Overregulation in New Mobility Law?

Through the combined effort of civil organizations, specialists, activists and authorities, a new General Mobility and Road Safety Law was created to improve mobility make roads safer. The law aims to create better and more standardized mobility in Mexico. It was approved in October 2020 and recently the World Resources Institute of Mexico (WRI México) presented new guidelines for its development, reports Milenio.

The law is designed to guarantee the right to mobility in conditions of equality, inclusion, sustainability, accessibility, road safety, quality, efficiency and gender perspective. It also seeks to guarantee safer transportation and better conditions for users no matter the mean of transportation, leading to zero road deaths and injuries, among other provisions.

One of the law’s main objectives is to establish ordered planning of urban centers, allowing citizens to move in a safer environment. However, it raises concerns for cargo trucking services, as it could open the door to overregulation in states and municipalities, warns Transportes y Turismo. The law follows a hierarchy: prioritizing pedestrians and cyclists, followed by public transportation and lastly particular vehicles, explains el Heraldo de México.

Overregulation Threat?

An industry concern is state regulations can sometimes overlap. “States and municipalities want to create their own rules, which many times clash with others. They need to create certainty; they need to make things in a way that keeps the trucking sector from feeling restricted,” said Leonardo Gómez Vargas, Director General of ANTP to TyT. The law actually wants to avoid the overregulation and bureaucracy that currently exists in different states and municipalities regarding trucking, which often leads to corruption, explained CAINTRA, which represents Nuevo Leon’s industrial sector, according to El Heraldo de México.

The new law hopes to guarantee proper structural legislation focused on mobility benefits for citizens in the short and long-term. “It is based on the essential elements of mobility rights. It is supposed to create a framework that respects the different government levels,” said Fernando Páez, Director of Sustainable Mobility at WRI Mexico.

“WRI Mexico urges authorities to create and approve the General Mobility and Road Safety Law during the current legislative period considering the guidelines that derive from multisectoral consensuses, with the objective of guaranteeing the right to mobility for all people,” demanded Adriana Lobo, Executive Director of WRI Mexico, according to Milenio.