The Municipality of Córdoba must resolve in the coming months whether to call for a new tender for the urban passenger transport scheme or to extend the current one for one year.
As it is a vital issue for the city and its surroundings, the decision will most likely be taken after the elections. If so, will it become a lynchpin in the impending campaign? Will the candidates publicly discuss the issue? The people of Cordoba should inform themselves and be aware of what is at stake.
The current collective scheme was launched in March 2014 with a 10-year contract. The term expires, then, in March 2024. But the regulatory framework allows it to be extended for one year, so it could be in force until March 2025 for the next administration to resolve.
It is the most likely scenario. Not only because the current Cordovan mayor is the Peronist candidate for governor and will not do anything in the municipality that could affect his image, but also because the economic crisis continues to cause so much uncertainty that business groups willing to make a multimillion-dollar investment to forcefully relaunch a new system.
Because here is the key element on which the candidates for mayor of the capital should present their proposals: the current scheme, except for some minimal modifications, has the same characteristics as the one implemented in 1987.
35 years have passed and, of course, the city is not the same as then: today it is necessary to develop an alternative for a metropolitan area that concentrates more than two million inhabitants, with a fairly narrow public road, where the groups coexist with the cars, motorcycles, bicycles, skateboards and a significant number of pedestrians, as well as taxis and remises.
If you look at the statistics, more and more people are moving on their own from one point of the city to another. The ticket cut has been falling year after year since before the pandemic. Rounding up, in 2018 171 million tickets were cut; in 2019, 163 million; the following two years were under the effect of the long quarantine due to the coronavirus and various associated restrictions, and in 2022 only 124 million tickets were cut, almost 25% less than four years ago.
It is that the collective has ended up providing a low-quality service. Since the frequencies are not met, no one knows how much time they have to waste at the stop or how many cars will pass full until they can finally get on one.
When the user cannot trust the system and has some other option, he chooses the most secure one. That is the starting point of a vicious circle where the bus ends up cutting fewer tickets and transferring exclusively to the social sector that cannot do without it.
The future transportation system in the capital must emerge from a public debate, in which all of society can participate.