For Francisco Martínez (*)
What happened to the project has caused Transantiago a high level of local excitement, social and political, also capturing good deal of interest from academia (national and international) interested in public policy. To this have happened and will happen, several corrective actions, as the Minister has addressed the Cortázar, and attempts to understand and explain what happened, as is the case of the Chilean Parliament's Committee has issued a report of its investigation distributing responsibilities and justifications; come, certainly more political and technical reports, and other actions.
This is a case of great interest to be analyzed from the perspective of the evolution of economic and social systems, which monitor the systems with special focus on its dynamics. The apparent collapse in this case, coupled with the fact that we try to follow in the direction of the changes made, showing is a big deal in this regard, although much higher or lower settings, makes this experience very unique.
is necessary to begin describing our object of analysis. Due to its complexity, we can conceive of public transport (STP) in Santiago as a system composed of several subsystems, operators and consumers, with great interaction with each other in what the market called TP. In turn, STP interacts with other transport systems that define the urban transport system, and private (cars) and goods transport (trucks), all of which utilize a scarce resource that is the road infrastructure, that being poor causes congestion. Following the description, the STP is a part of the urban system, where several other systems interact, on one hand the commercial and residential activities, to compete for land use, and secondly the environment with which it interacts consuming part of its clean air. Finally, the urban system is embedded in the national system.
This brief and limited description sets out four in ascending hierarchies are agents, transportation, city and nation. It also defines responsibilities for the use of scarce resources: time (Congestion), space (infrastructure), air and economic resources. Among the systems there are flows of interaction between higher and lower levels, in that the total resources available in a subsystem depend on processes occurring at the top level, for example in the urban system and resources are distributed in the lower level occurs competition for resources between transportation subsystems. In the upper set and at the bottom, what processes are controlled by available resources.
A novel feature of the evolutionary view is that means not only financial resources but also several elements that restrict the ability of developing a system. In this case it should be mentioned, at least, financial resources (funding), the political-administrative (institutional), human capital (education, knowledge, experience) and infrastructure. Another feature of this view is its recognition that systems are subject to findings and different impulses that keep in constant movement. When these impulses are lower, the systems tend to recover, when they are older evolve to other states clearly differ in their use of resources and organization, a process that is accompanied by instability on the one hand and innovation on the other. Third feature: the impulse may come from internal actions system, external actions of other systems on the same level or higher-level external actions which modify the conditions substantially. Fourth feature, the systems are subjected simultaneously to slow and fast changes, the former are predictable and easy to adapt the latter are less predictable and accumulate until the system can not hold more in its original condition. Fifth and last, the socio-economic developmental systems have memory and anticipation, unlike other ecological systems.
Taking this conceptual description of the dynamics underlying the process faced Transantiago, we try to explain what happened and try to anticipate what is coming. Urban transport was at a well-balanced long. The description of a well to imagine stability and high resistance to change that had accumulated by way of private sector and the political structure and laws. Moreover, outside the well system, in particular the dynamics that have adopted other systems or markets in the country over the past 30 years, caused the balance shaft is slowly transformed into a top very unstable, even with a small well (no deeper) even in the top. Not a huge destabilizing force required for the system to prove its instability, was observed when Owners of buses (to their surprise) failed to use the classic mechanism of failure to return to the traditional balance, thereby unleashing a process of striking change, as are the transitions from one steady state to another.
Admittedly, there was a degree of anticipation of interest in this process of instability by technical institutions (universities and government), who had expected a new well which could be achieved a new stable equilibrium, called the Program Santiago Urban Transport (PTUS) , within which was a well designed interior called Transantiago. It is remarkable that such a design, consider the dynamics systems that define the global context for the design, consisting of the urban system, and higher still, the economic system, social and environmental situation and the globe. For example, consider the improvement of school location (urban system), the need to optimize the use of cars (transport system), demands to reduce pollution (urban environmental system) and energy (global warming). It also addresses the institutional problem, as one of the main shortcomings to innovate in the urban system and achieve long-term goals set. Another interesting indicator is that defined an index to measure how positive New Balance which are crossed: the percentage of passengers on public transport Shall remain stable over time. The interesting thing about this indicator is that it responds to higher processes, such as economic growth very significantly affecting the increase in the purchase and use of cars, and other indicators such as the price system.
