Transantiago

Transantiago is a public transport system which is WF apply on Santiago city by the Government, who thought thought that the last public transport system was very bad, because the infrastructure of the buses was very damaged, there were a lot of traffic jams all the time and because –the most general explanation- the system was very disastrous.
Regarding the previous statement, is that the government decided to change the system and apply a new one which his goal was to overcome the problems I mentioned previously –and other secondary problems too. So, the system contemplate 3 things:
1. Organize Santiago in 10 areas which belong to different towns. Every area has a color and a letter to identify it.
2. Different types of buses:
- Troncal services: these connect the areas delimitated by Transantiago, crossing important sites of Santiago. These are white with a green line.
- Local services: these work into the different areas, and drive the users to specific places of the area. These are of the colour of their area and have a white line.
3. Participation with WW “Metro de Santiago”: Metro operates like troncal services.




According with the last, I think that some objectives are exceeded, but other problems appear now, like the people are always squashed and also that the buses don’t past all the time; you have to wait a lot to take a bus. But I think that the biggest problem is that the authorities SVA don’t accomplished their promises, so the users are very angry with that and feel that their requires are not listened.
Something that I think is a good idea is “Bip! card”, because when you get on the bus, it’s more quickly. The problem is that is very expensive and the people which are not from Santiago, or even Chile, don’t have one, so they have to buy it once and then they don’t use it again.
My experience with Transantiago it’s quite well now, but when it appears I was very angry because I didn’t have a “Student card” –which is cheaper- and I wasn’t determine to pay near $400 to go to my home. So the first year I decided to used my bike and/or walk to everywhere. Now that I have it, I use more “Transantiago” and it’s nos disagree to me, because the place where I live, there are the biggest problems of the system, there are only details… but it’s incredible when I go to Plaza Italia, for example, in the week at night and see the biiiig lines waiting the buses.
To fix Transantiago, I think that the ticket has to be cheaper… I think, if you travel by bus in Santiago 2 times, the cost is near $1000, so you spend like $30000 in a month… it’s too much!
Another thing is that it has to be more buses, and finally, the people which are not from Santiago, need more access to this public transport… or maybe, a good –but crazy- idea is that make that the public transport could operate in whole Chile.