Vehicles and pedestrians mingle haphazardly on Bolívar avenue, one of the main arteries in Caracas, where traffic rules are regularly flouted. Credit: Raúl Límaco/IPS

By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS, Jan 3 2014 (IPS)

The family of Susana Suárez, a 35-year-old Venezuelan dentist, are still in shock over her death in a traffic accident in May. She and a friend were killed on their way back from the beach, and became just two more of the 130,000 victims who died on Latin America’s roads in 2013.

“I wasn’t prepared for her death,” said her sister, Lilian Suárez, with a catch in her voice. “They were coming home at around 8:00 at night in her car, and they got a flat tire just as they drove onto a bridge. They fell into the Aroa river, at a spot where the water is deep and turbulent.”

It wasn’t the first time that a vehicle fell into the river from that bridge, which is near the town of Tucaras in the western state of Falcón.

“Even a semi-trailer truck fell in once,” on a poorly-lit, badly paved and inadequately signalled spot along the road, “where there is a bridge with a weak railing,” Suárez said.

Added to the 130,000 casualties are “six million people who are injured, including hundreds of thousands who are left with a permanent disability,” Verónica Raffo, a senior infrastructure specialist at the World Bank, told IPS.

There are 19.2 road fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants in Latin America, “more than three times the rate of some European countries,” she said, citing the “Global status report on road safety 2013” by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Africa, with 24 fatalities per 100,000 inhabitants, and the Middle East-North Africa, with 21 per 100,000, are the other regions losing the most lives to traffic accidents.

In South America, the rate is 21 per 100,000 inhabitants.

“For young people in the region between the ages of 15 and 44, traffic accidents are the main cause of death,” Raffo said from the World Bank offices in Buenos Aires. “It is an extremely significant loss because the state invests a great deal in their health, education and well-being and loses them at their time of greatest productivity for society.”

Bernardo Baranda, Latin America director for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), told IPS from Mexico City that the lack of road safety “is a major public health problem.”

“Aside from the family and emotional tragedies, the most productive people are dying,” the expert said. “These aren’t accidents, they are preventable occurrences.”

In March 2010, the countries of Latin America signed the United Nations resolution proclaiming 2011-2020 the Decade of Action for Road Safety.

The governments of over 100 countries have committed to cutting down road deaths and injuries, with the aim of reducing by half the predicted increase in global road deaths by 2020. The goal is to save five million lives and five billion dollars in costs.

In Latin America, the projection was 30 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, due to the rise in the number of motor vehicles and the further decline in road safety, and the commitment is to bring the rate down to 15 per 100,000.

“But in many countries, traffic accidents are on the rise, and few have managed to stabilise or reduce the number of victims,” Raffo said.

Argentina, Chile and Uruguay have achieved good results, thanks to “strong political leadership and institutional changes to improve administration and management,” she said.

Five pillars are needed to combat road accidents, she said.

The first is “to improve institutions.” In most countries, responsibility is dispersed and there is a lack of adequate institutions, Raffo said.

Argentina is one model to be followed. In 2008, it created the National Road Safety Agency, with an observatory that monitors policies, campaigns, strategies and results, which has led to significant improvements.

Colombia ended 2013 with the approval of a similar agency, in a country where road accidents represent the second-most frequent cause of violent death, according to the World Bank.

The World Bank and regional institutions report that the countries where traffic accidents have increased since 2011 are Bolivia, Ecuador, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.

In the latter two, the increase was as high as 40 percent, in large part due to accidents involving motorcycles, a vehicle that is in dangerous expansion, even used by parents to transport children.

Pedestrians, cyclists, and motorcyclists account for 70 percent of the victims of urban road accidents.

“Working on road safety means working on equality, because the lack of safety mainly affects the most vulnerable users, who are also the most vulnerable segments of society,” Raffo said.

“The second pillar is safe infrastructure, roads and urban mobility; the third is safe vehicles and drivers; the fourth is educational and awareness-raising policies; and the fifth is a key issue: post-accident response, that so many lives depend on,” she said.

“These five pillars make up the focus of a safe system, which is accompanied by the concept of shared responsibility,” she added. “The state leads and coordinates, the drivers obey the rules, car-makers and insurance agencies put a priority on safety, and civil society works to bring about changes in behaviour.”

