Bogotá maintains a deep-rooted idyll with cycling, and has finally fulfilled a long-delayed wish: launching a robust bike-sharing system.
In the midst of noisy debates about the mobility of the Colombian capital, its chaotic traffic and the construction of a first metro line that seems very far away, the bike rental scheme has taken off.
In the four months of operations since the city launched the system, growth has been steady.
Tembici, the operator of the stations, reports more than 170,000 accumulated trips, 63,000 of them in January alone.
The system operates with nearly 300 stations for 1,500 mechanical bicycles and another 1,500 for electro-assisted pedaling.
All are located in the so-called expanded center, the eastern fringe of the city that includes the towns of Chapinero, Teusaquillo and La Candelaria, and parts of Usaquén, Santa Fe and Barrios Unidos.
The numbers and coverage may seem modest, but it's a key milestone in a city that boasts of being the bike capital of the world.
“This was what we needed to close that circle in the face of the need to cover the need for travel,” Deyanira Ávila, the Bogotá Mobility Secretary, told EL PAÍS.
“We had several studies indicating that this was the potential zone, the zone of the expanded center, where mainly the trips are floating.
That is to say, it is not a pendular journey of going to work and returning home, but of short distances and short trips in time, and with a willingness to pay ”, she explains.
The idea is to stabilize the operation, and then expand it to other parts of the city.
The District Mobility Secretary, Deyanira Ávila Moreno, in the center of Bogotá, on February 9, 2023.Juan Carlos Zapata
“I used them out of necessity;
It was a quick option at rush hour and I have a station right in front of my office that always has bicycles available”, says Nicolás Congote, a 36-year-old journalist who has been an occasional user and has made a positive assessment.
“Because it is a new service, the bicycles are in very good condition.
In the area where I move, which is Chapinero and its surroundings, there is a good possibility of riding on bicycle paths, so it is a viable alternative ”, he recounts.
"In addition, without a doubt, the bicycle is one of the methods of transport that generates the least impact on the environment and for a city with such chaotic traffic these alternatives will always be an excellent option."
There is a good availability of stations in that area, agrees Juan Pablo Ossa, a 45-year-old political scientist and a great fan of cycling, either as a sport or as an urban mobility option.
“When I didn't have my bike at hand I found it cumbersome to go back;
When I saw the available bicycles I decided to try them out and I really liked them;
It seems efficient, fast and even cheap to me, ”he says at the station on Calle 85 with Carrera 15, one of the busiest.
"Sometimes I see that there are problems finding parking space," he warns.
“It should be more widespread.
Bogotá is a city that lends itself to riding a bicycle to the extent that it is flat, the climate is pleasant and there are no high temperatures”.
The Colombian capital has a very strong cycling culture, of popular use and bicycle trade, with enormous potential, says Ricardo Montezuma, director of the Ciudad Humana organization.
“A bicycle loan system is a significant advance for the city;
it is something useful, valuable, that can help a lot to complete trips ”, he points out.
It is something that Bogotá has tried in many ways for more than a decade.
“Paradoxically, it is almost the last of the Latin American capitals to put a loan system into service,” he points out.
One of the Tembici stations, in the north of Bogotá, on February 10, 2023.Juan Carlos Zapata
“Bogotá does not have the sea, but it does have a bike path”, read a well-remembered radio announcement about this city of chaotic traffic.
The unique relationship of Bogotanos with bikes can be traced back at least to the 70s, when the capital began to cut avenues on Sundays so that its inhabitants could go out pedaling and that tradition was born.
For years the capital has also celebrated “day without a car” days and night bike paths to encourage alternative methods of transportation.
Mayor Claudia López, from the Alianza Verde party, arrived on a bicycle to her inauguration ceremony, on the first day of 2020, and during the campaign she turned the collective rides into one of her favorite events.
The commitment to two wheels has had the sustained impulse of the mayors of different ideological shores, and even redoubled in the pandemic.
Bogotá, which already had the most extensive network of bike lanes in Latin America, was also a pioneer in redistributing public space to extend those bike paths during the health crisis, a policy imitated in many parts of the world.
In full national quarantine, the Mayor's Office began to enable a series of provisional bike paths parallel to the Transmilenio route, the articulated bus system with exclusive lanes that crosses a city that –for the moment– lacks a metro.
Some have come to stay.
In total, the city today has 600 kilometers of bike paths.
But he was in debt to launch a shared bicycle system like those that exist in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires or Mexico City.
Map of the Bogota bicycle route network. Ministry of Mobility
López, who ends his term at the end of this year, proposed at the beginning of his Administration to increase the number of bicycle trips by 50% in his four-year term.
The consolidated figures for 2019 –before the outbreak of the pandemic– show 880,000 daily trips by bicycle, close to 7% of all trips in a city of close to eight million inhabitants.
When the updated figures from the Mobility survey are released this year, a notable increase is expected, exceeding one million daily trips.
“The bicycle is extremely important in terms of sustainable mobility, with zero emissions, and the progress Bogotá has made is extraordinary,” says Darío Hidalgo, a transport professor at the Javeriana University and a frequent user of shared bikes.
Almost all the mayors of the last 25 years have worked to promote it, he points out, since it does not seem to have a partisan connotation, as the debates around the subway or the Transmilenio do.
The city intends to reach 20% of total trips by bicycle, and that half of these trips are made by women, since the gender gap is very wide – barely 23% of cyclists are women.
“The shared bike system does not solve everything,
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