Borgen Magazine is a media outlet specialized in analyzing the fight against poverty. Recently, Borgen published an article on the role of Bogotá`s ‘Ciclorrutas’ as a tool to alleviate poverty and promote sustainability.
For Borgen, Bogotá is a benchmark in bicycle mobility. Its bicycle infrastructure is 550 km long and it´s currently under expansion. Through the development of these bicycle roads, Bogotá will eliminate 4.1 million car trips and seek that 10% of all the city´s trips are made through bicycle.
With this ambitious plan, the city not only aims to develop sustainable mobility but also helps the working classes and vulnerable households to improve their finances. Borgen Magazine notes that poverty levels have dropped in Bogotá thanks to the city´s bicycle infrastructure as a low-cost mobility option. In this sense, the article emphasizes the importance that the next plans for the expansion of bicycle infrastructure take into account the working-class neighbourhoods of the city.
Among the social and economic benefits of the development of Bogotá´s bicycle network, Borgen highlights:
- The creation of jobs thanks to the construction of new cycle paths.
- The reduction of the living costs of working-class families and vulnerable households that use the bicycle as their mode of transportation.
- The decrease in fossil fuel dependency.
- The democratization of the public space by generating more bicycle roads for poor neighbourhoods in the city.