“A multisectoral strategy is needed, with very clear goals. Actions must be more forceful,” said Baranda, who called for “reliable data, reduced speeds, measures to fight drunk driving, stricter law enforcement, and prevention through education.”

One piece of good news was the creation of the Ibero-American Road Safety Observatory, which Raffo and other experts see as fundamental for the region to have monitoring, management of data, indicators and policies, and a platform for sharing successful experiences.

Although the first three years of the decade have not provided grounds for optimism, the evidence shows that there are some countries that have brought extremely high road fatality rates down, Raffo said.

“We have to stop holding the fatalistic view that because the region grew economically and the number of motor vehicles has increased as a result, the number of deaths has gone up,” she said. “Things don’t have to be this way, it’s possible to change: the case of Argentina and others show it’s possible.”

Besides, developing countries “lose between one and three percent of GDP [to road accidents], in some cases up to four or five percent; that’s an extremely high cost,” she said.

WHO figures indicate that 90 percent of road accidents occur in the developing South, which has only 50 percent of the world’s vehicles.

Articulated bus in dedicated lane, part of the BRT system in Curitiba, Brazil. Credit: Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz Mariordo CC BY 3.0

By Fabíola Ortiz
RIO DE JANEIRO, May 30 2013 (IPS)

Brazil, and especially the city of Rio de Janeiro, is experiencing a boom in bus rapid transit (BRT), a public transport system that now has an internationally-recognised quality standard.

According to Brazil’s National Association of Urban Transport (NTU), there are 113 BRT projects in 25 cities, with 1,270 kilometres of dedicated bus lanes. By 2016 they should all be operative.

“BRT is the star of sustainable transport; it is an environmentally friendly, economical solution for big cities that have serious congestion problems,” Helena Orenstein, the country director for Brazil of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), told IPS.

The system does not exclude other methods of transport; on the contrary, it creates an integrated network of different kinds of transportation, Orenstein said.

But a common definition and quality assurance were previously lacking, she added.

The ITDP helped formulate quality guidelines known as the BRT Standard, in partnership with a commission of experts and various organisations.

The BRT Standard, launched in March, analyses and gives points for 32 items divided into six categories, such as service planning, infrastructure, integration and access, as well as others which carry negative points, like overcrowding or lack of maintenance.

The result is a tool with common parameters of quality control for BRT all over the world, which will also guide and motivate improvements in these transport systems, according to Orenstein.

“The idea is that BRT should deliver an excellent form of transport, paying attention to the requirements of safety, comfort and practicality. It’s about time people no longer had to waste three hours a day to commute across cities,” said the head of the Brazilian office of the ITDP, an NGO that offers technical support in a number of countries.

The quality certification functions as a checklist that adds or subtracts points and is easily understood by authorities, consultants and operators.

The BRT Standard issues bronze (55-69 points), silver (70-84 points) or gold (85-100 points) certificates.

The aim is “to certify BRT systems that are already operating in order to correct any flaws and reward good examples,” Orenstein said.

Pedro Torres, the ITDP’s urban development manager in Brazil, explained that a technical committee would carry out annual reviews and updating of the certifications.

Following pilot trials in 2012, the first full certification exercise this year analysed 67 BRT systems in 41 cities in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Ecuador, France, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Peru, South Africa and the United States. Twelve of them were awarded gold certificates, 28 silver and 24 bronze.

The remaining three systems, two in the U.S. city of Pittsburgh and one in New Delhi, India, did not earn enough points for the bronze certificate but met the minimum requirements to be regarded as “basic BRT systems.”

Among those that won gold, the highest points were earned by the Zhongshan Avenue BRT in the Chinese city of Guangzhou; four TransMilenio services in Bogotá, Colombia; and the Linha Verde (Green Line) in Curitiba, the Brazilian city that pioneered this type of mass transport in 1974.

“It was a very positive experience. It’s an opportunity for society, governments and companies to have a public evaluation and monitoring tool for these systems,” Torres told IPS.

The head of NTU, Otávio Cunha, praised the BRT Standard initiative and said the NTU has passed the list of items to be evaluated on to its members.

“We are in favour of dedicated bus lanes as a sustainable transport option that has a higher cost-benefit ratio. The idea of a quality standard is a good one,” Cunha told IPS.

Traffic creates stress, increases the accident rate and causes economic “disbenefits” because of the waste of fuel and time involved in urban transportation, he said.

