Farmer Crescencio Hernández checks seedlings in his chinampa in the San Gregorio Atlapulco collective land, in the Xochimilco municipality, in the south of the extensive metropolitan area of Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
SAN GREGORIO ATLAPULCO, Mexico , Sep 18 2024 (IPS)

Mexican Crescencio Hernández orders radishes, herbs and lettuce for shipment to an alternative market in west-central Mexico City.

The vegetables have been harvested from his chinampa, a pre-Hispanic wetland farming system that survives in three boroughs in the south of the Mexican capital, albeit surrounded by multiple threats.

Hernández, 44, married without children, attributed the success of the traditional technique to good practices. “We take care that there is no sewage in the canals, no construction in this area, we don’t use agrochemicals and reforest every year,” the owner of the Crescen de la Chinampa brand explained during a tour of his chinampa with IPS.

With three workers, Hernández harvests about 500 kilograms of vegetables each week, including tomatoes, peppers, chilli peppers and spinach, from a chinampa he owns and another he borrows in the town of San Gregorio Atlapulco, home to some 24,000 people and part of the borough of Xochimilco, known as ‘the land of flowers’.“We take care that there is no sewage in the canals, that there is no construction in this area, we don't use agrochemicals, we reforest every year": Crescencio Hernández.

Originally from the municipality of Acambay, in the state of Mexico (neighbouring Mexico City), Hernández has been a chinampa farmer (chinampero) for 28 years, an activity he shares with his brother, who rents another of these plots of land for agricultural production.

In 2017, he abandoned the use of agrochemicals and now uses compost from the organic matter produced by the farm. In June, he installed a greenhouse inside the chinampa to plant tomato, lettuce and cucumber.

“The basis of the system is water, it sustains it. I diversify production to meet the demand, as I am asked for several products, and also to take care of the soil,” he said.

But what he and other chinampa farmers protect, is destroyed in nearby areas, with the complicity of the authorities, who are responsible for protecting these unique sites.

Irregular urbanisation, the use of pesticides, the effects of the climate crisis, over-exploitation of the aquifer and neglect have dug their daggers into the bowels of the chinampa, according to a study by the World Cultural and Natural Heritage Zone Authority (AZP) in Xochimilco, Tláhuac and Milpa Alta.

The AZP, established in 2014, manages the preservation of the wetland’s special ecosystem in order to maintain the World Heritage designation.

Chinampa farmers in the municipality of Xochimilco, in the south of Mexico City. Credit: Fundación Tortilla

Ambiguity

The original peoples used chinampas, , a term that comes from chinampi, which in the indigenous Nahuatl language means ‘in the fence of reeds’, long before the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors in the 15th century.

The technique creates small, rectangular gardens in the wetlands of the micro-region, by means of fences made of ahuejote (willow) stakes, a tree typical of this ecosystem with the virtue of tolerating excess water.

The bottom of the chinampa is rich in mud and organic waste, which provide nutrients for the growth of plants, irrigated with water from the canals, in one of the most studied areas in the centre of the country.

The chinampas are the vegetable garden that partially feeds the 22 million people of Mexico City and its metropolitan area.

The chinampas system retains water, produces fish, vegetables, flowers and medicinal plants, and saves water compared to traditional irrigation, with a network of navigable canals of some 135 kilometres.

Luis Zambrano, doctor in basic ecology at the Institute of Biology de of the public National Autonomous University of Mexico, believes chinampas have had their ups and downs.

“There are chinamperos who… want to work the way they used to work, and that helps resilience and local food production. But it’s getting worse, because urbanisation, such as houses, football pitches and night clubs, is gaining ground,” he told IPS.

This, he said, because “Xochimilco is very threatened by local public policies that promote these activities, when the land’s vocation is to be productive”.

San Gregorio Atlapulco, part of the municipality of Xochimilco, in the south of Mexico City, lost conservation land between 2012 and 2024, victim of urbanization and the installation of greenhouses, as shown in the two satellite images from each of those years. Credit: Google Earth

In 1992, the Priority Zone for the Preservation and Conservation of Ecological Balance y was established as a Natural Protected Area (NPA), which covers the ejidos (community farms on public land under concession) of Xochimilco and San Gregorio Atlapulco, with a total of 2,507 hectares.

