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Two important attributes of Bogotá must be noted before reviewing the results of this study. The first is that TransMilenio involves two types of transit service integrated into one system. Following arterials crossing the city from north to south, and passing through the city’s urban core is the TransMilenio trunk service, characterized by large-capacity buses operating on

dedicated lanes. In the sprawling neighborhoods to the city’s north, south, and west,

TransMilenio takes the form of a feeder service, which resembles more conventional bus-based transit, with standard-sized buses operating in mixed traffic. Though the two services are part of the same system, they offer very different user experiences.

The second attribute is that households in Bogotá are somewhat spatially segregated according to socioeconomic status. Higher-wealth households are concentrated near the urban core and are underrepresented in feeder-served neighborhoods. Lower-wealth households are distributed more broadly across the city, but are more likely to be located in feeder-served neighborhoods than in neighborhoods served by the main trunk lines. Thus, right from the start, the implementation of TransMilenio meant something different to households from higher- and lower-wealth segments of the city’s population.

This segregation influenced the analytical approach I followed and the interpretations and policy implications of the results. Among higher-wealth households, I examined the impacts of access to trunk stations only on vehicle ownership. Among lower-wealth households, I tested the impacts of trunk and feeder access on vehicle ownership and on non-car mobility. Thus, the results and my interpretations of them are couched both in terms of wealth and service type received.

Vehicle ownership

Among higher-wealth households, I found that access to BRT trunk stations (location within 400m from a trunk station) was associated with a sharp drop in the odds of vehicle ownership from the pre-test to the post-test. The strength of that relationship decreased with increasing distance from a station, and leveled off after about 500m.

I found no statistical evidence that the supportiveness of neighborhood-level urban form affected vehicle ownership among higher-wealth households. Urban forms along the trunk corridors were, nearly across the board, more supportive of transit and nonmotorized travel than

elsewhere in the city, raising the possibility that urban form is confounding the relationship between trunk access and vehicle ownership. However, the weakening of the trunk access/vehicle ownership relationship with increasing distance from a trunk station lends support to the

conclusion that access to the trunk system did indeed exert a negative influence on vehicle ownership among higher-wealth households.

Among lower-wealth households, my initial models suggested (1) that trunk access did not have a significant impact on the odds of vehicle ownership, and (2) that moderate access to the feeder service (location within 400-800m from a feeder stop) was associated with a small and unexpected increase in the odds of vehicle ownership. Distance-based models showed no

significant relationship between feeder access and vehicle ownership, however, suggesting that the cause of the uptick in vehicle ownership in feeder-served neighborhoods might not have been due to the introduction of the feeder service itself, but to other concurrent and spatially co-located policy interventions within the feeder service area.

The differential impacts by wealth and service type in Bogotá are not unique to this study. Other researchers have found differential impacts of TransMilenio as well. For example, Lleras (2003) found that TransMilenio’s introduction resulted in significant travel time reductions for trips originating in trunk-served neighborhoods, but increases in travel times for trips

involving a feeder bus, compared to travel times for similar trips made via the conventional service prior to TransMilenio. These findings suggest that the mobility benefits (in terms of travel time and reduced vehicle ownership pressures) of TransMilenio have accrued primarily to higher- wealth households. The impacts of these benefits are reflected in property values: TransMilenio has been associated with increasing demand for moderate and high end residential properties along the trunk lines (and to a lesser extent in feeder-served neighborhoods), but not for lower- value housing with either type of service (Rodríguez and Targa, 2004; Muñoz-Raskin, 2010). The picture became more nuanced when I incorporated urban form measures into the models. Regardless of the cause of the uptick in vehicle ownership among lower-wealth, feeder-

served households, I found that supportive urban form – in particular, increasing proximity to destinations and support for nonmotorized travel – moderates the relationship between vehicle ownership and feeder access. Specifically, in feeder-served neighborhoods with low levels of destination proximity and support for nonmotorized travel, the relationship between feeder access and vehicle ownership is positive. But in feeder-served neighborhoods with high levels of

destination proximity and support for nonmotorized travel, the relationship between feeder access and vehicle ownership is negative.

In other words, when the introduction of BRT service is coupled with supportive urban form in lower-wealth neighborhoods, the apparent negative impacts (with respect to vehicle ownership pressures) of the change on lower-wealth households are lessened, and in some cases reversed, even when the only BRT service available is the lower quality feeder service. This suggests the importance of coordinating transit interventions with urban development policies that support those interventions, particularly in lower-wealth neighborhoods.

Mobility

In Chapter 5, I found no evidence that mobility, measured in terms of tour frequency or travel purpose diversity was significantly related to BRT access among car-less lower-wealth households. Of the urban form measured tested, only proximity to destinations showed a significant relationship with mobility. In the pre-test and among control-area households in the post-test, proximity to destinations was positively related to each of the mobility outcomes, as expected. However, among feeder-served post-test households, proximity to destinations was either insignificant or negatively associated with mobility.

Limitations in the data, design, and analytical approach may be obscuring the

relationships between the built environment – including BRT access and urban form – and travel behavior among lower-wealth households. I discussed these limitations briefly at the end of Chapter 5, and I revisit them in more detail in the next section of this chapter.

Despite these limitations, however, it is surprising that there was no significant relationship between TransMilenio access and any of the travel outcomes examined.

TransMilenio represented several substantial changes in transit service provision, even in the feeder areas. These changes include faster travel speeds, greater reliability, and improved safety for passengers and other road users. But TransMilenio also brought overcrowding and higher fares, particularly for riders whose travel patterns include TransMilenio-served and non-served areas, because at the time the data was collected, users had to pay fares in two different transit systems. For households whose mobility patterns aligned well with the conventional system prior to TransMilenio, the shift to BRT likely meant a sharp drop in level of service. Even though I did not see significant differences in non-car travel patterns for TransMilenio-served versus un- served households, the riots of 2012 over service inadequacies, overcrowding, and rising fares are a clear indication that large segments of the population of Bogotá are deeply dissatisfied with the new system. Whether the service shortcomings that have caused this dissatisfaction are due to mismanagement and delayed rollout of new lines, or because of the system’s inherent inability to serve lower income travelers (or both) is hard to tell. Regardless of the cause, however, the dissatisfaction underscores the need to better understand existing travel patterns and mobility needs of all users before investing in a new service.