Daniel Tunnard, the Brit taking all the buses in Buenos Aires, continues his Colectivaizeishon series with The 64.

The 64 goes down calle Hipólito Yrigoyen. I’m just writing in my notebook that I’ve always admired Hipólito Yrigoyen for getting elected president twice despite having two weird names (in fact, his full name was Juan Hipólito of the Sacred Heart of Jesus Yrigoyen Alem (and is it just me or does that Alem at the end not look a bit like ‘amen’?)) when a car crashes into the back of the bus. Finally, after 21 buses on which absolutely nothing of interest has happened, a moment of action.

Except, if you’re on a bus in a traffic jam and a car travelling at 5 miles per hour crashes into the back of you, the effect is overwhelmingly underwhelming. It nudges the bus forward about a millimetre, and you hear the sickly crunching of a car whose owner is going to spend the weekend on the phone to his insurance company amid much colourful use of the words ‘puta’ and ‘parió’. The bus driver pays no heed to all this and drives off. I’m not sure it’s completely legal to flee the scene of an accident in which one is directly involved, but my concept of what is and isn’t legal in Argentina gets cloudier every week. I think this episode goes under that grey legal area marked ‘One rule for buses, another rule for all other road users’. I think it’s a great law, as my bus journey times are reduced significantly by drivers jumping all the red lights.

Aside from the boredom of spending so much time on buses so low on incident that even when they do crash, it’s such a non-event that it would struggle to make the back pages of the local paper of a small village, the main physical effect of Colectivaizeishon is the return of the pain in my right shoulder, a pain that put a stop to my attempt to take all the buses two years ago. This has been a recurrent problem ever since the invention of the mouse, but it’s compounded by spending eight hours on buses, bent over myself trying to write in an A4 notebook. Luckily, I have my sister Sandra, my quasi-personal yoga teacher (‘quasi’ because I share her with two other lucky people who are sometimes absent). Today is the first time I’ve taken the buses after a morning yoga class, and the difference is notable. For the first thirty minutes. Not even yoga can defeat the discomfort of a Buenos Aires bus. And she isn’t really my sister, either.

The 64 also goes past my psychoanalyst’s office. Yes, I have an analyst. Living in Buenos Aires and not having a psychoanalyst is like living in Scotland and not drinking whisky. There’s such an abundant supply and the quality is so good, it would be a crime not to. Yoga and psychoanalysis are two of the greatest gifts that Buenos Aires has given me. Those two, and the phrase ‘Tampoco es la vaca del corso’ or ‘It’s hardly the carnival cow.’ It is no coincidence that I started writing my first novel in 2006, the same week that I added yoga to the analysis that I’d started a year earlier. There’s a theory that says that a writer or artist shouldn’t do psychoanalysis because it’s precisely the imperfection and tangled mess of a psyche that make the artist. It’s a theory invented by cowards. Psychoanalysis works to untangle the tangles so that you can write great works of literary prowess that fill humanity with unspeakable joy. Or write a book about how you bored your tits off taking all the buses in Buenos Aires, whatever.

(There’s a thought: it was just today I read a friend of a friend comment on Facebook: ‘there are three cures for all ills: psychotherapy, travel and writing.’ Colectivaizeishon feels like all three.)

Like psychoanalysis, yoga is ignored by a huge number who think that it’s all about sitting in absurdly contorted positions going ‘om’, when the reality is a demanding ninety minutes of physical effort that improves your muscles and posture and relaxes your mind. The only thing more relaxing than yoga that I’ve come across is sex, although that rarely lasts more than three minutes at a time, as my wife knows to her chagrin.

64 Buses (Photo: Lujan Agusti)

And I say chagrin, buy she rarely grins when we shag.

(I lose track of my thoughts momentarily when I’m distracted by a pretty girl walking down Avenida Santa Fe in a short spring dress. I love Avenida Sante Fe.)

For those Argentines reading these articles from abroad, when you next come back to Buenos Aires you’ll notice that our governors have avoided the need to invest in a transport system worthy of the 21st century, and instead have simply turned all the avenues that used to be one way into two-way avenues. Welcome to the future.