The chinampera area has 1,723 hectares, equivalent to 68 % of the NPA.

The borough hosts three zones in the ejidos Xochimilco, San Gregorio Atlapulco and San Luis Tlaxialtemalco, which still have canals and host 2,824 active chinampas out of the 18,524 existing ones.

Of the active points, 60% apply the chinampero system, 12.5% host greenhouses, recreational sites and football fields, 9.4% are dedicated to pastures and 16% were converted into residential areas.

In Xochimilco there are 864 active chinampas out of 15,864 registered over 1,059 hectares, corresponding to 47% of the total surface of the traditional system. This area preserves the largest number of chinampas that have potential for restoration.

San Gregorio Atlapulco has 1,530 operational chinampas out of 2,060 registered, over an area of 484 hectares (22% of the total), which makes it the locality with the greatest presence of these active sites.

San Luis Tlaxialtemalco is the smallest, with 103 hectares (5% of the territory), and 430 active chinampas out of 600 registered.

Xochimilco, with just over 442,000 people in an area of about 125 square kilometres, has been a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) World Natural and Cultural Heritage site since 1987.

In addition, its lake system has been part of the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, known as the Ramsar Convention, since 2004, especially as a habitat for waterfowl.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) classifies the chinampas as part of the Ingenious Systems of World Agricultural Heritage, as they conserve agrobiodiversity, adapt farmers to climate change, guarantee food security and combat poverty.

But these recognitions have not prevented the destruction, and restoration has been an ever-present promise, always unfulfilled.

The protected natural area has lost at least 173 hectares in recent years due to urbanisation, construction of greenhouses and spaces for mass events, such as festivals, according to calculations by Zambrano and his scientific team. The ANP’s 2018 management plan bans those activities.

Compounding the despair, in 2021 the capital’s government built a vehicular bridge over a wetland, which increases the threats to the ecosystem and has led to several complaints to Unesco, which have yet to be resolved.

The canals between the chinampas provide sediment, the base for planting, and water for irrigating vegetable crops, in a wetland located in three localities in the south of Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

A possible future

In this adverse context, the chinamperos also sow optimism that flows through the canals of the area.

Biologist Zambrano leads a project that includes research, maintenance of the sites and protection of the axolotl, working with 25 farmers and 40 chinampas that distribute their produce to shops and restaurants with the ‘chinampera label’.

In 2024, the restoration project has a budget of around USD 250,000 from private donations.

The amphibian axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) is endemic to the area and is at risk of extinction due to habitat loss.

At the moment, they are analysing profitability and increased production, in order to encourage more farmers to join.

Farmer Hernández highlighted collective work and government support as hopeful elements.

“I see solutions, but it depends on the government giving money. We need farmers to be aware of water use,” he said.

Zambrano called for a ‘social force’ to compel the regional and national governments to restore Xochimilco.

“Today they need subsidies, the value is very low and competition is high. This is a race against the dynamics we have brought in the last decades,” he argued.

He predicted a future with possibilities. “There are going to be places crowded with tourists, a lot of urbanisation and deterioration. But if we manage to change the balance and increase production, if the government supports it, we could have a very profitable area,” he concluded.

Exasperated by the government's performance in economic and social matters, thousands of Mexicans have protested since January 1 against the rise in oil prices, in demonstrations that have already left at least six dead, and led to looting and roadblocks. One of the demonstrations had its epicentre in the symbolic Independence Angel, on Paseo de la Reforma, in Mexico City. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jan 11 2017 (IPS)

“We are absolutely fed up with the government’s plundering and arbitrary decisions. We don´t deserve what they’re doing to us,“ said Marisela Campos during one of the many demonstrations against the government´s decision to raise fuel prices.

Campos, a homemaker and mother of two, came to Mexico City from Yautepec, 100 km to the south, to protest the recent economic decisions taken by the administration of conservative President Enrique Peña Nieto.

“Everything’s going to go up because of the gasolinazo“ – the popular term given the 14 to 20 per cent increase in fuel prices as of Jan.1, said Campos, while she held a banner against the measure, in a Monday Jan. 9 demonstration.