“Brazil is going through a mobility crisis and there is too much fuel and time wasted in cities because of traffic. Dedicated bus lanes can make journeys faster. BRTs are a new concept in surface public transport, inspired by the requirements for excellence in underground rail systems,” he said.

A dedicated corridor can transport 10,000 passengers an hour by bus, compared to only 750 by car. A bus can take all its passengers on board in barely 15 seconds before leaving a station.

In many cities, the time interval between buses can be as little as 20 seconds, making the service highly efficient. In Brazilian BRT systems, the interval between buses may be two minutes, Cunha said. One busload of passengers can replace 120 cars, he said.

Another benefit is the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle traffic. In Mexico City the BRT system, which is 20 kilometres long, has reduced the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from traffic by 80,000 tonnes a year, according to the ITDP.

Constructing BRT systems takes time and money, but much less of both than a subway line, which can take up to 10 years to build.

Building and equipping 10 kilometres of BRT takes an average of 18 months and 10 times less money than a metro line.

Brazil’s 113 BRT projects, operating in 25 cities, represent 30 percent of total BRT systems already functioning all over the world, according to NTU estimates.

The government’s current investment commitments amount to six billion dollars, including what it has already spent. By the end of 2013, more projects in medium-sized cities will bring the total to nearly nine billion dollars.

Four new BRT projects are under way in Rio de Janeiro: TransCarioca, with 39 stations, which is to be inaugurated in December at a cost of 900 million dollars; TransBrasil, with 25 stations, which began to be constructed in 2012 at a cost of 600 million dollars; TransOeste, with 64 stations, the second phase of which will be completed in August, at a cost of 380 million dollars; and TransOlímpica, with 18 stations, which is due to begin operating in January 2016 at a cost of 1.1 billion dollars.

TransOeste was awarded a gold BRT Standard classification, in spite of problems with overcrowding and poor road surfacing along some stretches of the bus corridor.

However, Torres said, the average journey time was halved from two hours to one, and TransOeste has new units with air conditioning and onboard cameras, is accessible and offers frequent service.

TransBrasil promises to be one of the biggest rapid transit corridors in the world in terms of passenger numbers, transporting close to 820,000 passengers a day, according to the project.

Ecobici, the government bike share system launched in 2010, has nearly 50,000 users in Mexico City. Credit: EMBARQ Brasil/CC-BY-2.0

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jan 17 2013 (IPS)

Latin America’s big cities should cooperate with each other in order to overcome shared challenges in transport issues, such as sustainability and a more human-centered approach to urban development, experts say.

“Challenges in the cities are very similar. Car use was favoured and the cities’ growth suffered from planning deficiencies, and now they have to make the public transport sector a priority,” Bernardo Baranda, Latin America regional director for the U.S. Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), told IPS.

“Cooperation is an interesting approach, because a lot can be learned from what other cities are doing. Nowadays projects are being taken up to give priority to public transportation, improving quality and giving users alternatives so that they leave their cars at home,” he said.

On Tuesday Jan. 15, ITDP and eight other international organisations presented the 2013 Sustainable Transport Award to the Mexico City Federal District, the country’s capital, which was represented by the city’s heads of Transport and Highways and of Environment, Rufino León and Tania Müller, respectively.

Nine million people live in the Federal District, and 20.4 million in the Mexico City metropolitan area, which spills over into part of the adjacent state of Mexico, one of the 31 states in the country. The size of its population puts Mexico City in third place among global megacities, after Tokyo and Delhi, according to the United Nations.

The other four finalists for the award were the cities of Rosario, Argentina; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Bremen, Germany; and Kiev, Ukraine. They had been selected from among nine candidates in eight countries.

ITDP and the Centre for Sustainable Transport-EMBARQ nominated Mexico City in August for adding an extra route to the Metro Collective Transport System, extending the public Ecobici bike share programme, and installing parking metres in some neighbourhoods.

In 2012 the cities of San Francisco, California in the United States and Medellín, Colombia shared the award, while in 2011 the winner was Guangzhou, China and in 2010, Ahmedabad, India.

Consultant Roberto Remes told IPS that the award for sustainable transport is a special opportunity for Latin American cities – nominated or not – to get together to share their experiences and discuss possible solutions.

“Best practices are an incentive, but one must understand that suppliers of technology carry out intense lobbying that is not always in line with best practices. This leads to governments looking for ways of using the technology, instead of looking for a solution for a specific problem, which is a flawed approach,” he said.