Taking by way of example the feminina-festooned Avenida Santa Fe, this has brought certain advantages. The streets either side of the avenue are free of buses and my sister-in-law can now watch TV with the window open. The return journey up Santa Fe instead of Güemes seems faster, and you don’t have to wander the side streets searching for the bus stop, as is the lamentable habit of the present author. Best of all, you get that transgressive thrill of feeling like you’re going the wrong way down the avenue, a thrill that lasts about as long as sex in the Tunnard household, but a thrill nonetheless. ‘Better than a kick in the teeth’, as my wife so often reflects.

But then, what else can be done to improve traffic? Santa Fe is too narrow to stick a tram down the middle, and there’s already a subway running under it. My solution, and you’re not going to like it, is to ban all cars and taxis from the avenue, make it exclusively for buses and bicycles, and widen the pavements for the pedestrians. I told you weren’t going to like it. Better still, ban all cars from entering the city. Like speedboats, the car should be a luxury item for weekend use only, one that you leave during the week in great storage houses on the outskirts of town, whence you take a utopian fast train into the city.

Of course, some people would be exempt from this new rule: doctors, the disabled, other noble cases. Police would have to go on horseback, because there’s nothing prettier than a policeman on a horse, unless you’re being baton-charged by one. Parents taking their kids to school would be totally banned from using cars ever, because they’re a bunch of lazy fuckers who only had children so that they could use them as excuses for their own shortcomings (unless they’re friends of mine and are giving me a lift somewhere, in which case ignore that comment.) And taxis will be replaced by little cars with pedals, like in Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone film. The taxi drivers will kick up a fuss about this at first, but they’ll end up thanking me when they see the positive health benefits. Like in that mineral water advert. ‘¡Gracias, máquina!’ they will cry. ‘What you have done has brought us great pleasure and fulfilment.’ Which is more than my wife ever says.

Daniel Tunnard, the Brit taking all the buses in Buenos Aires, continues his Colectivaizeishon series with The 8.

If there is one thing I have put more time, effort and thought into in my thirteen years in Buenos Aires, it’s finding a cheap way to get to Ezeiza airport. Those of you who live in Buenos Aires will know what a ballbreaker of an airport Ezeiza is to get to, and those of you who live in Argentina but outside Buenos Aires will know that these moaning porteños have no idea.

The week before my wedding in April 2011, I endeavoured to go to the world’s worst-located airport some five times to meet as many possible friends and relatives who’d taken almost as much time and money to come to my wedding as the time and money a trip to Ezeiza costs. So I started looking into cheap alternatives to getting to what was bewilderingly voted ‘Best Airport in the Americas’ a couple of years ago.

Colectivo number 8 in Buenos Aires (Photo: Maia Kano Worsnop)

The cheapest option, as many a cheapskate knows, is the bus formally known as the 86 but now known as the 8. The 86 still exists, but only the 8 goes to Ezeiza. There was a schism. They’re still on speaking terms, but you don’t want to be there when they bump into each other at parties. Very tense.

‘You look well’ says the 8.

‘You look lovely,’ says the 86.

’86, please… don’t,’ she implores him.

Then the 86 spends the evening staring longingly at the 8 from afar, getting steadily drunker and drunker. The 8 leaves with the 80, who she’s always carried a torch for, and the 86 just sits there, a single tear silently sliding into his whisky.

For a quarter of what it costs to just get into a taxi you can travel from Liniers or anywhere else on the southside of the city to Ezeiza Airport in about 2 and half hours. I’ve done this trip many a time. Got plenty of reading done. But it becomes a bit of a drag when you live an hour from Liniers and have to be at Ezeiza at 8am. Hence the search for cheaper options.

There’s a minibus that leaves from San Telmo, Defensa and Belgrano, eighteen of your pesitos. Leaves every fifteen minutes, but only 9am to 6pm Monday to Friday. Then there’s Manuel Tienda León.

Manuel Tienda León, or Tienda Ladrón as I humorously refer to them, safe in the knowledge that that joke will never get old, charge 50 of your pesos to go from Retiro to Ezeiza in an hour, and go on the hour, all night.

The day I go and pick up my sister, the first arrival for the wedding, I get to Retiro at 7.05am and the Tienda Lechón has just left. To my near-eternal joy, I spy a minibus right there with ‘Ezeiza Bus’ written across its snout in majestic purple letters.

