1370099 - Congestion impacts of non-motorized transport policies in Bogotá, Colombia

Highly motorized traffic is a major contributor to environmental externalities that reduce the health and quality of life in urbanized areas. Cities around the world are taking actions to improve the living spaces by limiting or prohibiting motor vehicles on streets. In Latin-American cities, the introduction of improved infrastructures that encourage non-motorized transport has gained popularity in recent years. In Colombia, the city of Bogotá expanded the network of protected bicycle lanes during the COVID 19 outbreak, to reduce vehicle emissions and to prevent the spread of respiratory diseases in an overcrowded public transport, both by inducing cycling as a mode of transport. However, questions remain on the effectiveness of this measure on reducing congestion, since the city approach was, in multiple important corridors, to reduce road space for motor vehicles by putting in place hard protecting barriers over one lane, making it bicycle exclusive.

Using crowdsourced information from WAZE, this study aims to examine the congestion impacts of the introduction of new policies to promote cycling in Bogotá. This study implements the econometric impact modelling method difference-in-difference (dif-dif). This method is usually used to capture the impact of an intervention (treatment) by comparing behaviours over time of a group of subjects who were exposed to a certain condition (the treatment group) with a group who were not (control group). The dif-dif method requires information from two time lapses; one before the intervention and the other after it takes place. This study will specifically focus on two time periods: (i) a month in 2019 or early 2020, and (ii) a month in 2021 or 2022 when new cycle-infrastructure became available, considering the moderating impacts of other spatially targeted transport policies and economic trends. The results of this ongoing research will indicate if there exist statistically significant changes in the congestion trends on those corridors affected by the inclusion of bike lanes, when compared with the trends in the non-altered roads. Conclusions will be drawn in the light of the city purpose of reducing congestion.