Saturday, May 31, 2008
FINANCIAL TIMES: Venezuela’s road to serfdom
Today’s FT reports on the ongoing traffic chaos in Caracas. Some Venezuelans are upset at the failure of a plan whereby Venezuela would provide subsidized fuel to the city of London, in exchange for transport and planning advice. How does one even begin to analyze the levels of stupidity involved here? Let’s start with what Ken Livingstone, the former London mayor who signed the deal, should have said to Chavez as his first piece of advice: DON’T SUBSIDIZE FUEL. Boris Johnson, to his credit, has cancelled the agreement, but Caracas remains a disaster."
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Livingstone was going to provide advice on three main aspects--1) garbage collection and recycling to reduce need for landfill sites (rellenos sanitarios), 2) plans to reduce traffic congestion, mainly by improving public transport, and 3) ways to reduce street crime, mainly by improving the police force and installing cameras.
ReplyDeleteThere were reasonable possibilities on recycling under 1), some limited possibility to create a more honest and efficient police force under 3) but not a hope in hell for solving the traffic congestion problem under 2).
Because of Caracas' topography, traffic pours down the surrounding hills into just a few main roads e.g. from La Trinidad and its areas into the autopista in Prados del Este and from El Hatillo and its areas into the main road of El Cafetal. These and others are tremendous bottlenecks. It is not practical to have bus services from all the urbanizations in the surrounding hills, so people must use their cars. Add to this that gasoline is cheaper than bottled water and you have an intractable problem.