PumaKatari Municipal Buses & LaPazBUS Real-Time GPS App
🤖 AI-generated summary of the sources below · 🔎 Last verified
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
La Paz's municipal bus service started on 24 February 2014 with PumaKatari buses built for the city's steep slopes, growing to 213 vehicles (174 PumaKatari plus 39 smaller ChikiTiti feeders), of which about 135 run on a normal day. On 30 July 2026 the mayor's office launched the LaPazBUS app, putting each bus's live GPS position and arrival estimates in riders' hands. The data layer arrived in the service's hardest year: Bolivia's diesel shortage cut operations to half, with only four of ten routes prioritised in April 2026 and days when no bus could refuel at all, while the budget has shrunk by roughly 60% since 2021. Mayor Iván Arias concedes the service at its best carried only 1.6% of the city's passengers — though after minibus fares rose in February 2025, daily ridership climbed from about 30,000-35,000 to 41,000-42,000.
📊 Impact
Daily ridership rose from about 30,000-35,000 to 41,000-42,000 after February 2025 minibus fare hikes, but at its peak the service carried only 1.6% of La Paz's daily passengers and its budget has fallen roughly 60% since 2021 (mayor's and Setram figures via press).
🎓 Lesson
A tracking app cannot fix fuel supply: real-time GPS launched just as the diesel crisis idled the fleet it tracks — the data layer is only as reliable as the service underneath it.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “PumaKatari Municipal Buses & LaPazBUS Real-Time GPS App” — La Paz, Bolivia. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/la-paz-pumakatari-bus/ (last verified 2026-08-07). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.