‘Do you go to Ezeiza?’ I ask.

‘I stop in Ezeiza, yes.’ says the driver. Ah, fickle semantics.

‘How much?’

‘Seventeen of your pesitos’. Wait till I tell my wife about this, I think to myself. Seventeen pesos and I’ll be in Ezeiza in an hour.

And, in effect, after an hour has passed I find myself in Ezeiza. That is, the town called Ezeiza, not the airport called Ezeiza. We turned off the airport motorway with about three kilometres to spare. This is fine, I think. We’re probably just dropping a couple of people off, and then we’ll be right back on that motorway to the sky. I notice we’re passing Ezeiza railway station. ‘Fancy that’, I think. ‘I bet you could get a train here from Constitución, and then a taxi to the airport. And how much could a taxi cost from Ezeiza to Ezeiza, eh? It’s got to be ten pesos, tops’. I make a mental note to look into this later. I’ll find out the answer sooner.

Ezeiza and Tristan Suárez on Google Maps

We leave Ezeiza behind us and trundle along a bit. The bus is offloading somewhat and we’re now in a town called Tristán Suárez. I’m trying to work out whether Tristán Suárez sounds like the kind of town that only gets mentioned on the news in the crime segment, or the kind of town that Manuel Puig would set a novel in. Neither is good. After putting off speaking to anyone on the bus for fifteen crucially timid minutes, I finally drum up the courage to turn to the lady behind me and utter the fateful words:

‘Does this bus stop at the airport?’

‘Oh, no no. What? Airport? No. You should’ve got off ages ago!’

I tell the driver that there’s been a kafuffle. The driver acts like it’s all my fault, as if parading round Retiro in a white van marked ‘Ezeiza’ wasn’t a deliberate ploy to con thousands of cheapskates out of seventeen pesos on a daily basis. He drops me at a taxi rank. The word for taxi rank in Spanish is ‘remisería’. This transliterates as ‘great poverty’. It’s that kind of taxi rank.

‘How much to the airport’. It’s got to be like five pesos tops. I’ve been in taxis in the provinces, they never cost more than five pesos.

‘Fifty six pesos plus tolls.’

Ah. My mother’s voice appears in my head, talking about false economy. I hate it when my mother’s right.

There’s a twenty-minute wait until the taxi turns up, so I stand outside and breathe in the picturesque joys of Tristán Suárez. After that, it’s a nineteen-and-a-half minute wait for the taxi.

It’s then a twenty-minute ride, at one hundred kilometres per hour, mind you, to the airport. I work out I must have overshot my target by about thirty-three kilometres. Impeccable arithmetic under pressure, that’s what I pride myself on.

I get to the airport at 9am to find my sister’s flight arrived with a slight delay and she hasn’t got off the plane yet. This is turning into a Seinfeld episode.

Time passes. There is no sign of my sister.

McCafe in Argentina (Photo: Maia Kano Worsnop)

I notice to my joy that McDonald’s has set up shop in Terminal A, and that their prices are the same as in the city. This is great news because it is the business philosophy of all the other eateries at Ezeiza Airport that if you haven’t been robbed during your time in Argentina, they will at least ensure this experience for you before you leave. My McDonald’s breakfast is a skinflint’s twelve-peso delight, the one small crack of bargain in an overcast sky of overspend.

It gets to 9.40 and I ask if I can see the passenger list. They don’t let you do that anymore. Shame, it’s exciting asking to see passenger lists. You can still ask, but you know it’s going to be in vain.

It gets to 10am and I phone my wife and ask her to check my e-mail to see if my sister’s been in touch. I tell her to phone me back. Like I said, bit of a skinflint.

She phones me back. I got the dates wrong. My sister arrives tomorrow.

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner listed terms for Buenos Aires’ takeover of the Subtes, but Mayor Mauricio Macri retorted with “under these terms, there will be no transfer.”

During a speech, Fernández de Kirchner said government must be cautious when raising public transportation rates, noting that with the 127% price increase in Subte tickets, ridership fell 30%.

She added that the price increases mean more people are taking buses, and the high fares affect those who do not have the ability to pay.

