Archive for the ‘punctuality’ tag
A Brit in Caracas #
The Economist’s Correspondent’s Diary for last week is rather good.
The opposition mayors of two of the capital’s municipalities decided they had had enough of waiting for the city-wide authority and the national government to act. They came up with a plan, inspired by a successful initiative in the Colombian capital, Bogotá, to take one fifth of the cars off the road each day during rush-hour, based on the last number of their licence plates. Briefly, the hellish traffic eased, and despite the inconvenience of having to leave the car at home once a week, most residents told pollsters that they supported the measure.
Then the Supreme Court stepped in. In response to an initiative from one man, the judges ruled that the plan violated the constitutional right to free transit, making Venezuela (in the words of one of the mayors) the only country in the world in which vehicles have constitutional rights.