“It would be better for governments to act according to state-of-the-art knowledge and best practices,” Remes said.

In April 2012, Metrobus Line 4, covering 28 kilometres in the Mexican capital, came into operation, expanding the bus rapid transit (BRT) system that uses dedicated lanes, while Metrobus Line 12, covering 24 kilometres, opened in October 2012.

Ecobici, the bike share system launched in 2010 by the metropolitan government, has nearly 50,000 users who have made close to five million trips. The scheme has 264 bike stations and 3,670 bicycles in the centre and west of the capital.

Finally, the Ecoparq system of parking metres has been in operation since January 2012 in two neighbourhoods in the west of the capital, and is about to expand into other areas.

These measures taken by the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), which has governed the Federal District since 1997, seek to reduce the use of private vehicles that leads to chaotic urban transport, and create environmental benefits such as pollution reduction.

In the metropolitan area of the Valley of Mexico, where the Federal District and several municipalities of the adjacent state of Mexico are located, citizens make 49 million journeys daily, 53 percent of them on public transport and 17 percent in private vehicles, according to the Centre for Sustainable Transport-EMBARQ.

The creation of BRT-type systems in the region’s megacities has shown a marked increase over the last decade, to the point that they now exist in at least 17 cities. The same has happened with public bicycle share programmes.

The award is “a recognition and a call for continuity, to make (the programmes) more aggressive in the coming years, in order to give citizens better transport options,” Baranda said.

“There is still a great deal to be done to integrate different modes of transport, to make it easier for users to change from one mode to another,” said the ITDP regional director, who is currently negotiating a collaboration agreement with the capital city government.

In 2009, transportation expert Carlos Pardo wrote a report titled “Los cambios en los sistemas integrados de transporte masivo en las principales ciudades de América Latina” (Changes in integrated mass transport systems in the major cities of Latin America) for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

In it he identified challenges in this field among cities in the region, including integration and coherence with other modes of public transport, with non-motorised transport, with urban policies and with public and private investments in public transport, and the corresponding priorities.

The study also discusses the need for synchronising project execution timing and politically determined timing; and the importance of feasibility studies and the analysis of alternatives, in order to carry out projects that are successful in the medium to long term.

In 2012, Rio de Janeiro, which has 11.8 million people and is the Brazilian city with the second highest population after São Paulo, opened its first BRT corridor, called TransOeste. It also expanded the shared bicycle programme it launched in 2011, and started a project for improving public spaces.

The Argentine city of Rosario, which has nearly 1.2 million people, has concentrated on improving transport, the bicycle programme and public spaces.

In October, ITDP presented a plan titled “Perspectivas de crecimiento de la red de Metrobús y transporte integrado del Distrito Federal a 2018” (Prospects for growth in the Metrobus network and integrated transport in the Federal District to 2018) which proposes annual growth in the system of between 25 and 30 kilometres and the addition of 10 new routes by 2018, benefiting some two million additional passengers.

This year, the Mexico City government intends to extend the Metrobus and Ecobici systems, strengthening multimodal integration.

“We have to make the leap to an integrated transport system. The modality and the route do not matter as much as the user having access to a system of smooth transfers, with discounted fares. The connectivity of all the systems is very important,” said Remes.

(END)

The cyclists riding in the bicycle lanes along the beachfront avenue of this Brazilian city pass the car drivers stuck in rush hour traffic.

The Rio de Janeiro city authorities are encouraging this simple, cheap and non-polluting solution for the growing problems of urban transport.

The sight of commuters on bicycles is increasingly common in Rio because of strong economic growth, easy credit and incentives designed to boost auto sales.

Bicycling in Rio de Janeiro. Credit: Courtesy of ITDP

“I sold my car because it was so difficult to park, parking lots were expensive, I couldn’t cope with the traffic any more, and I was stressed out,” physical education teacher Teresa Moreira, who sold her car and now cycles to work, told IPS.

“When I drove to work I was under stress and I was rude. Now, on the bike, I’m not,” said Moreira, who commutes daily along the seafront drive between the neighbourhoods of Leme and Leblón, in the south of the city.

Traffic jams occur in any part of the city and at any time. They are worse when unanticipated events happen, such as an accident, the visit of a president or a rock star, a big international event, or simply Christmas shopping season.