happened that the conditions for creating the well PTUS not materialized, but the well Transantiago materialize under a certain design. In this scenario, the evolutionary process of public transport started, but rolling down a concourse without finding that it would host PTUS well for stability. This continues today, ie Transantiago can evolve in many directions because it is immersed in a system that will give conditions for a stable equilibrium. To illustrate, there is no guarantee that Transantiago success in keeping the modal split at some level or rank, or the city with or without Transantiago evolve into a state of greater or smaller, or that operators be able to establish an attractive business, etc.
In my opinion, the main cause of failure in implementation lies in the precarious PTUS institutional component, ie the anticipation of the technicians could not change the political and institutional conditions to govern the process of change, even when they were established in PTUS own, but instead there was such a political component to drive change that destabilized urban transport. In the absence of the necessary institutions, Transantiago was developed project from the highest political level, which included the role of presidents and ministers. With these actors relevant variables were discussed at that level the political system, but concern was inhibited step (financial and technical resources) for a suitable design in detail and a change control process that ensure coordination actors that make up the Transantiago.
The year 2007 began with the implementation of the project is unleashed surprise the initial collapse of the system at the operational level, but simultaneously supports the participation and commitment of the operators and the Government. The latter has sought to reduce the instability of the system with emergency measures, while maintaining the orientation and overall project design. It has focused on contracts with operators, the upward adjustment of the fleet, the implementation of fleet management systems and the new form of integrated fare payment and electronic, and improve operations in some stops. Another issue of high political impact has been publicly funded. This describes a mature setting, governed by the vulnerability of actors and the emergence of innovation, not only in what had been designed, but in the form of a variety of proposals on how to organize the system to restore stability. The diaspora of views covering the entire spectrum, from nationalizing everything, including subsidies, through the restructuring of routes. The instability is observed not only in the in a variety of views, but still more in the fact that some of them break up fees deeper ideological parties where you wield, causing great instability in the parties themselves.
Could stability be reduced with more timely and gravitating action of some actors political or technical? This is the question I tried to answer the Parliamentary Committee. The evolutionary approach does not fully answer the question but does see that the decisions reached at the highest possible, thus integrating the entire political system of government. Second, the lack of predictability and surprise disaster, despite the conceptual advance that he shows to address a larger problem such as PTUS required to take a political risk also increased, on which there was no recognizable benefit or perception of increased cost was going to happen. Example of tasks for a new institutional framework are many, including address the issue of right of way for users of the transport system leading to policies of exclusive lanes and congestion pricing, tariffs and subsidies to public transportation, the disabled, students, and other items included in the PTUS.
This analysis suggests that our institutional system requires fundamental reform, giving it a more permanent capacity to adapt to innovation. This is the first lesson from the experience of Transantiago, and how it creates an effective change in the institutional order will depend not only how we face similar transformation processes, but imagine the possibilities of even deeply innovative new processes. Without an adequate institutional framework, to incorporate greater stakeholder participation, greater recognition of the expertise and greater decentralization of power, the natural reaction of an evolving system is to delay the changes, although they are clearly identified in light of the slow variables that observed in larger systems. Procrastination is a conservative policy that inhibits innovation in favor of stability, but at the cost of bringing the systems to the ends of their passing ability after the collapse.
The vision presented here puts its focus on long-term dynamics of the urban system and arises from both the reflection on evolutionary systems that integrate the economic, social and environmental, as the experience of Transantiago. That is, is itself part of the evolutionary process. I can not stress the importance of this perspective, since the current instability of the system is essentially a unique opportunity for our country that already pay the cost, which consists in learning to build more sustainable and adaptive systems, which have an impact on the way to make policy under changing external environments such as climate and the rapid growth seen in our economy.
(*) Academic Division Transportation Engineering, University of Chile
Member Millennium Institute for Complex Engineering Systems
Director of International Centre for Sustainable Urban Researcher
Chilean-German Project "Risk Habitat Megacities" .
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