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Lessons From Colombia
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| A Monday evening speech by ex-Bogota Mayor Enrique Penalosa drew a batch of Los Angeles leaders, including the heads of the CRA and the City Planning Department. Photo by Gary Leonard. |
Ex-Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa Lectures City Officials On How to Steer a Car-less Future
by Evan George
On the night famed urban environmentalist Enrique Peñalosa came Downtown to speak, a First Street closure turned the community into a snake of tailpipes, lending a twisted sense of poetic justice to the event.
On Monday, Nov. 13, Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, who is widely credited for setting that city of 7 million on a course of sustainable development, spoke to a rapt audience of politicians, planners and employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority at the agency's Downtown boardroom.
Making cities more livable, he told the crowd, requires a shared vision among city leaders that extends beyond bus routes.
"It is not for traffic engineers to decide how we are going to solve transportation problems, it is a political decision," Peñalosa said. "How do we want our city to be? How do we want to live?"
City Planning Director Gail Goldberg was in attendance, as was Community Redevelopment Agency CEO Cecilia Estolano and staffers from City Councilwoman Jan Perry's office. The event was co-sponsored by a spectrum of groups including the Alliance for a Livable Los Angeles, the Trust for Public Land and Bikestation, a nonprofit organization that operates repair and rental centers along public transportation corridors.
One sponsor after the next explained why their organization had helped bring Peñalosa to Los Angeles. Single-issue agencies working alone, they agreed, will never manage the strides needed to make Los Angeles a city that lives within its means. Cooperation between city agencies and inspiration for "the city of dreams to dream" is needed, Goldberg said.
Enter Peñalosa, a towering figure with a silver beard and big brown eyes who served as mayor of Bogotá for only three years, from 1998 to 2001, because of the city's limit on consecutive terms. In that short amount of time, Peñalosa made significant inroads to fixing Bogotá's severe environmental and social ills.
Walter Hook, executive director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, introduced him by saying, "We were talking about [the solutions] and then Peñalosa just went and did it."
How He Went and Did It
Peñalosa's presentation detailed his administration's achievements in creating 1,200 urban parks, an immense network of bike paths and one of the leading public transportation systems in the world. Even more impressive is that it was achieved in a city that a decade before was known mostly for pollution, traffic congestion and a failed economy.
Peñalosa made strides by ignoring some experts and their conventional wisdom. When Japanese consultants suggested he build seven elevated highways to solve the city's traffic woes, Peñalosa recalled, he did the opposite.
Instead, the city invested in a world-class bus system, built pedestrian-only streets (one stretches 20 miles) and restricted car use in downtown Bogotá. Thanks to a much-improved and "sexier" bus system, Peñalosa said, public transportation in his city is actually too popular and 20% of rail riders own cars they don't use.
The public transportation push was so successful that in a referendum during his term, the city's voters approved an annual car-free day and nearly passed an initiative that would have banned all cars during peak commute hours.
"To make more highways or bigger roads to solve traffic jams is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline," Peñalosa told the crowd on Monday.
His visit comes at a time when state voters have approved nearly $20 billion in transportation bonds that city officials have said will aid many Los Angeles-area projects. Although a portion of the money will go to expanding rail systems, much of it will be invested in clearing up auto congestion by synchronizing traffic lights, improving roads and expanding highways.
Peñalosa told Los Angeles officials his city might not be the perfect example for one the size of Los Angeles - or even Downtown - to follow, but that planners here will confront many of the same issues because traffic jams are just one symptom of a failing city.
Angelenos will never choose to leave their cars at home, he warned, until the city pushes them to do so with car restrictions in areas like Downtown, provides incentives to take Metro, and offers reasons to spend time in public space rather than in homes or cars.
"Traffic jams without public transportation is useless. But public transportation without traffic jams is useless too," he said.
Goldberg thanked Peñalosa for coming to Downtown Los Angeles and assured him that the gathered civic leaders had heard him loud and clear.
"Los Angeles is at a crossroads and we have an opportunity as we are planning for our future to plan it for cars, as we have always done in this city, or plan it for people," she said.
