Mobility solutions needed in Central America

Smart mobility could be defined as developing the most sustainable way to provide efficient (reliable, fast and safe) public transportation throughout cities.

While traditional solutions involve building infrastructure such as subways, urban trains, and bus-rapid-transit (BRT) systems, many large cities throughout Latin America are finding it difficult to build these costly infrastructure projects amidst growing populations.

When thinking about cities in need of urban mobility solutions, mega-cities such as São Paulo in the south (at least 12mn people) and Mexico City in the north (at least 9mn) usually come to mind, mainly due to their sheer size.

However, we cannot overlook smaller cities in Central America such as Tegucigalpa (Honduras), Managua (Nicaragua), Guatemala City, and Panama City, the latter which was recently highlighted by Latin American development bank CAF.

According to the bank, Panama City (some 885,000 people) faces 30% more commute time than the LatAm average. While home-to-work travel takes 40 minutes on average in Latin America, those in Panama City take about 52 minutes.

Residents in the city are also the second most dissatisfied commuters in Latin America (34% unhappy), only behind Bogota.

While Panama City residents using private transport such as a car take 56 minutes on average, those using public transportation take around 67 minutes. The problem, according to a study carried out by the bank, is displacement.

There are pockets of dense urban areas which are being served by public transport systems with winding routes which are not efficient.

While a home-to-work commute averages 17km in Panama City (taking up to 85 minutes), commutes in larger cities such as Bogota with 9mn people and Santiago do Chile with 7mn people are approximately 11km (taking about 50 minutes).

For public transport to be efficient, land use planning must first be aligned with transit, and stations should be no more than 1km from homes, according to Clayton Lane who is the CEO of New York-based non-profit Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP).


ITDP CEO Clayton Lane (Source: ITDP)

Moreover, “fares should be paid before boarding, there should be a station every 500m to 3km, and it would be ideal if the public transit system has a dedicated right-of-way separating it from street traffic,” says Clayton.

However, some of the recent – more instantaneous solutions – are ride-hailing and car sharing services. Among those available in Latin America are international ride-hailing companies Uber, Cabify, 99 and Easy Taxi, as well as locally operated car-sharing and bike-sharing services.

Public vs Private transport

In Latin America, approximately 39% of the workers use public transportation to go to work, 22% uses private transportation, and 26% walk, according to the bank. In Europe, the breakdown is 23%, 54%, and 11% respectively.

Considering the U.S., it is very car oriented with nearly 90% of its commuters using private transportation. Larger cities such as New York and Chicago, however, opt more for public transport.

Photo: Panama city traffic (Source: Creative Commons)