http://tags.library.upenn.edu/tag/transportation_policy+car_free_day+transportation PennTags Feed http://tags.library.upenn.edu/makerecord/url/17650 http://tags.library.upenn.edu/makerecord/url/17650 <div id="headline"> <h2><br /></h2><p>Bogota's urban happiness movement</p><p>&nbsp;From living hell to living well: A radical campaign to return streets from cars to people in Colombia's largest city is now a model for the world </p> </div> <div id="author"> <p class="byline"> CHARLES MONTGOMERY </p> <p class="source">From Saturday's Globe and Mail</p> <p class="article-date">June 25, 2007 at 4:32 PM EDT</p> </div> <p> On a clear, cloudless afternoon, Enrique Pe&ntilde;alosa, former mayor of Bogota, leaves his office early in order to pick up his 10-year-old son from school. As usual, he wears his black leather shoes and pinstriped trousers. As usual, he is joined by his two pistol-packing bodyguards. And, as usual, he travels not in the armoured SUV typical of most public figures in Colombia, but on a knobby-tired mountain bike.</p> <p> Mr. Pe&ntilde;alosa pedals through the streets of Santa Barbara in Bogota's well-to-do north side. He jumps curbs and potholes, riding one-handed, weaving across the pavement, barking into his cellphone with barely a thought for the city's notoriously aggressive drivers.</p> <p> On most days, this would be a radical and perhaps suicidal act. But today is special. </p> <p> Ever since citizens voted to make it an annual affair in 2000, private cars have been banned entirely from this city of nearly eight million every Feb. 1. On <em> Dia Sin Carro</em>, Car Free Day, the roar of traffic subsides and the toxic haze thins. Buses are jam-packed and taxis hard to come by, but hundreds of thousands of people have followed Mr. Pe&ntilde;alosa's example and hit the streets under their own steam.</p>