The measure unleashed the latent social discontent, with dozens of protests, looting of shops, roadblocks, and blockades of border crossings throughout the country, carried out by trade unions, organisations of farmers, students and shopkeepers.“It is too big of an increase. It is a very big, direct and precise blow to people's pockets. They are feeling it. People do not understand the reform, because they don't read laws, not even those on taxes.“ -- Nicolás Domínguez

The simultaneous price hikes for fuel, electricity and domestic gas were a spark in a climate of discontent over growing impunity, corruption and social inequality.

The protests, which show no signs of subsiding, have led to at least six deaths, some 1,500 people arrested, and dozens of stores looted.

“We are opposed to Peña Nieto’s way of governing. The price rises and budget cutbacks have been going on since 2014. Now there will be an increase in the cost of the basic food basket and transport rates,“ Claudia Escobar, who lives on the south side of Mexico City, told IPS during another demonstration.

Escobar, a mother of three, decided to join the protests because of what she described as “serious social disintegration and turmoil.“

In response to the social discontent, the government argued that the price rises were in response to the increase in international oil prices since the last quarter of 2016, and insisted that without this measure, budget cuts with a much more damaging social impact would have been necessary.
But the rise has its origin more in the elimination of a fuel subsidy which up to 2014 absorbed at least 10 billion dollars a year, as well as in the state-run oil company Pemex’s limited productive capacity.

To this must be added the government’s tax collection policy, where taxes account for 30 per cent of the price of gasoline.

In addition, energy authorities seek to make the fuel market more attractive, because its freeing up is part of the energy reform which came into force in 2014, and opened the oil and power industries to private capital.

Peña Nieto, in office since December 2012, promised Mexicans that this energy reform would guarantee cheap gasoline for the domestic market.

Pemex’s oil extraction has been in decline since 2011, and in 2016 it fell 4.54 per cent in relation to the previous year.

In November, crude oil production amounted to 2.16 million barrels a day, the lowest level in three decades, due to an alleged lack of resources to invest in the modernisation of infrastructure.

Gas and diesel production suffered a similar decline over the past two years, with a 15.38 per cent decrease between 2015 and 2016, when Pemex refined 555,200 barrels equivalent a day of both fuels combined.

This forced a rise in fuel imports, mainly from the United States, with Mexico importing in November 663,300 barrels equivalent a day, 15.88 per cent more than in the same month the previous year.

Traditionally, Pemex contributed 33 per cent of the national budget, but the collapse in international prices since 2014, and its contraction in activity, reduced its contribution to 20 per cent, which compels the government to obtain income from other sources.

For Nicolás Domínguez, an academic at the state Autonomous Metropolitan University, the government is facing the complex situation with “simplistic and incomplete“ explanations.

“It is too big of an increase. It is a very big, direct and precise blow to people’s pockets. They are feeling it. People do not understand the reform, because they don’t read laws, not even those on taxes.“ he told IPS.

But the public “do understand when they go shopping and they can’t afford to buy what they need. That makes them angry. And when they ask for explanations, the government tells them that in United States gasoline prices have gone up, that they have gone up everywhere.”

The common prediction of critics of the gasolinazo is its impact on the cost of living, which in the last few months has been spiraling upwards, with inflation standing at around 3.4 per cent by the end of the year, according to still provisional figures.

The non-governmental organisation El Barzón, which groups agricultural producers, warns that the price of essential goods could climb by 40 per cent over the next months.

“It is likely that there will be serious repercussions on national agricultural production and in households,“ the organisation’s spokesman, Uriel Vargas, told IPS. He predicted that the impact of the rise in fuel prices will be “an increase in the levels of inequality, which are already a major problem.”

For Vargas, “the government must take action to avoid a rise in prices.“

According to 2014 official figures, 46 percent of Mexico’s 122 million people were living in poverty – a proportion that has likely increased in the last two years, social scientists agree.

The gasolinazo canceled out the four percent rise in the minimum wage adopted this month, which brought the monthly minimum to 120 dollars a month.

As demonstrated by the Centre for Multidisciplinary Analyses of the Mexico National Autonomous University, the minimum monthly wage, earned by about six million workers, does not satisfy basic needs.

In its “Research Report 126. The minimum salary: a crime against the Mexican people,“ the Centre concluded that the minimum wage has lost 11 per cent in buying power since Peña Nieto took office.

The study states that it takes three minimum wages just to put food on the table.

