Bogotá’s mayor, Carlos Fernando Galán, launched this Friday a campaign against drivers registering their cars in municipalities around the capital. “Three out of ten cars circulating in Bogota do not pay city taxes, yet they contribute to pollution, traffic congestion, road wear and accidents,” he wrote in his paper. reel on social networks. He announced that the district will tighten movement restrictions for these vehicles starting in January. Vehicles will be given peaks and license plates, and they will be prohibited from driving on two Saturdays a month. “If you don’t want to wear a license plate on Saturday, register your car in this city,” he warned. Leaders of neighboring municipalities, which together with Colombia’s capital form a metropolitan area, are complaining and questioning the lack of coordination.
Peak-and-plate is a travel restriction introduced by the city in the late 1990s to ease traffic congestion and reduce the environmental impact of motor vehicles. Over time, some changes have been made and now cars with license plates ending with certain numbers are in circulation one day, and cars with other numbers the next day. It runs from Monday to Friday, from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. There are also important exceptions, such as electric and hybrid vehicles. Similarly, you can bypass restrictions by paying for permits, pickaxes, and solidarity plates. The Mayor also plans to take action on this last point. Vehicles registered outside the city of Bogotá will be charged a 50% surcharge compared to the 20% currently paid.
Galán justified his decision with figures showing that registrations in Bogota accounted for 37.3% of all Colombian registrations in 2012, but will only account for 13.7% in 2024. Although the number of vehicles circulating in the capital is increasing every year, the pace of registration is not the same, with many drivers choosing to register in other municipalities where fares are cheaper. The “logical thing” for the mayor is to counter this dynamic. “It is essential to guarantee that those who use Bogotá’s roads and create externalities will help us by paying their taxes,” he stressed. He said the capital has lost 1.1 billion pesos (about $300 million) in the past 10 years, which is critical to maintaining roads and traffic lights.
Jorge Rey, governor of the neighboring department of Cundinamarca, said the initiative had never been discussed at a meeting of the metropolitan region’s leaders and said it “could sound discriminatory.” “There is a legal history of aborted decisions without a consensus plan, like this one,” he warned in a speech at a festival promoting the ministry. In any case, he has maintained a conciliatory tone. “Bogotá is probably hurting something, but we didn’t know it hurt that much. Now we’re going to discuss whether we can find a cure for those diseases (…)”.
Less accommodating was the mayor of Soacha, a municipality bordering Bogota with a population of about 700,000, where registration fees cost about 300,000 pesos compared to 600,000 pesos in the capital. Julián Sanchez, better known as Parakeethas criticized President Gustavo Petro for a lack of dialogue and suggested that Mr Galán has double standards. Questions have also been asked about what will happen if Soacha imposes peaks and number plates on vehicles registered in the capital. “We need coordinated and, of course, joint decisions in this region,” he stressed.
The mayor’s opponents in the city also spoke out. Urivista city councilor Daniel Briceño criticized the additional costs to the public. “If Mayor Galán needs more money, what he should do is take the local mayor’s office away from a politician and invest that money wisely,” he said. “Why don’t La Carrera, Chia or Soacha do the same for us?” He asked, citing neighboring municipalities as an example.
Felipe Jiménez Ángel, Secretary of Administration and Planning in the Office of Mayor López (2019-2023) added a list of questions. “The immediate impact will be queuing up of desperate Bogota residents to change their license plates in the coming months,” he said. “If tourists arrive on the weekend and are not able to travel on Saturday, there will be less spending, less experience and less desire to return,” which will have a negative impact on tourism. He agreed with Lozano that the solution is to reach an agreement with surrounding municipalities to level registration fees.
On the other hand, some scholars defend the mayor. Juan Pablo Bocarejo, head of civil engineering at Universidad de los Andes and co-chair of the city’s mobility secretary with Enrique Peñalosa, said the measure was “fair.” “In many countries, it is compulsory to register your vehicle in the city you live in,” he said, adding that “some Bogota residents pay their taxes elsewhere, demand better infrastructure for mobility, and protest if they are asked to donate here.”
Although no start date has been set yet, it has sparked a debate about the dynamics of dialogue in metropolitan areas that has never fully begun. The mayor is aware that many Bogotá residents will be prompted to change their registration in the coming months before Saturday’s peak and license plates come into effect. “Bring your license plates to Bogotá and help improve mobility in this city,” he promoted at the kickoff of the license plate recovery campaign.
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