“Originally the focus was on building cycle lanes for recreation, but now our priority is to find ways of fomenting bicycle use as a means of transport for short and medium distances, complementing the mass transport system,” María Lúcia Navarro, manager of the “Rio, Capital da Bicicleta” (Rio, the Bicycle Capital) programme of the city government’s environment secretariat, told IPS.

Rio de Janeiro, home to some 12 million people, is the second largest city in Brazil after São Paulo further to the south.

Special bicycle lanes began to be built in the late 1980s. Today they extend for nearly 300 kilometres, including lanes marked on roads and bicycle paths on sidewalks shared with pedestrians. These efforts put the city in first place in Brazil for kilometres of cycleways, and second in South America after Bogotá, Colombia.

Bicycles do not emit greenhouse gases that cause global warming, and they ensure fast journeys, are low cost, and provide health benefits “because pedalling is an aerobic exercise,” Navarro said.

If the cycle route network is integrated into high quality public transport, “its efficiency will spread throughout the city,” Zé Lobo, head of Transporte Ativo (Active Transport), an NGO that promotes alternative means of transport, told IPS.

The city government’s keen interest can be seen in the appointment of Carlos Roberto de Figueiredo, the city’s former secretary of conservation, to head the transport secretariat, said Clarisse Cunha Linke, deputy head of the Brazil office of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), a New York-based NGO working for sustainable transport.

As a result of his appointment, she expects more policies to foment bicycle use.

Navarro said progress is being made compared to the last 20 years. Today, close to four percent of short and medium distance trips – approximately one million journeys a day – are made on bicycles. Bike users already outnumber train and boat passengers.

The 2009-2012 municipal plan emphasised the importance of sustainable urban mobility, and of maintaining and expanding the bicycle path system, integrating it into other forms of transport, and providing cycle storage shelters and bicycle rental sites.

For the period 2013-2016 the plan is to add 150 kilometres of cycle lanes and paths, as well as bicycle parking lots, with the aim of having a network of 450 kilometres of cycle routes by 2016, when the Olympic Games will be hosted by Rio.

The cycle route network “is still very disconnected from the transport system,” Linke told IPS.

“We’ll have to think about how to integrate the service sites and the bicycle storage units into the mass means of transport – the metro, trains, and fast bus lanes,” she said. “We have to start thinking about bicycles not only as a form of recreation but as a means of transport.”

Navarro discussed meeting this goal through plans for a bus rapid transit (BRT) system with cycle storage facilities at bus stops and with space on the buses for bicycles. The BRT buses are envisaged to spread into densely populated areas, like the west of the city.

ITDP is working with the city government, providing technical advice and evaluating, together with other organisations, a bicycle system for the centre of the city.

“Shops, for instance, still don’t see bicycles as something that could help them draw more customers. It’s important for the private sector to start to participate more,” said Linke.

She said more bike paths are needed, because most of them are concentrated along the coast. “If people can start and finish their journey on bicycle, the system will work better,” she said.

Moreira approves of some of the measures that have already been implemented, like being able to take bicycles on the metro at weekends. But “on weekdays the metro is already crowded. Imagine if everyone decided to take their bikes into the carriages.”

The private sector is contributing with 600 shared bicycles, rented mainly in tourist areas. Linke said this system should be further encouraged.

The new transport plan will put out to tender the supply of 200 cycle stands and 2,000 bicycles in less privileged and more remote zones.

Bicycle parking lots also need to be expanded.

“The total quality of the infrastructure should be attended to, and not just its extent,” Lobo said.

Solange Medeiros, a law student and sports cyclist, believes it is important to develop respect between cyclists and pedestrians.

“Sometimes pedestrians walk where they’re not supposed to on the cycle routes, creating problems and the risk of accidents,” she told IPS.

Moreira suggested that the authorities carry out traffic campaigns, especially for drivers of electric bicycles, who “move at 40 kilometres per hour, faster than is allowed, and knock over elderly people.”

As in all things, “what matters is respect,” she said.

Greater integration of public passenger transport is a major challenge facing the next government of the Mexican capital, one of the most traffic-congested cities in the world, if it wants to guarantee people the right to mobility.

The authorities of the Mexico City Federal District have invested billions in collective transport, but have failed to create a balanced, multi-modal transportation system.

“Part of integration is physical – making it much easier to move from one system to another,” said Bernardo Baranda, the director for Latin America of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).

“It also has to do with the design of stations, and improving the integration of multimodal transport,” Baranda, whose office is based in Mexico City, told IPS.

