2022: Bogotá, Colombia

Seventeen years after its first Sustainable Transport Award in 2005, Bogotá, Colombia won the award again—this time, for transport interventions that expand safety and mobility for the city’s most vulnerable residents.

Soon after the COVID-19 pandemic began, Bogotá became one of the first cities in the world to create emergency bike lanes. 84 km were built, with 28 km becoming permanent and 46 km still in use today. The new bike lanes encouraged bike use to quadruple on some main roads. The COVID-19 changes were cemented with official policies, such as Acuerdo 804, which established biking as the priority means of transport in the city in future planning efforts. These built on previous goals formalized in the City’s 2020-24 Strategic Plan, including growing the number of cycle trips by 50% by 2024. The City also reconfigured street space to allow for better social distancing and pedestrianized streets once only served by cars. Over the course of one project, 17,000 square miles of street space were repurposed for pedestrian use.

To improve public and environmental health, the City of Bogotá has assembled a fleet of 1,485 electric buses for its public transportation system--placing the city among the three largest e-bus fleets outside of China. 350 buses have been deployed so far, and the switch will benefit low-income residents the most, whose neighborhoods have the most bus lines and highest air pollution levels in the city. Additionally, Bogota has begun a new program that provides exemptions to HOVs, vehicles with more than 2 passengers, from the city’s odd-even license restriction program. This program prevents half of the city’s cars from driving in peak times, but by allowing HOV exemptions, the city aims to encourage carpooling and expects to reduce car travel by 2 million kilometers weekly.

The City also worked to improve road safety with speed management programs that reduced speed limits and deployed traffic calming measures. The speed reduction on major roads brought a 21 percent decrease in traffic deaths in 2019 compared to 2015-2018 average, and a 28 percent decrease in 2020.

Travel safety efforts focused on some of Bogota’s most vulnerable residents, schoolchildren. The City found that 58 percent of student trips are taken on foot, mostly by low-income children. At the same time, pedestrians younger than 15 years old were twice as likely to die in a traffic incident than adults. To change this, Bogotá began a Kids First program that targets students who commute on foot, but also, focuses on providing transportation solutions to students who commute in the different transportation modes. Among other initiatives, the program created caravans escorted by adults, for the young travelers who commute to school, both on foot and by bike, which have so far helped more than 6,000 students in 2021 to get to class safely.

Bogotá will be joined by two honorable mention cities--Peshawar, Pakistan, and Tartu, Estonia. We look forward to celebrating these amazing cities, learning from them, and working with them for MOBILIZE programming throughout the coming months. We’d also like to thank the STA committee and the participation of all who nominated their city.

Since 2020, Zu Peshawar, the first Gold Standard BRT on the Indian Peninsula, has been moving over 250,000 passengers daily, providing access to the city for women, persons with disabilities, and youth. The system’s design, centered on the needs of people who need it most, is the highlight of achievements which earned the City of Peshawar, Pakistan its STA Honorable Mention in 2022.

This case study, co-developed with TUMI and TransPeshwar, discusses the efforts of inclusive transport planning guided by strong leadership and policies, resulting in the city’s shift towards sustainable mobility.

Since 2012, the City of Tartu, Estonia, 2022 recipient of an STA Honorable Mention, has been implementing programs, infrastructure, and policy that transformed the city into a model for sustainable, accessible mobility based on data, feedback from residents, and ambitious climate goals.

This case study, co-developed with TUMI and the City of Tartu, shows lessons learned from the approaches and tactics that the city utilized, turning setbacks of 2020 and 2021 into opportunities bolstering the city’s resilience and identity.

Watch all of the Mobilize Bogotá Events

Maeve Power