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In a short time, Bogota citizens will begin to see green buses of the Integrated Public Transport System (SITP) rolling through the streets of the city, although they have always been blue.
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In principle, 583 buses will be repainted, which were purchased in China by the operators and are due to go into operation this year. Of those cars, 462 are already in the country. In fact, 371 have remained for 3 or 4 months in a workshop yard near the San Martín meat processing sector, in the southwest.
The decision to change the image of the SITP buses is because the Bogotá mayor’s office wants citizens to identify the Euro VI technology electric and gas vehicles, which pollute the least, according to the TransMilenio company responded to this newspaper.
But other sectors, mainly the Council, consider that the change in the color of the buses is motivated by a political issue, and recall that Mayor Claudia López belongs to the Alianza Verde party.
The decision has also generated criticism of the Administration for the cost of this operation. Repainting each bus has a value of approximately 9 million pesos, for a total of about 5,300 million.
According to a source close to the SITP operators, it is expected that the first vehicles will begin to be brought to the Marco Polo plant on the Siberia-Cota road these days. In fact, there they are already making adjustments and receiving personnel to begin that work. These vehicles would be from the consortium formed by Grupo Exprés and Somos K, which will not assume the cost.
The decision to change to green would have been made a few months ago; however, it had not been executed at cost to the city. For this reason, as it transpired, the mayor’s office looked for a company to sponsor the modification.
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When consulted by this newspaper, Felipe Ramírez, manager of the TransMilenio company, confirmed that the Euro VI gas and electric bus fleet will be painted green and assured that this cost will not be borne by the city, but by Enel-Codensa, At first.
It should be remembered that the District is the majority shareholder of this company. Enel-Codensa abstained from commenting on the color change of the SITP buses and the purpose.
“The color change is not going to be done in any of the buses that are already running. That is very important because it does not have any additional cost associated, it is about new buses that are going to enter, the electric ones and Euro VI ”, he explained.
The idea, he added, is that the electric buses that are tendered from now on arrive in the city with the color green and not blue. The manager also clarified that the process of adaptation and preparation of the new SITP buses to start operating “is very long” and that, despite the pandemic, “It is within the times.” “We have always said that the buses enter at the end of this year and the beginning of the next,” he said.
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One of the first to come out to criticize the decision of the current district administration was former mayor Enrique Peñalosa. “We with our TransMilenio manager María Consuelo Araújo bought 500 electric buses that are arriving soon. The mayor has spent a long time getting the electric blue buses we bought green painted to see if she appropriates something from them. Show”.
The councilor Last Thursday, Lucía Bastidas (Alianza Verde) sent a right of petition to the manager of TransMilenio in which she requests information on the decision to paint the Euro VI gas and electric buses green, and asks, among other things, for an explanation of the “technical and legal reasons for changing the color of the buses.”
“Neither given nor loaned these resources should be used to change the color of buses,” said Bastidas, who stated that in the current circumstances they should be “used
on social issues, such as employment, and not on a whim ”.
The councilor does not doubt that the green color is because the mayor wants “to put the stamp of her political party, that does not make any sense.” In addition, he warned that the SITP manuals expressly indicate that buses must be blue.
The president of the Council, Carlos Fernando Galán (Bogotá for the people), also assured that it is “An unnecessary expense” and said that it is better to invest that money “in improving energy service.”
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Galán recalled that the same people who said last year that the red uniforms of TransMilenio were to promote their campaign for mayor, now “they want to paint all new buses green. It seems to me that they contradict each other ”.
Carlos Carrillo (Polo Democrático), for his part, said that he had heard that they wanted to paint the SITP buses green, “but the truth is, I didn’t think the mayor would dare to do it.” He described the change as an “unnecessary and political” expense, and said that “the only thing missing is that they also paint them with the sunflower and the face of Antanas Mockus”.
Jorge Colmenares (Democratic Center) has the same opinion, for whom this expense is not justified in the current situation. “I hope it is not to encourage the mayor’s party (…). The mayor’s office has to explain why and why it changes color, ”said the councilor.
TransMilenio’s environmental explanation
Felipe Ramírez, manager of the TransMilenio company, explained that one of the flags of this administration is to improve the operation of the public transport system and the environment of the city, and within that strategy are the electric buses, which are “a very important step for the people of Bogota.”
Given the criticism for the relationship of the new color of the buses with the Alianza Verde party, he said that green has an environmental meaning and that in this case it has nothing to do with the mayor’s party.
He explained that the Euro VI gas and electric buses will be painted in that color so that “the city begins to see the change in this fleet that is helping the environment and begins to see that, in effect, there is an important change for the people of Bogota” .
GUILLERMO REINOSO RODRÍGUEZ
Bogota Editor
@ guirei24
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