To make matters worse, Mexico’s economic growth will range only between 1.5 and 2 per cent, and a further weakening of the economy is possible, according to several projections, due to the impact of the protectionist policies of Donald Trump, who will take office as U.S. president on Jan. 20.

In an attempt to calm things down, Peña Nieto presented this Monday Jan. 9 an “Agreement for Economic Strengthening and Protection of the Domestic Economy,“ which includes a 10 per cent cut in the highest public sector wages.

But for observers, these are merely bandaid measures.

“What the government wants is to calm people down. These are small remedies and what people want is a drop in gas prices. The question is what direction do they want Mexico to move in. If it is about improving the well-being of families, this is not the best way. If the demonstrations spread, the government will have to back down,“ said Domínguez.

For people such as Campos and Escobar, the starting point is reversing the increase in oil prices.

“We will persist until the rise is reverted and there is a change,“ said Campos, while Escobar added “we hope that they understand that we will not stay quiet.“

On February 4 there will be another price adjustment, another spark to the burning plain that Mexico has become.

Construction work on the Chapultepec Intermodal Transfer Station, with the castle in the famous Chapultepec forest in the background. The recurrent complaint of Mexico City residents affected by public works in this city is the lack of consultation, transparency and information. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Sep 23 2016 (IPS)

People living in neighborhoods affected by the expansion of urban construction suffer a “double displacement”, with changes in their habitat and the driving up of prices in the area, in a process in which “we are not taken into account,” said Natalia Lara, a member of an assembly of local residents in the south of Mexico City.

Lara, who is pursuing a master’s degree in public policies at the Latin American School of Social Sciences (Flacso), told IPS that in her neighborhood people are outraged because of the irrational way the construction has been carried out there.

The member of the assembly of local residents of Santa Úrsula Coapa, a lower middle-class neighborhood, complains that urban decision-makers build more houses and buildings but “don’t think about how to provide services. They make arbitrary land-use changes.”

Lara lives near the Mexico City asphalt plant owned by the city’s Ministry of Public Works, which has been operating since 1956 and has become asource of conflict between the residents of the southern neighbourhoods and the administration of leftist Mayor Miguel Mancera of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, which has governed the capital since 1997.“There is clearly a lack of planning and vision, the strategy of only carrying out projects with a strictly economic focus is affecting us.There is no interest in building spaces that help improve community life. We are becoming more isolated, people don’t take their kids to play in parks anymore, but go to shopping centers instead, the fabric of the community breaks down. These are serious problems.” -- Elias García

In mid-2014, Mancera’s government announced its intention to donate the asphalt plant’s land to Mexico City’s Investment Promotion Agency, which would build the Coyoacán Economic and Social Development Area there.

In response, local residents organised and formed, in September of that year, the Coordination of Assemblies of Pedregales, which brings together residents of five neighborhoods in the Coyoacánborough, one of the 16 boroughs into which Mexico City is divided.

But the transfer of ownership of the land took place in December 2014, to create a development area including the construction of an industrial park and residential and office tower blocks.

To appease local residents, Mancera proposed modifying the initial plan and turning the area into an ecological park, despite the fact that the soil is polluted and will take many years to recover.

Last May, the mayor announced the final closure of the asphalt plant and its reconversion into an environmental site, although the decree for the donation to the city investment promotion agency was never revoked, and there is no reconversion plan.

This conflict shows the struggles for the city, for how the public space is defined and used, one of the central topics to be addressed at the Oct. 17-20 third United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III) in Quito, Ecuador.

In the upcoming summit organised by U.N.-Habitat, member states will assume commitments with regard to the right to the city, how to finance the New Urban Agenda that will result from Quito, and sustainable urban development, among other issues.

Cities like the Mexican capital, home to 21 million people, are plagued with similar problems.

Elías García, president of the non-governmental Ecoactivistas, knows this well, having worked for three decades as an environmental activist in the borough of Iztacalco, in the east of the capital.

“There is clearly a lack of planning and vision, the strategy of only carrying out projects with a strictly economic focus is affecting us.There is no interest in building spaces that help improve community life. We are becoming more isolated, people don’t take their kids to play in parks anymore, but go to shopping centers instead, the fabric of the community breaks down. These are serious problems,” he told IPS.

