Streetsblog New York City

This is the third in a series of reports about sustainable transportation policies in Mexico City. Last week, Streetsblog participated in a tour of the city led by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Previous installments covered pedestrian improvements and the city’s new bus rapid transit system.

An Ecobici station in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City. This station was full of bikes, but a nearby station was nearly empty. Photo: Noah Kazis

Mexico City never had much of a reputation as a bicycle city. Traffic is terribly congested and extremely dangerous — drivers don’t even have to take an eye exam to get a license — and until recently, the air was thick with smog no one hoped to inhale too deeply.

Under the leadership of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, however, Mexico City is taking a multi-pronged approach toward becoming bike-friendly, making changes to its streets, its laws and its culture. Most important has been the introduction of a new bike-share system, Ecobici, that’s expanding rapidly.

In 2007, when Ebrard began a concerted effort to improve cycling, half of all trips were less than eight kilometers long, yet only one percent of trips were made by bike. The city resolved to boost cycling to five percent of all trips in just five years. Mexico City has made big strides under Ebrard but will probably need more time to hit the initial five-year target. Today bicycle mode-share is between two and three percent of trips, according to ITDP.

At the center of the city’s effort is Ecobici, which launched two years ago. A public bike-sharing system funded mainly by the government, Ecobici offers 1,200 bikes at 90 stations, making it comparable in scope to Washington, DC’s Capital Bikeshare but far smaller, for the time being, than systems in London and Paris.

As of today the system can only be found in the trendy Condesa neighborhood, which is often compared to New York City’s Soho. Even limited to one neighborhood, however, demand is sky-high. To ensure quality service for the 30,000 current members, Ecobici has had to set up a waiting list for new subscribers. Otherwise there just wouldn’t be enough bikes to go around, explained Ivan De La Lanza, coordinator of Mexico City’s bicycle mobility strategy. Each bike is already being taken out an average of 10 times per day.

Though Ecobici is only available in a single neighborhood, a full 40 percent of new cyclists in the city use the system, said De La Lanza. It also may be encouraging others to get on their bikes more. According to Good magazine, the use of personal bikes rose 50 percent in the year that Ecobici opened.

A map hanging in Ecobici headquarters shows the current extent of the system along with two expansions planned for this year. Photo: Noah Kazis

This year, the system is set for not one but two major expansions. In June, the service area will spread east, into the Roma neighborhood and Mexico City’s historical downtown. Then in November, Ecobici will move west, surrounding the Bosque Chapultepec — Mexico City’s equivalent of Central Park — and expanding into the business-oriented Polanco area. Membership is expected to skyrocket to between 73,000 and 100,000 users, according to Ecobici official Oscar Montiel.

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A new articulated Metrobús sits in front of Mexico City's Monumento a la Revolucion. Photo: Noah Kazis

This is the second in a series of reports about sustainable transportation policies in Mexico City. Last week, Streetsblog participated in a tour of the city led by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. A previous installment covered pedestrian improvements in the city and a third will discuss its bicycle planning.

After a precipitous collapse, buses are on the rebound in Mexico City.

When the city’s public bus system fell apart during the political and economic turmoil of the 80s and 90s, Mexico City residents were left to rely on a fleet of private microbuses that was extensive but slow, dangerous, and heavily polluting. Now, the city is quickly building out a bus rapid transit system called Metrobús that’s making surface transit fast, safe, and healthy. “It’s the most important initiative in the city in the last 25 years,” says Mayor Marcelo Ebrard.

On the Avenida de Insurgentes, where the first Metrobús line opened in 2006, the distinctive red buses pass by in continuous streams, even when it’s not rush hour. At midday, the gap between one bus and the next was rarely longer than the time it takes to load and unload passengers at the previous station or to wait at a red light. Each bus was full. Clearly, demand is high, perhaps higher than the system can handle.

A bus pulls up to the elevated station in a dedicated lane. Another bus followed immediately behind this one. Photo: Noah Kazis

Each of the three Metrobús lines offers a full set of bus rapid transit features. Riders cross to the median of a wide avenue, where buses run in each direction on physically separated lanes. A ramp leads up to an enclosed station, where you tap a smart card against the turnstile to enter.

