ansoncfit

A Day in the Life of the Pinky and the Brain Bus

(English Translation Below)

Cuando yo caminaba por Panamá Viejo, yo ví un hombre lavando su bus. Decidí a saludarle y decirle lo de mi proyecto. Luís era muy amable, dandome mucha información sobre el 1987 Blue Bird/International antiguo bus escolar de su padre, y me invitó a acompañarle y el chofer del bus, Edwin, el día sigiuente.

El día sigiuente, me reuní con ellos en frente de los barberías de la Plaza 5 de Mayo a las 8:00. Eso fue la segunda vez que habían pasado la parada, despues de empezar sus vueltas de Panamá Viejo a las 5:40. Yo abordé a y disfruté el día andando por Avenida Balboa en su ruta para Panamá Viejo (mira la linea roja en el mapa que yo hice).

8:05 – Luís and Edwin les digan a los pasajeros quienes quieren viajar a La Terminal de Albrook que desembarquen y cambien buses. Aunque buses de Panamá Viejo usualmente van para la Terminal, entonces se vuelvan y regresan por El Chorrillo, Edwin a menudo no va a la Terminal en las mañanas porque no hay bastante pasajeros allá.

8:10 – Edwin para el bus en el lado de la puente de Avenida 3 de Noviembre a Avenida de los Mártires. El orina en la llanta y un hombre con muletas aborda. Él llama pasajeros al bus en las paradas de Ancón, y Luís le da unos cuartos por la ayuda.

8:25 – Estamos esperando mas pasajeros en El Chorrillo. Álguien pregunta “¿Esperan cuanto para salir de aquí?” Edwin le contesta que vamos a salir cuando un otro bus viene. El otro ya viene, y salimos por las calles angostas para Calle 12.

8:35 – Estamos en Avenida Balboa/La Cinta Costera otra vez. Todos los asientos están occupados, y ocho personas estan parados.

8:45 – Luís pregunta, “¿Nádie para abajo del puente?” Nádie contesta, y por eso, evitamos el tranque caminando por el Puente Via Israel.

8:55 – Entramos el barrio Panamá Viejo, pasando por una area residencial por primera vez.

9:20 – Todos los pasajeros desembarcan en la ultima parada en Vía España. Edwin sale del bus para comprar sus boletos to rotulo. Mientras Edwin está comprando sus boletos, Luís y yo hablamos sobre la transformación de los buses viejos. Me dice que muchos turistas quien abordan su bus no saben que estuvo un bus escolar en EEUU. Edwin regresa, molestado porque no tenían El Chance.

9:30 – Luís les dice “No voy” a los que quieren abordar. Continuamos conversando sobre el reusar de los buses cuando manejamos para Panamá Viejo. Comprando en la subasta, los dueños panameños puenden comprar un bus usado por $4,000. Ellos cambian los cambios de automáticos para palancas, los que piensan son mas durables. Luís y Edwin felicitan la durabilidad de los diablos rojos y critican los buses con aire acondicionado, como los nuevos de Hyundai y Daewoo. Prefieren chassis de International para las máquinas, y para los buses, a Luís le gusta los de Thomas (mas de Blue Bird), porque son mejor para modificar con pintura.… Read the rest

Read Full Post | March 11 2011 | School Bus Migrations | 1 Comment » |

Taller Abdiel | Abdiel’s Garage

Edwin invited me to travel out to Abdiel’s Garage to fix the transmission of the Pinky and the Brain bus. Though it came from the US with an automatic transmission, the bus was outfitted with a manual transmission, which was now spontaneously shifting out of fourth gear into neutral. A young Nicaraguan mechanic was able to successfully rebuild the transmissions of a couple of different buses. Abdiel, the owner of the garage and the mechanic’s boss, enjoyed joking around and giving people a hard time. Listening to his banter, waiting around for him to pick up needed parts, having lunch, chatting with other bus owners, and translating bits of School Transportation News articles for them made the long, drizzly afternoon enjoyable.