“We must be very careful, responsible and gradual when we touch the prices of public services such as transportation, which many people use to go to work and study,” the president said during a ceremony in the Government House.

On the topic of Subte security, Fernández de Kirchner proposed that the Buenos Aires city government develop a “gradual” schedule to take over the policing of the lines in three months.

Currently, federal officers are patrolling the stations, although metropolitan police were scheduled to take over the detail 29^th February. The federal government announced a 30-day extension on the deadline 1^st March, so the city could put together a security force.

As for buses, Fernández de Kirchner proposed that the city and federal government “share” subsidy responsibilities for a year, adding that bus subsidies are about $1.18 billion.

“We will ask that for a year we share that subsidy – half from the national government and the other half from the city,” she said, adding that he also asked them “to help us implement the subsidies.”

In a press conference given this afternoon, following the proposals made by president Fernández, Macri rejected the transfer again and criticised the opposition deputies who voted for it in Congress last night.

“We want to take over transport system, as well as the port, gambling and security,” he said, but repeated that it can only be done if the national government also transfers “the resources” necessary to manage them. Macri also minimised the importance of the transfer bill passed by Congress by a broad majority yesterday, saying that the situation “is not going to change until there is an agreement approved by the [city] legislature.”

Subte and transport issues have been in the public eye for months. The Buenos Aires government has been planning to take over the Subtes from the federal government, however the transition has been rocky. The effects of the handover have caused protests, strikes and public displays of displeasure from both governments.

To get from my flat in Belgrano to Liniers and where the number 1 bus starts its route, I have to take the 80, so the 80 becomes the first bus of Colectivaizeishon. For the last 15 years I’ve wanted to write a book like Cortázar’s ‘Hopscotch’ with all the chapters in non-sequential order, and I reckon that if I take all the buses in Buenos Aires in a non-numerical order I might end up with something similar, my own lack of literary merit and knowledge of jazz lyrics notwithstanding.

To give you some socio-historical context, in the week that I start taking all the buses the following things happen in Buenos Aires: Eleven people are killed the number 92 bus jumps a level crossing and hits a train; Carlos Menem receives a pardon for never having sold weapons to Croatia, honest; and “actress-singer-model” Luciana Lopilato tells eternal chat show hostess Susana Giménez that she would like to have four children with husband Michael Bublé, “two of our own and two adopted”.

All the other news is about the many potential threats to human life. News channels have exhausted the murder, rape and robbery stories in Argentina and abroad, and have started to search further afield in their bid to sow panic among viewers and push up their ratings, and have turned their attentions to an old satellite that is due to fall back to Earth on Friday. All the reports manage to insinuate that this satellite will fall directly on the city of Buenos Aires, wreaking untold damage and loss. Only one report repeats the words of a NASA expert, who says it’s highly likely that the satellite will break up on entering the atmosphere and at most there will be a few scattered fragments over a wide general area.

Meanwhile, the 80 trundles along its route along Avenues Los Incas and Beiró up to Avenida General Paz, the ring road separating the city of Buenos Aires from the province of Buenos Aires, where there are all kinds of murderers and dragons and stuff. At my first attempt at taking all the buses in 2009, it was here that I first started to soil myself, thinking that the 80 was about to go off on a detour through the province and I’d get lost in some place that you only hear about on Crimewatch, and my dad would get a phone call at 3am demanding a ransom for my release, and die of a heart attack, thus triggering an unpleasant scrap between my sisters, my stepmother and me over the inheritance.

This time I want to shake off this fear. I want to show, primarily to myself but also to anyone else who cares to listen, that Buenos Aires has nothing to be scared of. Ultimately, I want to get lost. Of course, my Argentine readers will say, you’re English, you work at home in fancy-pants Belgrano, you only leave your house to go to yoga class, you don’t know what it’s like to live in fear of Buenos Aires. And it’s true. Fear is a highly subjective thing, like listening to James Blunt, and Colectivaizeishon is an attempt to come out of my Belgrano cocoon and see what other porteños see.

