Santiago de Chile and the Transantiago: Social Impact

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to identify the requirements of public transport modern-ization and resulting impacts on people's daily life and social inequalities, with specific regard to the case of Santiago de Chile. The public transport policy developed from a period of deregulation in the 1980s to reregulation since the late 1990s, which seems to have had significant impact on users' travel habits and competences. During the period of deregulation, the service was characterized by an uncoordinated, over-supply of private buses, complementary to the efficient but rather small public metro network. In order to eliminate the stigmatization attached to public transport as the " mode of the poor, " the period of reregulation finally culminated in the establishment of the " sophisticated Transantiago " system in February 2007. The Transantiago project envisaged total modernization of the transport industry by reorganizing the bus network under private operation, renewing the fleet and bus infrastructure, establishing advanced public regulation and monitoring tools, and introducing a tariff union with the metro and new electronic tickets. However, the design and implemen-tation process of this ambitious project failed, and in its first 2 years of existence, the Transantiago was increasingly rejected by parts of the population. This chapter consists of four basic parts. The first part presents the concept of motility, within the theoretical framework, and provides an appropriate explanatory approach to the Transantiago rejection. Moreover, methodological implications for J.-C. Bolay et al. (eds.), Technologies and Innovations for Development, DOI 10.1007/978-2-8178-0268-8_4, # Springer-Verlag France 2012 39 public transport planning and public responsibility for the provision of adequate transport services are highlighted. The second part of this chapter presents the basic data for Santiago de Chile and, more specifically, the Transantiago project. In this context, a brief overview of the technical and planning failures of the Transantiago is provided. The third part focuses on the results of our own empirical works and is made up of two segments. The first one consists of a case study on block level, including spatial analysis supported by a Geographical Information System (GIS) and a short survey of 50 residents. The second one considers individual attributes backed up by 40 in-depth qualitative interviews in five different boroughs. The last part provides some final remarks, highlighting the lessons learned concerning transport planning and related social drawbacks.