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On the Calle Regina in Mexico City's historic downtown, the city replaced both cars and crime-associated vendors with a new pedestrian space. Photo: Noah Kazis

This is the first in a series of reports about sustainable transportation policies in Mexico City. Last week, Streetsblog participated in a tour of the city led by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy and funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. Upcoming installments will cover the city’s transit expansions, particularly its new bus rapid transit lines, and its bicycle planning.

Reclaiming Mexico City’s Calle Regina for pedestrians proved more difficult than simply closing the historical street to traffic. If anything, drivers had more trouble passing through the area than those on foot.

“All the space was taken by vendors,” said Walter Hook, the CEO of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. “It was a little bit like a war when they got rid of them.” As the administration of Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, a former police chief, cleared the area, authorities found caches of drugs and guns, said Hook. Different colored tarps announced which gangs protected each vendor. Only after removing the vendors could officials turn their attention to making Calle Regina car free.

On the Calle Francisco I. Madero, the challenge to pedestrianization was more traditional: the opposition of small businesses along the narrow street. Madero is “the most symbolic connection, maybe, in the country,” said Daniel Escotto, head of Mexico City’s Public Space Authority. On one end of the street is the Zócalo, the central square that has been the spiritual heart of the country from when it hosted the chief temple of Tenochtitlan through Spanish colonization to the political turmoil of today. On the other end is the city’s single busiest intersection, its fine arts museum, and its oldest park.

Despite enormous pedestrian volumes, Madero’s business owners, largely local shopkeepers, resisted all efforts to take away motor vehicle access, said Escotto. “Let me just have one day, with cones,” Escotto recalled asking the local chamber of commerce.

Merchants aren't complaining about the pedestrianization of Calle Francisco I. Madero now that 200,000 people per hour walk along the street. Photo: Noah Kazis

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Bike-sharing users might be safer because they take fewer risks while riding. These two women trying out Boulder's new bike-sharing system don't look like daredevils. Photo: dgrinbergs via Flickr

People riding shared public bicycles appear to be involved in fewer traffic crashes and receive fewer injuries than people riding their personal bicycles. In cities from Paris and London to Washington, D.C. and Mexico City, something about riding a shared bicycle appears to make cycling safer.

Paris’s Vélib’ is perhaps the most iconic bike-sharing system in the world. Launched in 2007 with 20,000 bikes, its widespread popularity not only transformed how Parisians traveled across their city but set off an explosion of new bike-sharing systems worldwide. With a few years of practice at this point, the Parisian experience is particularly telling.

“The accident rate is lower on a Vélib’ than on ‘normal’ bikes,” a spokesperson for the office of Paris Mayor Bertrand Delanoë told Streetsblog. In 2009, the most recent year for which data is available, Vélib’ riders were responsible for one-third of all bike trips in Paris but were involved in only one-fourth of all traffic crashes involving a bicycle.

The numbers are if anything more striking in London, where the Barclays Cycle Hire system — or “Boris Bikes,” to borrow the phrase locals have adopted in honor of their mayor, Boris Johnson — opened at the end of last July. Though the London government didn’t track the relevant safety stats of bike-share users compared to other cyclists, they provided us with the data to do some back-of-the-envelope calculations.

So far, after 4.5 million trips, no bike-sharing user in London has been seriously injured or killed in a traffic crash, according to Transport for London. Only 10 bike-sharing users were injured at all in the first 1.6 million trips on the system, a statistic that was compiled earlier. A spokesperson also told Streetsblog that they estimate that half a million bike trips take place across London each day, 20,000 of which are on Boris Bikes. Finally, during 2010, 10 people were killed, 457 seriously injured and 3,540 non-seriously injured while cycling in London.

Crunching those numbers, no people were seriously injured or killed on the first 4.5 million trips on Boris Bikes, while about 12 people are injured for every 4.5 million trips on personal bikes. And over 1.6 million trips, ten bike-sharing users received non-serious injuries, compared to an average of 35 such injuries for the same number of trips on personal bikes.

