Learning to enforce traffic rules by new means

Mimes and citizens help taking over corrupt local traffic police and enhance self and mutual

regulation

Antanas Mockus

Mayor of Bogotá 1995-8, 2001-2003

antanas@corpovisionarios.org

Citizen’s Cards

Trust

Reputation

Social

recognition

Social norms

Regulatory Mechanisms

Fear oflegal sanction

or moral obligation to obey the law

Admiration for the law

Fear of guilt

or moral obligation to follow personal moral

criteria

Moralself-gratification

Fear of social

rejection

Legal norms Moral norms

¿Will the mimes put fines?

Mobility

Mimes

instead of

Traffic Police

in a small

part of

Central

Bogotá

succeeded in

enforcing the

use of zebra

crosswalk

“Carrot Law”

(alcohol restriction), mimes, seat

belt , zebra

Traffic police change

Life protection 1991-93Deaths reduction in traffic accidents

585

697

1089

1284 12601341

914931878

834

745

13871301

0

200

400

600

800

1000

1200

1400

1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

No

. m

uert

es

Pre-hospital care

Some results in mobility

• Reduction of the rate of people killed in traffic accidents (from 24 to 8 per 100000; 7 in 2013)

• Priority given to maintenance of roads used by public transport

• Incorporation in contracts for buiding new infrastructure of five years of full maintenance

• Law obedience even without legal punishment

• People rushed to pay valorization (trust in government)

• The Metro discussion. After making an commitment with National Government to follow technical

advise. Flexible Bus Mass Transport was given priority (112.9 Kms of Transmilenio lanes built until

today, 1.926.985 daily trips which cover 30% of the public transport demand in the city).

Main enforced norms with the help of citizens’ paticipation

• Do not mix driving with alcohol

• Use seatbelt

• Do not park on sidewalks (initially we used physical barriers: “bollards”)

• Obey traffic lights and zebra crosswalks for Pedestrians and Drivers

• Respect the shifts system for circulating (40% cars out during rush hours)

• Taxi drivers give full change

Legal sanction: a sort of last resort

Of course, infrastructure also counts.

Before

New Transportation ModelTransmilenio – Massive Transportation System

After

New Transportation ModelAlternative Mobilization – Bikes on common days

• 230 km network of bike-ways (“ciclorrutas”)

• Bike trips: 1% (1998) → 4% (2003-4)

• A crucial antecedent: bike use in Ciclovía (120 km, 7h on Sundays and holidays, more than 1’600.000

people, begun in 1974)

Transport Challenges

• As economy grows, people buy more cars.

• Bogotá has set the goal of growing its road network in a 5% in 4 years.

• There are still obstacles in culture for using alternative transportation such as bicycles (rainfall, sweat and odours).

• “Bogotá is landlocked but it has ciclovia”. A massive exercise. The infrastructure has unexpected new use new fields for citizens regulatory action

• An example of second degree regulatory behaviour

What to find at public transport

• Beyond the reliability or comfort in public transport you find unknowns

“Half the work on civic culture is in transport”

Paul Bromberg.

• Respect between strangers as one of the overarching objectives in Bogota.

• Moving from total ignorance to anger (conflict between the bus driver andpassengers because of the bus stop).

• It is not only a problem of Bogotá, the civic culture survey shows the 8% ofpeople say they have going on a bus that was going too fast.

Just with education the speed of city’s transport could be improved by 20%. But it

would take 20 years.

Japanese Agency -JICA- expert.

The Future: Alternative and Public Transportation

Beyond economic and legal means, beyond the appeal to consciousness it will be necessary to built social norms against car use and against sedentary lifestyle.

Let’s hope that moral satisfaction and social recognition, more than guilt and shame, will shape our behavior.

Public transportation is your best ally in the fight against sedentary lifestyle

Future Public transport

• Politically the threat of total freedom is used in the imposition of tariffs and organizing map against possible strikes.

• More sophisticated forms of public transport are very expensive (about 26,000 users filtrate without paying in Transmilenio daily) and become system vulnerable to “shortcut culture ”.

• Multimodal Model: Cycling to some distance and then take bus to the final destination, and vice versa.

“Life is Sacred”

Intervention in the central cemetery. Bogotá, Colombia.