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Gran Terminal Nacional de Transporte

One of my favorite places in Panama City was the Albrook Bus Terminal. Hundreds of diablos rojos pull into the thousand-foot-long local bus platform, and the pedestrian bridge from the Terminal to the adjacent Albrook Mall was an excellent spot from which to observe the buses. Almost all of these local buses are Type C former school buses. The breakdown of chassis manufacturers is, by my estimate, 80% International, 10% Ford, and 10% other. About half of the buses have Blue Bird bodies, and about half have Thomas bodies.

At the other side of the terminal, long-distance buses, with a wider range of body types and manufacturers, arrive at upper deck and depart from the lower deck. There is a 5¢ fee to access the long-distance boarding platforms, which is payable with a newly-implemented contactless smartcard system called Rapipass.

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Sights of Panama City

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Casco Antiguo

Casco Antiguo (The Old Compound) is the center of the second of Panama City’s three iterations. After the first site (Panama Viejo) was attacked by pirates, Spanish officials moved the city to the fortified peninsula. It flourished there, and the churches, plazas, and old streetcar tracks testify to the area’s former prosperity. As the city expanded north and east, Casco Antiguo eventually fell into disrepair. The neighboring area of El Chorrillo was especially hard-hit in the 1989 US Invasion, and the resulting blight spread.

In the last few years, Panama’s government has been encouraging investment in Casco Antiguo. The resulting gentrification is interesting – fancily restored boutique guesthouses next to the rubble of colonial buildings, gelaterias in front of crowded tenement dwellings. The history and historical preservation of Casco Antiguo was the subject of a number of conversations in Alianza Pro Ciudad. One member told me about how a greedy developer working on a project in Casco Antiguo’s main plaza tried to add an additional story to a historic building, only to have one of the walls collapse onto the street below. An architect described his careful preservation work with a rare stone roof and how they contrasted with a neighbor’s gaudy restoration efforts. His words seemed to sum up many of the developers’ superficial care for the neighborhood’s character and current residents: “They manipulate the term restoration for exploitation.”

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Manejar un Diablo Rojo | Driving a Red Devil

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Soberanía

Soberanía (sovereignty) is the name of, among other things, a beer and a national park in Panama. An afternoon hike I took through the Parque Nacional Soberanía brought into clear relief the centuries of colonial and imperial control that have made sovereignty such an important issue for Panamanians.

I started my journey at the Albrook National Bus Terminal, named after the US Air Force Base that used to occupy the site. Looking through the back window of the Gamboa-bound bus I was riding, I could see the imposing Canal Administration Building. Twelve years after the United States left the Canal Zone (the US residents of which had almost everything provided for them in what one Panamanian described as the closest the US has come to socialism) and turned over control of the canal to the Panamanian Canal Authority, the building still bears its name in English along the side. The bus continued, passing along the Gaillard/Culebra Cut, which the French began in 1881.

I got off the bus at the start of the Plantation Trail in the Parque Nacional Soberanía. The trail followed the route of the remains of the first asphalt road in Panama, which was constructed to improve access to the sugarcane crops being grown at the eponymous plantation. The trail eventually diverged from this roadbed and, for a while, followed a series of streambeds (I was lucky I did the hike the day before record rainfall started to hit Panama).

After a while, paving stones began appearing in the streambed. Eventually, the trail turned onto an old cobblestone road. I was walking along one of the first Spanish routes across the isthmus, built in the 16th century. The wheels of mule-drawn wagons, carrying gold from South America to the Atlantic coast for shipment to Spain, had passed over the cobblestones on which I was standing. Walking along this linchpin of a bygone empire, one of the continent’s oldest transportation projects related to globalization, I was within two miles from the Panama Canal Expansion, one of the continent’s newest.

Over more than four centuries, transportation infrastructure within this two-mile-wide band across the isthmus has benefited people around the world. It certainly seems appropriate that the Panamanian coat of arms, which features the canal in its center, includes the Latin motto Pro Mundi Beneficio – For the World’s Benefit. Maybe Cum Maiesto – With Sovereignty – would be an appropriately assertive addition.