The bus goes through Liniers, down Lisandro de la Torre and deeper into Mataderos, the area of Buenos Aires that gets its name from the slaughterhouses. As the famous tango goes, “You can always tell you’re in Mataderos, from the overwhelming smell of cow shit”. It’s more or less here that my bravura begins to fall apart. I see an excess of bare breezeblocks in the architectural style of the area, a sure sign that I’m near a shanty town. I feel that unmistakeable movement in my stomach when I realise we’re going past the famous Ciudad Oculta, or Hidden City, the most notorious of the capital’s slums. It’s easy to spot Hidden City because there’s a big sign that says “Hidden City”. Whoever tried to hide it didn’t do a very good job.

White Elephant in Ciudad Oculta (Photo: Kate Stanworth)

I no longer wish to get lost. I want to stay on this bus until I reach the relative safety of the terminus, somewhere in La Matanza, an area in Buenos Aires province whose name translates as “The Massacre”. My Guía “T” street map book informs me that said terminus is located between the streets Pius X and John XXIII, that is, two popes. This must be an extremely safe place, protected as it is by its condition of double papacy.

In the end, the 80 leaves me outside the motor racing track, and the fear subsides. It’s a horrible place, with the muddy puddles, abandoned factories and dual carriageways that tend to characterise the border between capital and province, but there’s a pretty mural of racing driver Juan Manuel Fangio and his friends, and the sun is shining. Nobody was ever abducted or murdered on such a day in front of such a mural. I tell myself that that movement I’d felt in my stomach wasn’t fear, but mere hunger, and I make a mental note to bring sandwiches on future trips, and a postcard of Fangio to comfort me in moments of fear.

The driver of the 80 bears a certain resemblance to Diego Maradona, with his shiny earring and rubbery face. I think: if Maradona hadn’t been Maradona, he could well be a bus driver today, but still in that inimitable Maradonian style, writing his daughters’ names in that flowery fileteado style on the back of his bus, greeting all his passengers with a kiss and hug, and diving like a chubby penguin along the wet grass every time he scored a last-minute bonus.

Despite my worrying about my imminent death during the first trip, the only physical discomfort visited upon my person is the loss of all feeling in my backside after just three hours sitting on a bus. One bus down, 142 to go. I’ve got about three hundred and twenty more hours of this discomfort.

Lead image by A-Dario

It is impossible to get around Buenos Aires without getting on, or at least noticing the city buses, or colectivos, as the porteños call them. They are everywhere, taking people to every nearly any corner in the city at almost every hour of the day.

While the fares are extremely cheap, many residents find much to complain about, especially in light of several tragic accidents involving buses that have made news headlines in recent weeks.

The Argentina Independent spoke to local bus-takers about the problems they see in the transportation system, and what they think should be done to improve it.

Edgardo, artisan from Martín Coronado, age 54

The biggest problem is the drivers. The mechanical system in the buses makes the braking and acceleration violent sometimes. It makes it hard for the people standing up to stay balanced. Even those who are sitting slide around a lot. I think drivers should be more careful about driving better for the sake of the passengers. But, in general, they do well. I’d like for them to be less noisy. And for there to be less restrictions regarding the schedule. Sometimes the drivers get in a hurry and can cause accidents. There are inspectors at the bus stops, and if the buses aren’t on schedule, they get fined.

Michelle, student from Villa Tesei, 17

Sometimes the drivers don’t do what they should. They worry about being on schedule and they get in a hurry and they don’t pay attention to the safety rules. They should start on time so they don’t have to rush. Two weeks ago I was on a bus and the driver was in a hurry and he almost ran over a kid on a bicycle. The kid and the driver got into an argument and the kid threw a rock at the mirror on the bus. There should be more buses on the routes to keep this from happening.

Lucas, dairy distributor from San Isidro, 27

Getting around the city is very fast. There is bus stop on every corner and you can go take a bus practically anywhere. Nothing bad has ever happened to me on a bus. I don’t know if it is because of my physical appearance or not. I ride the bus every day.

Sebastián, retail worker in a toy shop, from Temperley, 21

The buses come on time. The hardest thing for them is the traffic. The roads are always being worked on, especially around Retiro because of the subte, and this causes delays. But the route I take from my house to work is pretty direct. I take the train first, which has a lot of problems and delays, but the bus doesn’t. I move around the city a lot, getting on 4 or 5 buses a day.