The activist and other local residents have witnessed how in Iztacalco a concert hall, a race track for F1 international motor races, and more recently, a baseball stadium were built one after another.

In the process, some 3,000 trees were cut down and many green spaces and local sports fields disappeared.

The last measure taken was Macera’s 2015 decision to revoke the declaration of the Magdalena Mixhuca sports complex’s environmental value, which had protected the facilities for nine year, in order to build a baseball stadium in its place. Local residents filed an appeal for legal protection, but lost the suit last June.

Luisa Rodríguez, a researcher at the public Doctor José María Luís Mora Research Institute’s Interdisciplinary Center for Metropolitan Studies, told IPS that where people live determines their enjoyment of rights, such as to the city, a clean environment and housing.

“The exercise of citizenship is connected to the idea of the city. When a severely fragmented city is built, based on a model that only benefits the few, participation in social institutions like education and healthcare is only partial. Geographical location determines the exercise of those rights,” she said.

There are a number of open conflicts between organised local communities and the government of Mexico City. One high-profile flashpoint flared up in 2015 when the city government intended to build the Chapultepec Cultural Corridor in the west of the city, next to the woods of the same name, the biggest “green lung” that remains in this polluted megalopolis.

In a public consultation last December, the residents of the Cuauhtémoc borough, where Chapultepec is located, voted against the public-private project, which intended to build an elevated promenade for pedestrians, lined with shops, gardens and trees, above the traffic down below.

Instead, the city government is building an Intermodal Transfer Station (known as CETRAMs) at a cost of 300 million dollars, whose first stage is to be completed in 2018. Besides the transport hub, it will include a 50-floor hotel and a shopping center.

The Economic and Social Development Zones (ZODES), which originally were to be built in five areas in the capital, have apparently failed to improve the quality of urban life.

“In spite of the benefits these micro-cities are supposed to offer, the negative aspects of evicting the people currently living in these areas have not been assessed, and they run counter to the concepts of sustainability and strategic management that the government claims to support,” wrote city planner Daniela Jay in the specialised journal “Arquine”.

The last draft of the final declaration of Habitat III, agreed upon in July, makes no reference to the process of building a city based on inclusion and the active participation of citizens, although it does refer to exercising the right to the city and the importance of such participation.

Activists see both positives and negatives in the approach taken by Habitat III. The conference “will reinforce urban laws that focus on building cities, displacing the perspective of native people and local communities. There is no trend towards inclusion,” said Lara.

Activist García demanded that the local people be heard. “They have to listen to the people who are committed to protecting the environment,” he said.

According to Rodríguez, Habitat III offers an opportunity to address urban emergencies. “There are high expectations for governments to start focusing on building cities thinking about the inhabitants instead of the buildings,” she told IPS.

But with or without the conference, the battles for the city in urban centres like Mexico’s capital will continue.

A Metrobus stop on 9 de Julio avenue in Buenos Aires, with the famous Obelisk in the background. Credit: Juan Moseinco/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
MEXICO CITY, Jan 6 2014 (IPS)

Sustainable transport grew in the Latin American cities of Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro in 2013.

The left-wing government of the Mexican capital inaugurated the fifth Metrobús bus rapid transit (BRT) system route and extended the Ecobici Individual Transport System.

It also expanded the Ecoparq parking meter system – a new parking management scheme – into new areas on the west side of the city and opened up a new pedestrian-only street in the old city.

In the Argentine capital, meanwhile, the third Metrobús line began to operate with great success on Avenida 9 de Julio, and the government expanded its “Buenos Aires, mejor en bici” (Buenos Aires, Better by Bike) programme.

In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the centre-right city government forged ahead with the construction of the Transcarioca and Transbrasil BRT corridors, while the second stage of the Transoeste BRT project got underway.

The network of bicycle paths was also enlarged, as part of the infrastructure planned for the FIFA World Cup, to be held in Brazil from Jun. 12 to Jul. 13, and the 2016 Olympic summer games in Rio de Janeiro.

In Mexico City, “there have been interesting projects, but they haven’t been carried out at the desired speed,” Bernardo Baranda, Latin America director for the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP), told IPS.

He called for more initiatives and said they should be more rapidly implemented, aimed at “a further reduction of the use of automobiles” in greater Mexico City, home to more than 20 million people.

