Feeling the heat

[Zorro]

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The bill for years of mismanagement has come due just as crucial elections loom. The president’s response has been to start locking up opponents.

From Parque Central station in Caracas a cable car silently speeds workers, residents and schoolchildren up the hill to Hornos de Cal and then down again to San Agustín, connecting these areas of self-built slum housing to the city’s metro system. The bright-red cars bear the names of Venezuelan states or of uplifting notions, such as “social duty” or “socialist morality”. Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s leftist president, opened the metrocable in January, proclaiming: “A socialist revolution has the essential aim of giving to all men and women the greatest possible happiness.”

The metrocable, of just 1.8km, took three years to build and cost $318m—over ten times as much as a longer line opened in Medellín, in Colombia, in 2004. But the local leaders of communal councils—the grassroots groups that Mr Chávez conceives as the driving force of his “Bolivarian revolution”—are indeed happy. “I never thought we would have such a big project in my community,” said María Eugenia Ramírez. “I thought it was just a dream.” Ms Ramírez now has a paid job informing passengers how the system works.

The metrocable is not the only improvement Mr Chávez has brought to San Agustín. Near Hornos de Cal station there is a primary health post, staffed by Cuban doctors, though it is open only in the morning, and a second-tier health clinic, complete with an intensive-care unit. Some of the shacks on the hillsides have had a recent coat of paint, in the regulation colours of another government project (red, yellow, blue or pink). Others were knocked down to make way for the lavish metrocable stations. Their residents were rehoused in new blocks of flats built by Misión Hábitat, yet another government scheme.

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More at: http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16104226

[protocol rv]

1. Seems like a waste of money to me

I know a guy who lives in Hornos de Cal, and he says it's not a practical solution for him, because he lives down the hill, so to take the metrocable he has to climb a ton of stairs. He finds it a lot easier to walk a bit and take the bus. What would help a lot more is to have pedestrian bridges across the highway, say every 200 meters, so people can get back and forth without having to go to the crossing points. That would cost a lot less. And they could use some money to build police stations next to the modulos to make sure the gangs are kept from robbing people. And while I'm at it, they need to build pedestrian crossing bridges everywhere, especially at Plaza de Venezuela, I'm tired of getting guys in motorcycles and taxis run me down when trying to cross the street.

This is typical of the mindlessness of the people who plan for the government, they throw a ton of money at something like this, to benefit maybe 1000 people, and the rest of the city gets nothing. It's just for show.