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Read Full Post | March 01 2011 | School Bus Migrations | No Comments » |

Bus Crashes

Overturned Bus on the Cinta Costera (Photo from Critica en Linea – Click on the photo to see more)

Racing each other to pick up more passengers, the old school buses in Panama City collide with alarming frequency. One particularly horrific crash, which injured nearly three dozen people, occurred on the Cinta Costera in January, 2010. Here is a translation of excerpts of an article about the event:

Transit: Race Leaves More than Thirty Injured
Panic on the Coastal Beltway

Oh my God! The shout was followed with alarmed screams of the more than sixty passengers aboard a Panama Viejo bus, which rolled over several times as crushed sheet metal crunched over the hard pavement. Out of the completely overturned vehicle climbed men, women, and children, some bleeding, others in pain, and the rest in hysterics. Thirty-five injured was the final count, among them ten seriously injured and two infants.

It was about 10:40 AM yesterday, Sunday, when the vehicular tragedy occurred. The Panama Viejo bus, license plate B-3388, expired since 2003, was racing with another Panama Viejo bus, which fled the scene. During the race the young driver lost control and ended up crashing into a lamp pole. The bus destroyed the signs, literally flew and spun in the air, fell 20 meters away from the impact, and ended up facing in the opposite direction. People escaped from the emergency door and the front on their own, but several passengers were trapped inside the vehicle. A young man’s right arm was trapped between the pavement and the heavy bus; more than fifteen soldiers were able to move the diablo rojo to free him.

Tears, pain and blood – the scene was sad. The injured, trembling in panic, sat among the steps that are used daily by dozens of children for fun, waiting this time for the help of paramedics. Most victims were women.

The driver of the vehicle, Elías Eliecer Guerra Singh, 20, was unhurt in the accident. He is not licensed to drive public transport, only private cars. In addition, his age is not adequate to drive that kind of public transport.

The second bus involved was located hidden in Panama Viejo, where it was impounded.

With such graphic and sensational media reports about diablo rojo crashes, it’s no wonder the government is making the implementation of Metrobus such a priority. At a November event with the first of the newly delivered buses, the Presidential Minister made the ambitious claim that there would be zero diablos rojos in the city by August, 2011. When questioned about the seating capacity of the new Volvo buses, he replied “The important thing is not to go seated, the problem is to go safely, in a comfortable and trustworthy manner.” Crashes like the ones above only heighten the government’s ability to replace the existing system and eliminate the existing drivers. Metrobus drivers will not be competing for fares, so there should be little incentive for them to drive at such high speeds.… Read the rest

Read Full Post | March 01 2011 | School Bus Migrations and Transportation News | No Comments » |

La Cinta Costera – The Coastal Beltway

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(English translation below)

Una de las campañas primeras de La Alianza Pro Ciudad fue enfocada en la construcción de la Cinta Costera de la Ciudad de Panamá. La organización pidió al Ministerio de Obras Públicas construya un parque que transforme positivamente la ciudad en lugar de un proyecto masivo de tráfico. La primera fase, que reclamó 25 hectares de la Bahía de Panamá entre Punta Paitilla y Casco Viejo, completieron en el 2009 por $ 189 millones. Para aliviar la congestión del tráfico crónica (ay, demanda inducida), la Avenida Balboa se convirtió en el uso de una via, con tres carriles locales y tres carriles expresos. Cuatro carriles expresos en la dirección opuesta añadieron, en dirección noreste hacia el Corredor Sur. Casi veinte y cinco por ciento de los terrenos ganados del mar se dedicó a las áreas recreativas y jardines, pero los grupos ambientales, incluyendo La Alianza Pro Ciudad clamaban por más:

Miembros de Alianza Pro Ciudad Raisa Banfield y Álvaro Uribe habría dicho que el plan original era tener un parque costero con un vial, no un camino mejorado con pequeños trozos de espacio verde.

