Urbanized Page #4

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but the number of trips

and the length of trips.

So the more road infrastructure

you do,

the traffic will become even worse.

The only way to solve traffic jams

is to restrict car use.

And the most obvious way to restrict

car use is restricting parking.

People seem to imagine

that parking is...

a right, almost a fundamental right

to be included

in the United Nations Charter.

In our Constitution,

there are many rights:

the right to housing,

the right to education, to health,

but I don't find the right to park.

I don't see any Constitution which

includes the right to park.

So if you ask me where you should park,

the Mayor can tell them,

it's almost if you're asking me

where should put

your food or your clothes,

This is not a government problem.

Before I was Mayor,

I have never been in a city

which hated itself more than Bogota.

There was a total lack of self-esteem

and lack of hope.

So when I was elected mayor we

started investing in people.

In sidewalks, in parks,

in great schools, in libraries.

And also we created a bus-based

public transport system.

We copied a system from Curitiba,

a small city in Brazil.

We called it TransMilenio,

we gave it a name.

Because buses in most places have a...

stigma, a bad image of being

for the poor,

so we had to raise the bus's status.

TransMilenio bus system

actually works more like a subway

on wheels than a traditional bus.

Buses go on exclusive lanes.

People pay when they enter the station.

When the buses arrive,

the station doors open

simultaneously with the bus doors.

You can get a hundred people out

and hundred people

onto the bus in seconds.

And now they can go from one extreme

to the other very fast.

For the same cost that we could do

a 25km subway,

we do 400km of TransMilineo.

These systems are also more flexible.

Younger cities don't have such

a defined center

and the center is shifting.

So if you put a hugely expensive

infrastructure like a subway line,

you might find that the

new center in a matter

of twenty or thirty years

is somewhere else where

the subway line doesn't go.

This system is very powerful

symbol of democracy.

The first article in every Constitution

says that...

The first article in every Constitution

says that all citizens

are equal before the law.

This is not just poetry.

It means for example

that a bus with 100 passengers

has a right to 100 times more

road space than a car with one.

It's democracy at work.

You can really see that public good

prevails over private interest.

Okay, here we are on part

of the Porvenir Promenade.

This is a 24km,

pedestrian and bicycle-only street,

which networks

very low income neighborhoods

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