Santiago’s transport system faces public outrage, by Guillaume Bolland (Diplomat Le Monde)

T.It rains Rush-hour subway commuters rummage through the station’s concrete pillars as they make their way to the northeastern business district of Greater Santiago (GS) at Baquedano Station, 32 meters below ground. The station’s main exit has been closed since it was damaged during protests known as the Estalido Social (Social Explosion) in October 2019.

At 6:45 am, 54-year-old Erika Molina was waiting for a bus in the densely populated city of Seronavia, west of Santiago. She doesn’t use the subway. And I wouldn’t even be sure to secure a seat for her,” she told me. Every morning she wakes up at her six o’clock for her job as a nanny and housekeeper. increase. Her journey to work spans her 7 of her 34 municipalities in the city. Her employer lives in the affluent Las Her Condes suburb in the northeast, about 30 km away. Molina came to Santiago in 2010 in search of her job. She made her 650 km journey by bus from Traigen, a southern town whose railway station is on the verge of collapse since the line closed in the 1990s. She was also drawn to the wide range of shops and services in the city center. “I had no idea you lived so far away,” she said, still watching the bus.

Between 1900 and 1960, migration from the countryside increased Santiago’s population from about 300,000 to 2 million (according to the latest 2017 census, more than 7.1 million are now in GS). live in the country, which is more than a third of the country’s total population). As the city grew and its congestion problems worsened, Santiago turned to other big cities like Paris, London and New York for answers. Support for building a metro system to complement overgrown bus services grew.

The plan was approved in October 1968 under President Eduardo Frey Montalba (1964-70), and the first phase of construction was completed within seven years by a French-Chilean consortium. Ten years later, (…)

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