Zulema, pensioner from Moreno, 56

I don’t think the buses are at all safe or efficient. They are slow. And there are never any seats available. Sometimes when they are supposed to come every 4 minutes, you have to wait ten minutes. And then, several come together all at the same time. You also have to hold on tight on the bus or else you get banged around. Just this past year, I was getting off the bus but I wasn’t holding on very well and I fell into the street. The driver made everyone get off and they took me to the hospital. Another time my friend fell getting on the bus and she was trampled by everyone behind her.

Crashed bus (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

In Argentina, and particularly in Buenos Aires, headlines about road accidents and fatalities are a regular feature in the news. On 15th September, 11 people were killed in Flores after the 76 bus, a tram, and a cement lorry collided. Two days earlier, in the same neighbourhood, a train crashed into a bus that was crossing the railway tracks, killing 11 and injuring 200 people.

Each day in Argentina, 21 people die due to road accidents. It is one of the most dangerous countries in South America for road fatalities, which is the highest cause of death in the country for under 35-year-olds. According to NGO ‘Luchemos por la vida’ (Fight for Life), 12% of these are caused by buses, which, nationwide, transport some 5.8 million passengers each day.

Possible Explanations

Buses in the capital are all owned by various, private companies. This has led to an overlap in the routes the bus lines ply, as each competes for passengers. Alberto José Silveira, the president of ‘Luchemos por la vida’, which was set up with the goal of decreasing Argentine road accidents notes that “On Corrientes avenue, there are maybe eight bus lines. This is too much, if there were only one, it would be better organised with less collisions.”

A demanding schedule, in which bus drivers are given a certain amount of time to complete their route, is another source of risk. The bus drivers often have a timetable to comply to and if they complete routes quicker, they can relax for 15 minutes before going out again. Santiago, a bus driver for line 36 who did not want to give his full name, believes that “the rapid turnaround times are to blame for the speeding. There is so much traffic these days so the routes take longer but we still want a break to have a coffee or smoke”.

A 2008 survey conducted by the Transport Union (UTA) discovered that 88% of bus drivers admitted that to drive to schedule involves driving in an unsafe way. Similarly the long, often 12 hour, days that the bus drivers complete in the city can lead to frustration or drowsiness, either of which can make a driver dangerous.

Speeding bus at night (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

The vehicles themselves are another problem. Bus travel in Buenos Aires has been heavily subsidised by the government since the 2001 economic crisis, accounting now for nearly 70% of every ticket. Although this means that the buses are one of the cheapest in the world, there is often not enough investment or demand for additional safety measures or the modernisation of the vehicles. Mr. Silveira thinks that the subsidies have resulted in “passengers with no right to claim to improve the buses, as they hardly pay for their tickets”.

What to do?

In 2008, the National Road Safety Agency (ANSV) was created to improve road safety throughout Argentina. It received a US$30 million loan from the World Bank to reduce accidents and deaths, commonly performing road checks and reprimanding drivers for drink driving, speeding offences and ignoring red lights. However, according to Mr. Silveira, since its launch, there has been no particular decrease in the number of road accidents.

Jota Leonetti, a journalist and founder of a traffic website believes the ANSV idea is positive but fundamentally people need to change their daily road habits, especially in the capital. “There needs to be much more order, respect and teaching. It is also a social question: many young people die on our roads, which is economically bad for the country too. Driving in Buenos Aires is crazy; the companies owning the bus lines just do what they want”.

Bus lane (Photo: Beatrice Murch)

The federal police assure that there are countless CCTV cameras around the city and when a bus speeds or commits other offences such as crossing red lights, the company gets fined around $300. According to Clarín, last year, bus line 15, for example, received 102 fines; half of these were for ignoring red lights.

However, the enforcement of the fines is questionable, Mr. Silveria stressed that “The police do not ensure that companies pay fines. They often claim they are too busy doing other things, often they accept negotiations with fines”. According to The World Health Organisation 2008 statistics, the reprimand rate for speeding in the country is only 30%.

To improve circulation in Buenos Aires, the city government has set up a lane just for buses in key avenues such as Juan B. Justo, Callao and Sante Fe. Though controversial, it is widely supported by bus drivers as it equates to quicker and safer access. Bus line 39 driver, Arturo Rodríguez, says this is the answer: “with bus-only lanes, there are no motorbikes or other vehicles in the way. The government should install more.”

