Mexico City’s Experiences May Provide Solutions to India’s Traffic Woes
EMBARQ Network brings Latin American transport experts to India for week of events
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 | Mumbai, India
EMBARQ Senior Transport Engineer, Dario Hidalgo (left), Chair of the Forum of Environmental Journalists of India, Darryl D'Monte (Center) and Adriana Lobo (Director of CTS-Mexico at a panel discussion on 'Urban Transport: Status, Issues and Solutions'. Photo by Altaf Mohammed Abid - EMBARQ India
Struggling with a transportation infrastructure stretched to the breaking point, Mumbai urgently needs more sustainable transport systems, and one of the blueprints it could use comes from a seemingly unlikely source – Mexico City. Once the epitome of uncontrolled growth and traffic chaos, the Mexican capital has worked hard in recent years to improve traffic flow, reduce air pollution, and add green space to the city. In an effort to share these successful experiences with policymakers in Mumbai, Indore and other Indian cities, the EMBARQ Network organized several recent events in India that brought Mexican and Latin American experts to India to share lessons with their Indian counterparts.
The first was a July 2, 2008, panel discussion co-hosted by the EMBARQ Network, the Asia Society India Centre, and PUKAR, which examined sustainable transportation initiatives currently underway in Mexico and Latin America. The event featured Adriana Lobo, Director of CTS-Mexico -- a member of the EMBARQ Network that has worked closely with the Mexico City government to improve the capital’s notoriously dysfunctional transportation systems. During her presentation, Ms. Lobo discussed how her Mexico City-based NGO is working with local, regional, and national authorities to improve public transit, increase biking and walking infrastructure, and promote smart urban growth across the country. In particular, Lobo highlighted CTS-Mexico’s role in helping design and implement Mexico City’s Metrobus project -- a BRT system in operation since 2005 that now carries 315,000 per month. Also serving on the panel was Dr. Dario Hidalgo, EMBARQ’s Senior Transport engineer and resident BRT expert, who gave an overview of sustainable transport not just in Mexico and Mexico City, but throughout the Latin American region.
In a second event designed to help build local technical capacity, the EMBARQ Network and partner ICTSL conducted a BRT framing workshop in Indore on June 25th and June 26th. Led by GTZ, this two-day “training of the trainers” workshop disseminated key lessons learned in the Metrobus project in Mexico City, and in other BRT initiatives throughout Latin America. Once again, EMBARQ Network BRT experts Adriana Lobo and Dario Hidalgo were on hand to provide their experiences implementing BRT systems in Mexico, throughout Latin America, and across the world. Building on this input, participants discussed a variety of issues the Indore BRT project is currently facing, and developed an operations plan for addressing them.