ITDP, a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation that provides technical assistance to cities on sustainable transportation development throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas, advises the Mexico City government.

The Metrobus system carries 800,000 passengers a day in Mexico City. Mariana Gil/ EMBARQ Brasil/CC BY 2.0

In the metropolitan area of Mexico City, made up of the Federal District and several municipalities in the surrounding Mexico state, there are 49 million daily trips, of which 53 percent are carried out on public transport and 17 percent in private vehicles, according to the Centre for Sustainable Transport for Mexico City (CTS-Mexico).

The transport system in this area of over 20 million people is made up of buses, minibuses, the Metro Collective Transport System and the Metrobus, which are often disconnected from each other. They transport 14.8 million people a day.

Mayor Marcelo Ebrard of the leftwing Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), in office since 1997, will be succeeded on Dec. 5 by his PRD colleague Miguel Mancera.

The metro system, with a network of 11 lines totalling 201 kilometres, moves five million passengers a day, a number only surpassed by the 6.8 million people who travel in private cars, according to figures from the road and transport secretariat.
The Metrobus, with four routes and a total of 95 kilometres, transports some 800,000 passengers a day.

Among the main factors contributing to the lack of integration in the expanding public transport system is the proliferation of shanty towns on the outskirts of Mexico City, according to experts, who are offering the next city administration different formulas for creating a more humanised mass transit system.

“A major concern is the lack of public policies for controlled urban development,” Daniel Zamudio, an expert with El Poder Ciudadano (Citizen Power), told IPS.

“Continual housing development means journeys are getting longer and longer, less safe and more costly,” said Zamudio, the public transport coordinator for the NGO.

In its comprehensive transport and mobility programme for 2007-2012, the government of the capital promised to create 10 routes for Metrobus and a bus rapid transit (BRT) system with pre-paid cards, exclusive lanes and articulated vehicles.

But only four Metrobus routes were built, and the authorities opted instead to build the 12th line of the metro, 24 kilometres long, at a cost of two billion dollars, to link the west and east sides of Mexico City. It is about to be inaugurated.

Ebrard also chose to build new stretches of elevated highway, which promote the use of private cars, according to critics of this move.

Total public and private investment in transport infrastructure has amounted to 4.7 billion dollars over Ebrard’s six-year term.

Even so, some of the plans for 2007-2012 remain pending for the Mancera administration to complete.

“We must ask the incoming government to be more aggressive in expanding Metrobus and improving current operations. The priority has got to be quality public transport. Work must begin in the most underprivileged areas, like the east of the city,” Baranda said.

On Tuesday Oct. 23, ITDP presented a plan titled “Perspectivas de crecimiento de la red de Metrobus y transporte integrado del Distrito Federal a 2018” (Prospects for growth in the Metrobus network and integrated transport in the Federal District to 2018), which proposes annual growth in the system of between 25 and 30 kilometres and the addition of 10 new routes by 2018, benefiting two million additional passengers.

The report estimates an annual investment of 117 million dollars. In 2013 a network linking the east and south of the capital could be built, a project that the city government has already planned.

The 10 new routes would save 290,000 hours a day in commuting time; signify a reduction in emissions of 11,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming; and reduce traffic accidents by 30 percent.

“It is necessary to create additional routes that feed into the Metrobus system, so that more people will start using mass public transport. Furthermore, bus stops and metro stations must be restructured to make them accessible and promote the right to mobility,” Zamudio said.

Since Oct. 17, commuters have been able to purchase the Federal District card and use it to ride both the metro and Metrobus. In future, it will also be possible to use the card to pay for bus transport, taxis and parking meters, as well as to rent bicycles.

Mancera has already been given the “Acuerdos para la Movilidad” (Agreements on Mobility) drawn up by “Citizens with a Vision,” made up of six civil society organisations that suggest expanding, modernising and integrating a quality public transport network.

They also point out the need to consolidate a legal and institutional framework for better public transport.

In terms of mobility, the group recommends articulating urban development and mobility policies; moving towards a more compact and orderly city; and achieving efficient and sustainable public investment in transport.

The measures proposed by ITDP would improve public spaces and passenger safety, reduce transit times, expand coverage by the mass transport network, decongest saturated transport corridors and improve the connectivity of the network.

“Mobility problems are solved by prioritising public transport. A good transport system serves the needs of the people,” Baranda said.