<\/a>Bogot\u00e1, Colombia, has been celebrated and emulated worldwide these past 10 years for its innovative Transmilenio system of articulated buses. Reports regularly appear in print that cities far afield, including New York City, are interested in replicating Bogot\u00e1\u2019s Transmilenio system. Here at home the system has done well in imposing order on a chaotic urban environment. Transmilenio buses run along designated lanes separated from daily traffic, and generally offer speedy, if at times very crowded, massive ubran public transportation.<\/p>\n All has been well and good for over 10 years. New Transmilenio lines have been successfully added to the system, most recently arriving almost, but not quite, to Bogot\u00e1\u2019s airport. The system works efficiently, daily and consistently. Not quite a subway, not a streetcar exactly, not simply a bus, the Transmilineo initiative in Bogot\u00e1 is a great urban compromise in transportation, an attempt to offer a speedier and lower cost alternative to a 20 or 50 year investment in subway construction. The citizenry of Bogot\u00e1, a city of no small size, has given the Transmilenio system a major thumbs up. The system is used by millions daily.<\/p>\n We were doing good.<\/p>\n We are accustomed in the United States somehow to believing that, anywhere other than here, radical changes in urban planning are happening daily, and that those changes are more citizen-friendly, more well thought-out and more successfully implemented than those here at home. Urban planners elsewhere are so much more adept in planning than we are in the US – so goes the thinking. Somehow, in the general mindset, we think that we are behind, less capable of initatiating change for the better than those anywhere other than here. These innovative changes, we believe may be happening in Spain, or in Canada or just possibly in an emergent economy such as Colombia.<\/p>\n Well maybe. Perhaps not. Do we lack perspective?<\/p>\n Back to Bogot\u00e1, to where we were doing so well. Here in Bogot\u00e1, Colombia, we have decided that we need to unify our non-Transmilenio bus system, our chaotic, broadly diverse, urban, antiquated, daily- polluting patchwork of buses into our very successful Transmilenio network. This sounds very good. Why not marry success to further success. Let\u2019s have an integrated public transportation system unified under the already established Transmilenio brand.<\/p>\n What a great idea!<\/p>\n We could call this integration something unifying, something like Transmilenio Bus<\/i>, for example. But no, no, no. no. Too simple. No.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s complicate things. Hey, what the hell, let\u2019s change the whole endeavor to something hard to pronounce like <\/i>SITP. No, not the whole system, just the new bus part. SITP has such a ring to it! Try saying SITP fast three times in a row, in Spanish or in English. But wait. Why don\u2019t we add the word Urbano to that!\u00a0 Why not? Let\u2019s call this new associated Transmilenio bus system the SITP Urbano<\/i>. Okay, we\u2019re good. We have come up with a name that is really hard to pronounce and without reference to what we were looking for, the already established Transmilenio brand. But what the hell, we have a new bus system, the SITP Urbano<\/a>.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s build the buses, give them their SITP (I am never sure if it is SITP or SIPT) logos, add their unifying blue color, and give them a sophisticated new electonic access system, and get them onto the streets of the city as fast as we can. But wait, shouldn\u2019t we have a public education plan in place first, tell people what we are doing, build up to an official launching?\u00a0 Nah. Shouldn\u2019t we have vending machines that issue the new sophisticated bus passes at designated bus stops?\u00a0 Nah. Where will people purchase these passes needed for bus entry? People will figure it out on their own. They really don\u2019t need us to tell them what we are doing. Our citizens are very smart!<\/p>\n Guess what. We have had SITP Urbano buses roaming the streets of Bogot\u00e1 for over a year now and almost nobody knows how to access these buses. We add new routes regularly, monthly it seems. We now have quite a lot of blue SITP buses plying our streets, adding to our urban congestion, traveling their routes generally empty of passengers.<\/p>\n It does not help matters that the designers of the system forgot to provide an easily identifiable means of recognizing where these buses are going, an electronic destination or bus number easily visible at night, for example. No, a non-descript placard, impossible to read, propped up on the interior bus windshield proports to tell you, if you have hawk vision, where the bus in question might be going.<\/p>\n But never mind where the bus is going, how do you pay to get on one of these buses. No, you cannot use cash as you can on the buses being replaced. Nope, you cannot use a Transmilenio electronic card, used throughtout the Transmilenio system. And so?<\/p>\n