Stateside, transportation officials are seeing the same effect.

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Back in April, Marcelo Ebrad, the mayor of Mexico City, announced he wanted those who worked in his administration to ride bicycles to work one day a month (at right, Ebrard, center, kicks off the program). Many were shocked at the idea, or simply laughed it off. But this excellent article in the San Diego Union details how the mayor's decree to his employees has meshed with several other initiatives to raise the profile of bicycling as a legitimate form of transportation in the traffic-clogged city:

Four months later, the officials have warmed up to the idea of riding bicycles to work, especially after 47-year-old Ebrard - who smokes and is not fond of exercise -- warned them their jobs depended on their participation.

No one expects their efforts to bring a flood of bicycles into Mexico City's crowded streets. But the ambitious program has sparked a national discussion about the auto congestion and pollution that are choking the capital city.

Since the program began, tens of thousands of Mexico City residents have taken to the streets on Sundays, when Ebrard's government has closed the downtown thoroughfares to vehicular traffic.

Men and women, young and old, fill the wide avenues with everything from vintage bikes to skates and scooters.

"Magnífico!" enthused Juan Carlos Espinosa, a 30-year-old computer programmer, as he used in-line skates to glide down elegant Reforma boulevard. "This is what we need to motivate us to exercise."

The government plans to build 186 miles of bike lanes and install bike racks at Metro stations and outside hundreds of city buildings. Mexico City even started a loan program so people who don't own bikes won't be left out.

The plan has gained the support of the World Bank, which is giving Mexico City a $100,000 grant to design a master plan to make the city bicycle-friendly.

"Many people have looked at Mexico City's traffic problems and thrown their hands in the air. This mayor is not doing that," said Michael Replogle, president of the New York-based Institute for Transportation Policy, who was in Mexico City last week to work with city officials on the bicycle project.

Photo: Associated Press

Finally, we get to see just how much former executive director Jon Orcutt was tamping down the high-powered talent at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign. The latest issue of Mobilizing the Region is jam-packed with good articles. Here are some highlights (and, yes, I'm kidding about Orcutt but serious about this week's MTR being really good):

Assemblymembers have proposed several spurious "alternatives" to congestion pricing, none of which have proven effective in reducing congestion and none of which would provide revenues for increasing transit capacity.

Assemblymember Richard Brodsky has argued for a car rationing scheme which would restrict car access to parts of Manhattan by license plate. As reported in MTR #558, a similar scheme in Mexico City increased used-car purchases, gasoline consumption, and driving, and decreased transit use.

Further investigation reveals, unsurprisingly, that Mexico City's policy has done nothing to improve air quality. A University of Michigan study found no evidence that the policy reduced emissions of five different pollutants-in fact, the policy increased emissions on weekdays....

...The only effective way to enforce a rationing scheme would be through the installation of license-plate cameras, which Brodsky is on the record as opposing.

When Governor Jon Corzine announced an executive order in February requiring New Jersey to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020, environmentalists applauded. However, while the NJDEP is busy creating a plan to execute the order, the NJ Turnpike Authority is fast pursuing an agenda thatwould undermine the plan's goals.

Newark's push to encourage growth goes beyond the addition of new housing: the city and state are also embarking on an aggressive complimentary plan to improve its run-down and unsafe streets. TSTC, along with the Regional Plan Association and others, has long said that improving pedestrian safety and streetscapes can help attract development and assist in revitalization efforts.

As New York City government employees rabidly defend the carte blanche parking privileges that enable their daily driving habit, the mayor of Mexico City has decreed that officials there bike or take transit to work once a month.

According to the BBC, less than one percent of trips in Mexico City are taken by bike, a figure Mayor Marcelo Ebrard wants to raise with improved public transportation, an urban cycling program, and tax incentives for employers who encourage car-free commutes.

And the mayor isn't just talking the talk: Ebrard was "the first to get on his bicycle from his home south of the city to his office in the central Zocalo."

The goal is to cut pollution and decrease related illness in the capital of more than 18 million.

Photo: CyberGus via Flickr