As part of that objective, he said it was important to expand Ecobici, which includes exclusive and non-exclusive bike lanes as well as a bike-share system.

What is happening in greater Rio de Janeiro, population 11.7 million, “is very exciting,” he said. “A great deal has been invested in infrastructure. Bicycle use has expanded. The centre has great potential for better transport conditions.”

The ITDP Latin America director said that in greater Buenos Aires, home to some 13 million people, “the use of public bicycles has been fomented, along with the idea of turning several streets in the microcenter into pedestrian-only.”

Roberto Remes, an independent Mexican expert in public policies on the environment and transportation, also pointed to interesting developments in the three cities.

He explained to IPS that in Buenos Aires, right-wing Mayor Mauricio Macri “is trying to build an alternative system to the subway,” which turned 100 years old in December.

Meanwhile, “in Mexico we see mainly plans. Apparently we’ll do ok, we’ll have an integrated system with policies focused on mobility and a person-oriented, rather than car-oriented, perspective.”

With respect to Rio de Janeiro, he said “they want their prepaid public fare cards and their institutional image to be the same across the entire country – something that not many countries have achieved.”

The three cities face similar challenges, such as heavy dependence on private vehicles, the proliferation of parking garage buildings, and virtually no progress on road safety, except in the case of Buenos Aires.

In addition, there have been social protests against the infrastructure work accompanying the development of sustainable, multimodal transportation systems.

Baranda said “the bicycle must be better integrated with mass transit, and more integrated transport is needed in order to make it easier to get around.”

On Jan. 15, the ITDP and eight other organisations will grant the Sustainable Transport Award in Washington, DC. This year’s nominees include Buenos Aires, Lanzhou, China and Suwon, South Korea. Mexico City won the award in 2013.

The prize, granted since 2005 to cities of more than 500,000 people, awards accomplishments such as improving public transportation and public spaces, reducing transport-related air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, and improving safety and access for cyclists and pedestrians.

This year, the Mexico City government will build another Metrobús line and will expand segregated and non-segregated bike paths.

For its part, the ITDP will focus on reducing the number of parking garages, and drew up a study on the viability of a Metrobús line on the central Avenida Reforma.

For the 2013-2016 period, the Rio de Janeiro city administration plans to build 150 km of bike paths, as well as bicycle parking stations, to reach a total network of 450 km by 2016.

Buenos Aires projects the creation of another four Metrobús routes for 2014-2015.

The December report on “Social, Environmental and Economic Impacts of BRT Systems” stresses the benefits of bus rapid transit in Bogotá, Colombia; Mexico City; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Istanbul, Turkey.

The report was produced by EMBARQ, the sustainable urban transport and planning programme of the World Resources Institute (WRI).

The study shows that BRT systems have led to travel time savings, a reduction in vehicle operating costs, improvements in health due to reduced pollution, and improved road safety.

But it also identifies challenges such as declining quality of service, the exclusion of the poorest residents from the system, limited integration with other transport systems, and competition with subways.

Remes warned that it was not enough to focus transport strategies on merely establishing BRT systems without addressing other possibilities, such as urban trains.

“The existing models of financing, management and planning only allow for the expansion of these systems. If we create BRT corridors, we can cover the cities in a decade, but there is still a problem: transfers and switches from one system to another. There’s something that’s not working in the long-term vision,” he said.

In the 1970s, nations like Japan, South Korea or Singapore began to build railway networks to foment a mix of transport, employment, financing and economic development in big cities.

In Latin America, “we are a millennium behind,” Remes lamented.

In a megacity like the Mexican capital, plagued by air pollution and traffic jams, carsharing and carpooling initiatives offer obvious advantages in addition to the economic benefits enjoyed by users.

Jimena Pardo’s company even offers electric cars that can be recharged in four hours. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Two of the most popular new initiatives of this kind are Aventones and Carrot, small companies founded by young recent university graduates.

Aventones takes its name from “aventón”, the Spanish word for hitching a lift. The company’s creation was spurred by “the excess of traffic and the inefficient use of cars,” in the Mexican capital, said Ignacio Cordero, a 28-year-old industrial engineer and graduate of the Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA), a Jesuit university in Mexico City.

