Comments on: Santiago, Chile: New Transportation System

By: Here We Go (Or Not, on the CTA) « Media SITREP

Here We Go (Or Not, on the CTA) « Media SITREP — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 01:27:46 +0000

[...] Tomorrow we Chicagoans are liable to be a grouse a lot, it will take a lot to reach the frustrations that citizens of Santiago, Chile are having with their TranSantiago. Global Voices has details on the crisis and last week’s protests– which will apparently resume on Wednesday. Writing for OhMyNews, so does Alan Mota: The program upgraded the bus structure, with new and more modern buses and a system of magnetic cards that was supposed to speed the process of paying for it. But a mistake in planning ended up with delays in the upgrading of the buses without keeping the old ones in the streets, which led transportation in Santiago to a halt. [...]

By: frances thompson

frances thompson — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 11:58:32 +0000

Having been informed of your new transport system by a close friend who lives near Santiago and works in the city I am reminded of how a similar system was received in ny area of South Yorkshire,England a few years ago.It takes time for these new things to be accepted and of course there are faults to be ironed that is how things evolve and hopefully improve.

By: Alan

Alan — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 02:05:49 +0000

At the same time the Transantiago was on its debut, I was riding a great bus in NYC, with its very good way of paying, just a little expensive. So in that time I was thinking, how cool it would be to have this kind of bus system in my city (Santiago). Time later, just arrived to my hotel, I was surfing the internet and got the very bad news of the Transantiago, it wasn´t working that good. I came back to Chile and of course rode a bus. I was pretty impressed with it; all the bad news what I had read, seemed to be a lie, everything was working great; in the bus-stop I didn´t wait a minute for it, I didn´t have any problem with my Bip! card (the card used for paying the transportation) and actually I felt as well as in the New York bus, and definitively felt much much better in the Santiago subway than the New York´s.
In summary I´d say that this new system is going pretty good, there´s not a doubt that it needs time, but not only the system and its drivers, also the population; I could see people very bad educated not making the things better. So congratulations to Santiago, the capital of south america and the developing countries and please pacience, every change needs time.