Contact Evan George at evan@downtownnews.com.
nightpage 7, 11/20/2006
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
On Monday, Nov. 13, Peñalosa, the former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, who is widely credited for setting that city of 7 million on a course of sustainable development, spoke to a rapt audience of politicians, planners and employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority at the agency's Downtown boardroom.
Making cities more livable, he told the crowd, requires a shared vision among city leaders that extends beyond bus routes.
"It is not for traffic engineers to decide how we are going to solve transportation problems, it is a political decision," Peñalosa said. "How do we want our city to be? How do we want to live?"
City Planning Director Gail Goldberg was in attendance, as was Community Redevelopment Agency CEO Cecilia Estolano and staffers from City Councilwoman Jan Perry's office. The event was co-sponsored by a spectrum of groups including the Alliance for a Livable Los Angeles, the Trust for Public Land and Bikestation, a nonprofit organization that operates repair and rental centers along public transportation corridors.
One sponsor after the next explained why their organization had helped bring Peñalosa to Los Angeles. Single-issue agencies working alone, they agreed, will never manage the strides needed to make Los Angeles a city that lives within its means. Cooperation between city agencies and inspiration for "the city of dreams to dream" is needed, Goldberg said.
Enter Peñalosa, a towering figure with a silver beard and big brown eyes who served as mayor of Bogotá for only three years, from 1998 to 2001, because of the city's limit on consecutive terms. In that short amount of time, Peñalosa made significant inroads to fixing Bogotá's severe environmental and social ills.
Walter Hook, executive director of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy, introduced him by saying, "We were talking about [the solutions] and then Peñalosa just went and did it."
Peñalosa's presentation detailed his administration's achievements in creating 1,200 urban parks, an immense network of bike paths and one of the leading public transportation systems in the world. Even more impressive is that it was achieved in a city that a decade before was known mostly for pollution, traffic congestion and a failed economy.
Peñalosa made strides by ignoring some experts and their conventional wisdom. When Japanese consultants suggested he build seven elevated highways to solve the city's traffic woes, Peñalosa recalled, he did the opposite.
Instead, the city invested in a world-class bus system, built pedestrian-only streets (one stretches 20 miles) and restricted car use in downtown Bogotá. Thanks to a much-improved and "sexier" bus system, Peñalosa said, public transportation in his city is actually too popular and 20% of rail riders own cars they don't use.
The public transportation push was so successful that in a referendum during his term, the city's voters approved an annual car-free day and nearly passed an initiative that would have banned all cars during peak commute hours.
"To make more highways or bigger roads to solve traffic jams is like trying to put out a fire with gasoline," Peñalosa told the crowd on Monday.
His visit comes at a time when state voters have approved nearly $20 billion in transportation bonds that city officials have said will aid many Los Angeles-area projects. Although a portion of the money will go to expanding rail systems, much of it will be invested in clearing up auto congestion by synchronizing traffic lights, improving roads and expanding highways.
Peñalosa told Los Angeles officials his city might not be the perfect example for one the size of Los Angeles - or even Downtown - to follow, but that planners here will confront many of the same issues because traffic jams are just one symptom of a failing city.
Angelenos will never choose to leave their cars at home, he warned, until the city pushes them to do so with car restrictions in areas like Downtown, provides incentives to take Metro, and offers reasons to spend time in public space rather than in homes or cars.
"Traffic jams without public transportation is useless. But public transportation without traffic jams is useless too," he said.
Goldberg thanked Peñalosa for coming to Downtown Los Angeles and assured him that the gathered civic leaders had heard him loud and clear.
"Los Angeles is at a crossroads and we have an opportunity as we are planning for our future to plan it for cars, as we have always done in this city, or plan it for people," she said.
Contact Evan George at evan@downtownnews.com.
nightpage 7, 11/20/2006
© Los Angeles Downtown News. Reprinting items retrieved from the archives are for personal use only. They may not be reproduced or retransmitted without permission of the Los Angeles Downtown News. If you would like to re-distribute anything from the Los Angeles Downtown News Archives, please call our permissions department at (213) 481-1448.
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