So I'm Vikas Meerotra. I teach finance at the University of Alberta in Canada.

So where are you? Where am I speaking to you?

I'm in Bogota, Colombia.

You're in Bogota. What are you doing there?

I was here for CFO summit. I was doing some talks on corporate governance.

How's the traffic there I'm wondering?

Right now from the window of my room it looks beautiful, it's flowing, but then I'm in a residential area.

When you get to the city's main arteries, it moves with all the elegance of snails.

Fast snails are slow snails. Slow snails.

When I talked to Meerotra, he was staying at a hotel in Bogota a few miles away from the University campus where he was giving his talks.

And every day he'd get a ride to the campus from friends of his, a couple of professors who teach at the University.

One thing struck Meerotra is very strange. His friends never picked him up in the same car two days in a row.

So we are at the Bogota Sheraton parking lot.

We sent reporter John Otis out one morning to take a ride with Meerotra and his friends.

So what kind of car is this?

I can read it here. The license plate is RMM660 and it's the last digit, the zero that's important.

Now Bogota has legendarily bad traffic and the pollution that goes along with it.

City officials have tried all kinds of solutions including license plate rationing.

Welcome to the war.

Alexander Guzman, one of Meerotra's friends and chauffeurs. Guzman pulls out a newspaper and reads the prevailing driving rules.

You are not allowed to drive a car if you're a license plate and in one, two, three, four on Friday.

On Monday if you license plate and see five, six, seven, eight is the same. You are not allowed to go out.

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