Mexico’s Med-sized Cities Face Big Transportation Challenges

Mexico’s mid-sized cities face financeable and technically feasible challenges in their post-COVID-19 public transportation strategies, argues GIZ Mexico. The optimization and assessment of transportation systems could speed up recovery.

These cities experience more difficulties to achieve bankable, financial and technically viable public transportation rescue plans compared to Mexico’s metropolitan area, like Guadalajara and Monterrey, which own technical capacities able to transform their public transport system, explained Dennis Quennet, City and Sustainable Transport Director, German Society for International Cooperation Mexico (GIZ Mexico).

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic reducing transportation demand throughout the country, its recovery in mid-size cities requires more than just achieving pre-pandemic user rates or receiving financial support, he added.

The system’s current problems have been present previous to the pandemic, as Mexican public transportation needs to become cleaner, safer and more efficient. For that reason, GIZ Mexico has been working on the system’s optimization through digital tools and electromobility processes to offer a restored service and increase user demand. However, these advances are only currently taking place inside the country’s metropolitan area.

Additionally, Quennet emphasized GIZ Mexico’s historic focus on assessment rather than financial support. While the latter is important to achieve change, the current economic crisis represents a significant difficulty. Within the country’s public mobility situation, GIZ aims not to bring financial aid to the cities but to share experiences and assess local and federal authorities to identify where opportunities to access financial resources lay.

“Our job is to provide technical assistance to make funding happen. Our goal is to support those who need financing and the public transport system involves a lot of people,” said Quennet.

In the past, GIZ Mexico has supported Mexican transporters, companies and the federal government by evaluating and analyzing how to renew fleets in cargo transportation and urban logistics. The current renewal of the equipment that the organization is managing requires support from the Financial German Cooperation, while assessing how to improve efficiency through training the fleet’s operators.

This international organization has three strategic lines in Mexico, which are attending cargo transport, urban logistics and urban planning with non-motorized mobility. This last strategy focuses on providing transportation alternatives that reduce carbon emissions and encourage private vehicle users to switch to sustainable modes of public transportation.

“GIZ is one of the few international organizations in Mexico that attends these three strategic lines. We do not seek to focus only on human transportation as we want to advance in the goods transportation industry as well […] within the philosophy of integral cooperation, we cannot conceive the city without transport nor the transport without the city,” said Quennet.