On Saturday February 10, the Chilean Government gave the go ahead for an ambitious plan to reform Santiago’s public system. That day it unveiled the much await public transit system, Transantiago.
Transantiago was designed as to replace a public transit system operated by an independent quilt of privateers who owned as many as one bus to a large fleet, part of some of the 8 thousand or so buses that clogged and raced through Santiago streets. Service was never a motto for the former system, which remains in place in the rest of the country. The former system depended on drivers capturing passengers charging them and then the driver would hand that money back to the bus owner in exchange for a percentage of its daily take.
That system meant passengers rode on buses that were converted trucks chassis, sat on dirty seats, heard the constant music piped by the driver, passengers took the bus on any point of the street and similarly got off anywhere they wanted. Buses and their lines would compete for passengers racing through the streets without care for other cars of pedestrian; the buses were responsible for a large portion of Santiago’s pollution; drivers would drive from one point of the city to another on trips that would last some four hours before setting back on its return route; passengers had no rights usually drivers would insult or curse at them and students were the most hated because they paid student fare.
That system was to change with the introduction of Transantiago. The new system was parcelled out to private companies that won bids for management areas and bought high-end buses, which would link feeder bus system with main thoroughfare routes and the subway. The system was to operate with GPS where a central control unit would regulate bus fleets, and passengers would pay with an electronic debit card collecting the fare for a ride that included transfers for up to 90 minutes.
That is how the system was designed and it was advertised as a new transit system that would put at its centre the user, it sold the system as one were passengers would have a greater quality of life, better rides, shorter trips and a longer spare time.
But since its introduction, it has been anything like that at all. Some of the companies that won the contracts to offer service have failed to produce buses for their routes; in fact, some companies were not structured as such. The centralized electronic GPS bus fleet system is not in place with just over half of the fleet having the electronic systems required.
Passengers have seen long waits for buses; they have had to walk for the first time more than a few street blocks to take the bus. Passengers could not understand the map of the city, because of lack of reading and writing comprehension, passengers had to get up earlier to travel to work and have arrived late.
Transantiago a public transit solution a plan set to improve the lives of Santiago residents has shown it self to be a system that will eventually work, but to date the system is working at meeting basic needs.
The new bus system has also unveiled how 40 years of free market of city land use and real estate speculation has transformed Santiago into an ugly dispersed city that has pushed to the outskirts of the city working families, the working poor and the marginalized. This mass of people has to travel some 40 kilometres each day to go to work and back home. People have to travel anywhere from two to three hours each day to work and then return home. It is that large mass of people that has been disenfranchised by the Transantiago, because buses have failed to meet their needs, they have to travel from the outskirts of the city transfer onto another bus before continuing to their destination.
The Government has tried daily to improve the system. The minister of transport has given the system 90 days before it is fully operational and has asked the passengers to understand the changes and be patient.
Protest have occurred on Santiago poorer districts that demand better services. Teenagers have taken to violent protests that include stoning buses, stoning police, set bon fires and even shots have been fired by demonstrators.
The subway has been the only system able to meet passenger demands, despite that capacity the subway has been forced to shut doors in some stations to reduce the passenger numbers on the train platforms and stairs.
Transantiago will eventually turn out to be the system that was promised, but in its six weeks of implementation, it has become a hot potato for the Government as criticism continues to rise. The opposition parties demand the resignation of the minister of transport if not they charged they would introduce a constitutional charge against the minister.
To complicate matters an owner of two companies that won contracts to operate 40 percent of the Santiago fleet, wants the system dismantled and called for return to the previous system. The minister of transport told him to either put up or get out.
The system was well designed but it failed to take into account Santiago outskirts and the control systems that control the fleet have not been put into place, so to date Transantiago rides blind with inspectors on the streets trying to determine the schedules are met.
Transantiago remains the last hope for a quality public transit system, that it already has shown that pollution and noise pollution levels have decreased significantly, so it is essential that the system finally gets running on its four wheels and provide the quality it was promised to Santiago residents and that was to then implemented in the rest of Chile’s larger cities.
