Destination gridlock: car chaos is choking the urban South. But Stephanie Boyd discovers a ray of hope in Lima's hidden dreams of electrical public transit

New Internationalist, Jan-Feb, 2001 by Stephanie Boyd

A lonely row of concrete pillars stretches endlessly into the smog of a grimy Lima dawn in the middle of the busy Avenida Aviacion. They are flanked by a constant stream of cars, mini-vans and buses spewing curls of black exhaust. The decade-old pillars represent the unfulfilled plans of a socialist government to connect the capital's outlying `cones,' or low-income neighbourhoods, with a massive, high-speed electric train. Wracked by a corruption scandal, the project was shut down just before President Alberto Fujimori came to power, chaining Peru to neoliberal reforms and a doctrine of privatization.

For Fujimori the abandoned train was a monument to his predecessor's corruption and inefficiency. But as the early morning sun struggles to break through the haze, the pillars reflect brightly painted murals of flowers, trees and rivers. Schoolchildren and a near-forgotten government commission have kept the idea alive. And now, with Fujimori gone, Lima's Greens prepare to conic out of the closet to battle the city's car epidemic.

Unbeknownst to most Peruvians, the dusty offices of the `Autonomous Authority for the Special Mass Electric Transport Project System for Lima and Callao' weathered out the Dark Ages of Fujimori's rule, tucked in a small corner of the Stalinesque Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Commerce building.

`How did you know we were here?' Miguel Torres, the association's president, asks nervously. `I usually don't give interviews to the press -- for political reasons the Government has wanted to keep this project quiet until outside funding was secured.'

They have been working `very quietly, almost secretly,' he explains, investing $200 million to purchase five trains and bringing 9.8 kilometres of track into operation. But with a government frightened of state-run services, the train's advancement was kept hush-hush. The plan was to seduce private investors onboard with impressive flow charts highlighting oodles of potential profits. Torres has been at the helm for four years without any takers. The targeted poor clients just cannot afford their most basic needs, let alone competitive subway fares. It's a dilemma throughout Latin America -- governments towing the neoliberal line but desperately in need of safe and clean mass public transit.

Environmentalists counter such IMF-induced fears of government waste by showing that electric mass transit makes fiscal sense by reducing costly road-building and maintenance. Then there is the strain on medical systems from auto accidents and diseases related to poor air quality. Plus, electric trains make social sense, cutting down on commuting time and stress-related maladies exacerbated by continual traffic jams.

The social and medical costs of Latin America's growing car epidemic are no joke, with more than 100 million people exposed to air contamination above World Health Organisation (WHO) limits. The results: a myriad of health problems from respiratory diseases to heart ailments and pneumonia. Children and the elderly are especially vulnerable. In Lima, respiratory infection rates for those aged five and younger are on the rise, according to the city's Grau Emergency Hospital. Some 80 percent of the city's air contamination comes from motor vehicles, exposing the population to nitrogen and carbon dioxide, lead and particulate matter. Major intersections register levels of particulates at least double WTO danger-limits, prompting health authorities to warn citizens against frequenting such areas. No easy task if you commute every day.

It's the same story throughout congested capitals of the South from Lagos to Jakarta to Mexico City. In Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, levels of lead in the air are about eight times higher than the WHO's `safe' levels, worse even than notoriously contaminated cities like Mumbai, India, or Mexico City.

Torres also cites crowded motorways combined with unenforced traffic regulations that have led to an explosion in traffic accidents -- with 45 per cent of violent deaths in Lima the result. He is quick to add that such grave statistics are all the more reason for a safe, enviromentally sound mass-transportation system. Some 80 per cent of Lima's nearly eight million citizens have no access to a car and must rely on a chaotic web of smog-belching private mini-vans, rumbling old buses and unlicensed taxis. Numerous Majority World cities with little public transportation are over-run by private mini-van buses. Names may vary -- matatus in Nairobi, combis in Lima -- but the reckless, competitive driving style, passengers packed like sardines and the use of the cheapest, lead-ridden fuel are common standards of this cut-throat form of free-market transit.

Torres sees an opportunity not to be missed: `We have to catch these disgruntled passengers now and get them hooked on using mass-environmental transit before the economic situation improves and they start buying cars.' Indeed any urban planner is well advised to fear the encroaching car culture -- across the developing world a rising trend in automobile use has already brought dire consequences for human health. According to a 1999 Worldwatch Institute report: `If every nation had cars at the US rate, the world fleet would be five billion -- ten times larger titan today. With many cities already reeling from pollution and congestion created by cars, such a figure is incomprehensible.' Lima is already stressed with about 800,000 vehicles; weak, largely unenforced emission regulations and no requirements for safety certifications.