quaint
little pedestrian street Downtown here and there, but hundreds of kilometres
of pedestrian streets where people could go ride bicycles, jog, just
sit and read a newspaper on a bench without having cars going in front,
look at people walking by. What we find more and more is that
good cities, one city where you would like to be at, and a city that
is good for the most vulnerable citizens. I will say a city where you
have many people in the street who are handicapped, where old people,
where children, children by themselves.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Mark Gorton:</i> [02:59]
Could you talk a little bit about your experience as a politician, you
know, in going through the process of implementing some of these changes? </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Enrique Penalosa:</i>
[03:07] What we try to do is to restrict car use, to create public transport,
to do bicycle ways, and to create public space. We took the road
network and created a bus system, what is called a Bus Rapid Transit.
You give exclusive lanes to the buses. Our system has a velocity
and a capacity that is very similar to the best subways in the world.
Clearly this is possible because we give priority to public transport
in the use of road space. So public good prevents over private
transport. We created a very large bicycle network, a protected
bicycle path network. A protected bicycle path is a symbol that
a citizen on a $30 bicycle is equally important as one on a $30,000
car. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Mark Gorton:</i> [04:02]
Your experience in Bogotá was that bicycling went from… I mean I
think it’s fringe activity to carrying a real fraction of the transport.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Enrique Penalosa:</i>
[04:14] When we started, bicycling was almost insignificant. Zero,
or 0.2% of the people in Bogotá used to bicycle. And now, nearly
5% of the people only after six years or so, we get almost 400,000 people
bicycling everyday.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Mark Gorton:</i> [04:36]
After you put in these changes, I mean and again I should state that
these are, you know, for cities around the world, among the most significant
changes in terms of moving away from cars and towards focus on pedestrians
and bicycles and public transit, I mean practically of any city I can
think of, I mean particularly in a short period of time. Maybe
you could tell us a little bit about what the public’s mindset was
beforehand and then afterwards. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Enrique Penalosa:</i>
[05:02] There is always resistance to change per se. And also
all of these policies which have a social content have conflicts with
those who own cars, whose use we are going to restrict, and those who
don’t. People opposed very much, for example, we had to get
rid of tens of thousands of parking bays which having illegally carved
out where they should be sidewalks. So we took tens of thousands
of parking bays away and we made big sidewalks. And there was
a huge outrage from shop owners. But then afterwards they realised
how much life had improved, how the real estate prices had gone up,
how crime had gone down, how they were selling more.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Mark Gorton:</i> [05:57]
After you left were the policy… were these policies continued by your
successors? </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Enrique Penalosa:</i>
[06:02] The Mayors that have come afterwards have continued that, and
there is a huge [unintelligible 06:06], it would be impossible really
for someone to reverse these policies. And on the contrary, then
we will have to make them even more radical. Our dream is to totally
ban car use during peak hours everyday. In many countries they
have car-free days where they close off a few streets to cars during
that day. But we close the whole seven million in Harrington City
to cars during one week day, a Thursday. And this again is not
only an experiment in environmental transport, but this is an exercise
in social integration, because we get uppering of people and lowering
of people, everybody going out to find public transport. We allow
taxis to operate that day but most people use buses or ride bicycles.
We show ourselves that it’s possible to organise the city without
private cars.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Mark Gorton:</i> [07:01]
In addition to being Mayor of Bogotá, you’ve also been a visiting
scholar at NYU, and you’ve lived in New York and you said you have
an apartment here in New York.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Enrique Penalosa:</i>
[07:12] Yes, I love New York.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Mark Gorton:</i> [07:14]
And I guess, you know, we were just walking down the street before and
you were talking about some of the things that you would like to see
and that you think make a lot of sense to do here, and it would be great
to get some of your ideas on that. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Enrique Penalosa:</i>
[07:26] I think what changes cities are things that are different.
I will almost say crazy. New York for example could turn all Broadway
into a pedestrian street, all the way from [unintelligible 07:39] Bridge
to the tip of Manhattan. And if you don’t want to turn the whole
Broadway to pedestrians, to take half of Broadway into a very large
giant sidewalk with bicycle ways and at least on Sundays it could be
closed off completely so to allow people to access Central Park from
different areas of Manhattan for example. I think there’s some
wonderful things that have been done recently, like the bikeway around
the Island, the Hudson River Park and this is wonderful. But here
in Manhattan for example, there could be at least a few cross-town bicycle
ways. We cannot continue to deceive ourselves thinking that to
paint a little line on a road is a bikeway. A bicycle way which
is not safe for an eight year old is not a bicycle way. And hopefully
to do a whole network of very well protected, physically protected bicycle
ways all across Manhattan. And only a few hundred cars would…
which are now parked would be affected by these measures, which is nothing
next to the millions that would benefit from this. The 42<sup>nd</sup>
Street project, where they turned 42<sup>nd</sup> Street into a pedestrian
street from East River to the Hudson River, put in a tram, it would
be fantastic. Manhattan has all the qualities for successful pedestrian
and bicycle street because Manhattan is dense, it’s very dense, distance
is relative very short, so it’s perfect for walking or for bicycling
and is very flat, so there are no significant hills. So these
are just some of the projects which could be implemented in Manhattan.
Mathematically it is totally impossible to solve the transportation
problems of a city using cars. Because cars simply don’t fit,
it’s impossible. If everybody wants to move by car… time lost
in traffic jams is increasing every year. There is a conflict
between a city that is friendly to cars and a city that is friendly
to people, because if you have very wide streets that are very… where
cars go very fast, they become obstacles for people, they are menacing,
they are threatening. The United States is a fantastic society,
having sampled the world in so many aspects and [unintelligible 10:17],
its culture, the movies, the music, universities, the libraries.
But not everything is ideal and one of those problems is this suburban
highway culture. I believe New York could be even better. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Enrique Penalosa:</i>
[10:35] If we will take a lot of space away from parked cars and give
it to pedestrians for example or to bicycles. The importance of
public pedestrian space is obvious in New York. How every sidewalk
is [unintelligible 10:47]. Mayor of Manhattan and the City Council
Members would be surprised how they may receive much more political
benefits from these measures which are relatively cost free. We
underestimate the power of dreams. The most difficult thing is
to dream and to create a collective dream or a shared vision.
I think it’s time to take a great risk suddenly and to do something
new, to do the new New York.</font> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p>
http://transcriptdivas.ca/transcription-canada/
Pingback: Streetfilms | Central Park & Prospect Park Video Advocacy Thru The Years (1997-Present)!()
Pingback: Streetfilms | Watch 18 Years of Car-Free Parks Advocacy and Progress in NYC()
Pingback: Today’s Headlines | Streetsblog New York City()