“The idea is to promote a culture of shared car use,” he told IPS, which in this case is achieved through carpooling.

Cordero joined forces with Cristina Palacios, a business administration graduate from UIA, and Alberto Padilla, an industrial engineer trained at the Monterrey Institute of Technology, to create the company in 2010.

Their services are offered to “communities of trust” – companies, universities and government institutions – with an average of 200 or 250 people, who are matched up through an online system that searches for compatible routes, travel times and empty seats in cars. The service’s users not only share a vehicle – they also share the ride together.

The client organisation is charged a fee of 8,000 dollars a year, which includes training courses.

The software used was created by the company’s founders. It is currently utilised by 5,752 users and 27 clients – 23 in Mexico and four in Chile, where the company began operating in January.

Carpooling has become well established in countries like Germany, Spain, Canada and the United States, but is just beginning to catch on in Latin America. Similar services are being developed in Argentina, Chile and Brazil.

Carsharing is another means of multi-user car transport, popular in Germany, Spain, Canada and the United States and now offered by Carrot in Mexico, Zazcar in Brazil and SigoCar in Costa Rica.

“There is a growing trend of providing more options for getting around. This has a significant positive impact on the environment and fosters multi-modal transportation,” said industrial engineer Jimena Pardo, 28, a UIA graduate, who co-founded Carrot in 2012 with Diego Solórzano, a graduate in actuarial science from the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.

The company, which is affiliated with the international CarSharing Association, offers its clients 40 vehicles, including three electric cars, and has already attracted 1,600 users.

Clients register through a website and pay a fee in accordance with how frequently they need the use of a car, Pardo told IPS. Occasional users pay around 23 dollars annually and seven dollars an hour, plus 23 cents of a dollar for each kilometre travelled.

A frequent driver pays around eight dollars a month, five dollars an hour, and 23 cents per kilometre. Users can pick up a car at one station and leave it at another when they are finished.

According to Carrot, each one of its shared vehicles keeps 20 private cars off the roads.

These new means of transportation are one of the most visible forms of “collaborative consumption”, a movement aimed at increasing the use and shelf life of consumer goods and resources by promoting their use by numerous different people, reducing the time that they sit unused but continue to generate expenses.

These solutions are more than welcome in a city like the Mexican capital and its metropolitan area, which have a combined population of 20.4 million. According to the Centre for Sustainable Transport, the inhabitants of this megacity carry out a total of 49 million trips daily, 53 percent on public transport and 17 percent in private vehicles.

The Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley estimated that as of October 2012, carsharing was operating in 27 countries and five continents, with an estimated 1,788,000 members sharing over 43,550 vehicles, and was planned in seven additional countries worldwide.

The “Propuesta de sistema de vehículos compartidos basado en un sistema de información geográfica” (Proposal for a carsharing system based on a geographic information system), co-authored in 2011 by Luis Guadarrama, Daniel Santiesteban and Javier García at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico, states that “the expected benefits of a carsharing system include a reduction in the use of individual vehicles and the number of these vehicles in circulation.”

“Our goal is for carsharing to become a habit, and for our service to be a social experience in every way,” said Cordero.

Aventones states that it has prevented the emission of 115 tons of carbon dioxide and saved 750,015 kilometres and 10,586 hours in car travel and 71,430 litres of gasoline.

Carsharing systems “can be replicated in medium-sized and large cities that have urban transportation, a high population density and a mix of residential and office areas,” said Pardo, whose company employs nine people and operates stations in the largest Mexico City neighbourhoods.

Both initiatives are self-financed and have ambitious plans for the future.

Aventones, which employs a staff of 10, hopes to begin operations this year in Bogotá and attract 25,000 new users, thanks to financing provided by its new partner, Venture Institute. Its software team is developing an open application based on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

Carrot, which has also partnered up with Venture Institute, plans to begin operations in Toluca and Puebla, cities near the Mexican capital, raise its membership to between 3,000 and 5,000 users, expand its fleet to 100 vehicles, and open up more stations in different neighbourhoods of the city.

Both organisations also hope to forge closer ties with the leftist local government of Mexico City, which is promoting the Metrobús (a bus rapid transit system using dedicated lanes), a public bike sharing system, and an electric taxi programme in the city’s historic centre.

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the World Bank.

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)