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Bus rides are cheap in Bogota, about US$ 0.50 per ride, no matter how long you stay on the bus (Bogota is huge, and a bus ride from one extreme of the city to the other would take about 4 hours).

There are some 40,000 public buses on the road. About one third of them are 'illegal', which means they are not owned by a company and usually do not comply with any safety or environmental regulations. The rest of them are owned by about a dozen big companies which do not comply which any safety or environmental regulations, as nobody seems to enforce those rules anyway. As a result there are thousands of buses on the road which date from the 1950's, make a deafening noise, throw out thick clouds of black smoke over the city, do not have functioning head nor taillights, and have wheels and other parts falling off all the time.
With all their defects, they do however manage to reach speeds up to over 100 km per hour. Whenever someone along the road raises his hand, the bus will make an emergency stop, crossing right over from the very left lane which they like best, and sometimes blocking 3 lanes at once, (bus stops do exist, but nobody seems to know what they are for).
To keep these buses on the road, mechanics have to work miracles, however they usually do not fix anything until the bus will absolutely not move anymore and has to be towed back home, usually by another bus.

Luckily Bogota is blessed with an almost non-stop mountain wind which blows away the enormous clouds of smog the bus traffic causes, although whenever the wind is absent the entire city is covered in a big brown haze.

The big bus companies supposedly have a lot of political power, and whenever the city tries to do anything about the bus situation, they go on strike and paralize the entire city. However times are changing, and the city has started building a new bus network, with fast, separate bus lanes and modern buses. A few lines are now operational and making life in the city a whole lot better. However it will take at least another 15 years for the project to complete.

Best,