Other changes are underway. Last year, manual photo cameras began operating in certain parts of the city, able to pull over offending vehicles within minutes of an infraction. As of this April, a line of buses has been set up in Vicente Lopez for the elderly and youngsters, which only allows women to drive them as they are deemed to be safer drivers.

Unfortunately, new measures are too often undermined by a lack of enforcement and false promises.

At the site of the Flores tragedy, for example, there is a sign claiming that the government will install a tunnel for the trains, so the buses wouldn’t have to cross the tracks. The sign has been up for four years, yet still nothing has been done.

Click here to find out what locals think of buses in the capital.

At 11am on Tuesday 27th April, Avenida Santa Fe began to run with traffic going in both directions for the first time in 43 years. The change is aimed at making public transport a priority on the avenue, with buses allowed to run both ways for 17 blocks, from Anchorena to Borges at Plaza Italia in Palermo.

Sixteen bus lines have changed their route to take advantage of the new regulation.

Private transport will also be able to run in both directions for almost the entire 17 blocks, with just one restriction: alongside the Botanical Gardens, between República Arabe Siria and Borges from 8am to 8pm on weekdays, they must find an alternative route.

The city government has openly said it is aiming at making Avenida Santa Fe solely for public transportation, with private cars taking alternative routes. This has been taken into account with the new traffic plans, as traffic travelling in the new direction towards Plaza Italia will not be able to turn left at any point along the 17 blocks, to keep the traffic flowing. Those wishing to turn are advised to take alternative routes, such as Güemes.

This is the latest in a line of changes in the city’s circulation aimed at getting buses off smaller back streets and onto the avenues, to improve the flow of traffic.

Argentina’s Agency of Environmental Protection (APRA) is almost finished testing the city’s first Ecobus—just in time for the new year. The Ecobus, a prototype using hybrid technology, is a promising source for less noise and less pollution.

The bus will run off thermal and electric energy and use two motors. An electric battery and diesel power will eliminate the emission of poisonous gases and reduce hydrocarbons that the current bus system employs. Forty-five batteries along the ceiling will store energy produced by the electric power of the brakes.

“When security tests have concluded in January, Buenos Aires will be at the standard of other large cities not only in its concern for citizen health but also of the planet, with global warming”, president of APRA, Graciela Gerola said.

Argentine scientists are hoping the model is successful and may become a source of income as an export. The new design allows the bus to shut off while waiting for lights or in traffic and start again with little noise and no loss of power. The buses are also estimated to be 30 to 40% more fuel efficient.

The Ecobus is also assumed to reduce 75% of the black smoke emissions of the current model as well as noise pollution which plagues all parts of the capital city.

“In the microcentro and surrounding area (where the traffic congestion is greater), these units are going to function only with electricity, with which the levels of noise pollution will decline notably”, said mayor Mauricio Macri.

The number 62 bus line will be the first to include the “green”—actually black and white—buses. Other routes are scheduled to make the switch in the coming year. During 2010, 20 hybrid buses will come into circulation among the some 9,500 others.

Government sources have confirmed that, from Monday 12th January, there will be a 20-25% increase in fares for buses, trains and the underground in Buenos Aires. An official announcement will be made at on Monday.

The new pricing scheme is hoped to save the government $800m per year and comes as a result of fears over the fiscal surplus in the current economic climate.

The increases on buses will change the tariff from $0.90  to $1.10 for shorter journeys within the city and $1.25 for longer distances. On the underground, the $0.90 fare will become $1.10, while train fares will increase from around $0.60-0.75 to around $0.70-0.90.

The price at some motorway tolls is also set to rise as soon as Saturday 10th January.  The North and West motorways in Buenos Aires, the main routes into and out of the city, will be seeing the implementation of a new sliding tariff depending on the time of day and how busy the roads are. The price will increase by 53-104%.

The news of the more expensive tariff has not been received well by the porteño public, especially as the shortage of coins in circulation already causes problems on the buses.

However, according to Daniel Mendez, spokesman for the Transport Secretary, this problem has been addressed in the new pricing scheme: “The increase in the tariff aims to provide manageable prices that can easily be paid for with coins.”