Bogotá Mayor Speaks! Mamdani Haters Should Know That Buses In Colombia Are ‘Excellent’
MADRID — Take that, Adams administration apologists!
Haters lost their minds earlier this year when Mayor Mamdani’s new Department of Transportation Commissioner Mike Flynn said he was looking towards world-class cities like Bogotá for inspiration towards remaking city streets.
But one person didn’t freak out: the mayor of Bogotá
That’s because the Colombian city has richly deserved its reputation for great bus rapid transit — offering up a model for moving tens of thousands of people per hour cheaply.
“For Bogotá, bus rapid transit has been key in the first phase of building a transportation system that is complete, that is integrated, and that at a lower cost can move a lot of people faster,” Mayor Carlos Fernando Galán told Streetsblog at the Bloomberg City Lab conference last week in Madrid.
Beyond its expansive bus rapid transit system, Bogotá is known for a bike lane network, and a popular weekly open street program called Ciclovía that’s a global example of prioritizing people over cars.
Obviously, the rage-baiting editors at Gothamist were well aware of Bogotá’s international reputation when they ran the headline, “Mamdani’s DOT Commissioner Wants NYC To Be More Like Paris, Bogotá, Tokyo,” in January. As if proving the genius of the clickbait headline, former Mayor Eric Adams’s chief of staff quickly jumped in with that uniquely toxic only-in-New-York combination of chauvinism and parochialism.
“I guess if your [sic] over 50, or live in any borough other than Manhattan your transportation needs are of no consequence. But hey let’s be like Bogotà [sic],” Frank Carone wrote on X, misspelling Bogotá.
Galán wasn’t aware that his city of 8 million high in the Andes was the subject of scurrilous comparisons by an embittered former New York City top official, but he was proud to say that Flynn and Mamdani should be inspired by Bogotá.
“Bus rapid transit can be an excellent compliment [to the subway], something that is part of a system,” he said. “The key is to understand the system as a system, not just one mode isolated from the other modes of transportation. If you can build a system where you understand what the [subway] can do, what BRT can do in other lanes, what other modes like bikes can do, for example. If you integrate everything in the corridors where each system can work better, you can find a solution.”
Bogotá’s BRT system, TransMilenio, has been operating for over 25 years and is widely touted as a success and an example for other cities to follow. In 2025, there were more than four million trips per day with a fleet of 10,509 buses. New York City’s bus system has a daily ridership of around 1.4 million, according to the MTA.
New York officials have talked implementing “true” bus rapid transit since the Bloomberg era. But the city has only gotten as far as Select Bus Service, which has some characteristics of bus rapid transit, like dedicated lanes, off-board payment, spaced out stops and all-door boarding, but does not function as true bus rapid transit.
Researchers in two separate reports last year urged the city and the MTA to take another look at BRT. And advocates are now pushing the Mamdani administration to integrate BRT into the redesign of 14th Street. Beyond closing the street to through traffic between Third and Ninth avenues, the street hasn’t been redesigned to specifically prioritize buses with true BRT treatments such as physical separation for bus lanes and raised boarding islands level with the bus doors.
At the same event, former DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan told Streetsblog that she looks forward to what Mayor Mamdani will do to set his administration apart.
“It’s really exciting to see him doubling down on his promises and so restarting the projects that were cancelled at the end of the last administration is a great down payment on a better future for New York City,” she said. “To see them moving forward with a slew of new projects, at a very strong pace, I am very excited about what he’s been able to do in the first 100 days and I am even more excited to see what he’s able to do in the next 100 days.”
Mayor Mamdani also wants to emulate “Ciclovía,” which has been running for over 50 years and closes off large swaths of city streets to car traffic to allow people to bike for hours with very little interaction with cars.
“I would explore a regular pedestrianization program on Sundays and holidays, taking inspiration from Bogotá and Mexico City,” Mamdani, told Streetsblog while he was running for office.
New York City’s Summer Streets program pales in comparison to Ciclovía, which happens every Sunday of the year and encompasses more than 62 miles of streets. New York’s Summer Streets program comprises just five days and covers just eight miles on the three Manhattan days.
Correction: An earlier version of this article quoted Mayor Galán as slightly overstating the number of passengers that can be moved via BRT in one hour. According to this report, the maximum is 56,000 people per hour per direction and the highest ever achieved is 43,000.
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