Cuando yo andaba en la Cinta Costera, no parecía un parque costero exitoso. La pista de jogging, canchas de baloncesto, ciclovias y quioscos estaban decididamente infrautilizados. Restricciones de la conducta y la alta cantidad de carriles de coches de alta velocidad son dos factores que conducen a esta falta de popularidad. Aunque seis puentes peatonales fueron construidos como parte del proyecto, sólo van super cuatro de los diez carriles, desde la acera frente al mar hacia las estacionimientos en el centro del proyecto. Los peatones tienen que correr a traves de seis carriles de tráfico para llegar al resto de la ciudad desde el fin de los pasos superiores.

A pesar de estas deficiencias, la Cinta Costera ha ofrecido algunos beneficios a la ciudad. Los valores de propiedad en las cercanías se han subido, y la ciudad se siente menos económicamente estratificado con un fuerte vínculo físico entre Punta Paitilla y Casco Viejo. La Cinta Costera ha servido como espacio público necesario para varios desfiles y manifestaciones, incluyendo los más recientes contra los cambios propuestos al código de minería del país (fotos aquí).

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One of the formative campaigns of Alianza Pro Ciudad centered on the construction Panama City’s Coastal Beltway, La Cinta Costera. The organization pressured the Public Works Ministry to turn a traffic project into a more broadly urbanist one that transformed Panama City’s waterfront. The first phase, which reclaimed 25 hectares from the Bay of Panama between Punta Paitilla and Casco Viejo, was completed in 2009 at a cost of $189 million. In an attempt to alleviate chronic traffic congestion (oh, induced demand), the existing Avenida Balboa was converted to one-way use, with three local lanes and three express through-lanes. Four express lanes in the opposite direction were added on the landfill, heading northeast to the beginning of the Corredor Sur. Nearly one quarter of the reclaimed land was devoted to recreational and landscaped areas, but environmental groups including Alianza Pro Ciudad clamored for more:

Members of Alianza Pro Ciudad, Raisa Banfield and Alvaro Uribe are quoted as saying that the original plan was to have a coastal park with an improved road, not an improved roadway with little bits of green space.

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Read Full Post | March 01 2011 | School Bus Migrations and Transport | 2 Comments » |

Alianza Pro Ciudad

One of my favorite parts of Panama City was sitting in on meetings of Alianza Pro Ciudad. Founded in 2007, the alliance is a nonprofit network of architects, urbanists, and engineers that speaks out for civic participation and a livable city. The group’s bulletin has covered topics ranging from proposed development at the site of the former US Embassy to the state of transportation in Panama City (which is how I found out about them). Every Tuesday afternoon, I would sit in on their weekly meetings at the coffee shop in the Exedra book store. Hearing professionals (including a former director of ATTT, the national ground transit authority) discuss and debate urban issues such as public space (“the government builds houses, not a city – there are no public spaces, no places to meet”), traffic congestion (the average commute time in the city is 70 minutes), and historic preservation (“developers manipulate the term restoration for exploitation”), was an excellent way for me to learn more about the city (and practice my Spanish).… Read the rest

Read Full Post | February 22 2011 | School Bus Migrations | 2 Comments » |

Bus Art Closeups

The buses in Panama City are covered with captivating spray-painted and vinyl adhesive images, cartoons and photos ranging from mystic wizards to Shakira, lions to Tupac, and Darth Vader to Pinky and the Brain. This article from 2008 details the buses and the concerns about losing valuable public art as they are replaced and helped convinced me to make Panama one of my stops. Though it mentions a renowned artist from El Chorillo, the drivers I talked to also spoke highly of a number of bus artists in the Santa Librada neighborhood. To my eye, the Santa Librada buses were the most well-decorated.

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Read Full Post | February 22 2011 | School Bus Migrations | Comments Off |

Panama Viejo

One rainy afternoon, I explored the ruins of the first site of Panama City. It was founded by the Spanish in 1519 and inhabited until being sacked by pirate Henry Morgan in 1671. Not much remains of the colonial city, but some preservation and restoration work is underway.

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