Scott Muller, Senior Scientist helped organize and lead a Workshop on Low Emission Urban Transportation in Latin America and the Caribbean in Lima, Peru.
At the national scale, climate action plans and mitigation targets are increasingly being formalized and implemented across Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Already, the countries of Colombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Trinidad and Tobago, Costa Rica, and Brasil have either submitted their intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) to the UNFCCC— or they are in an advanced draft form.
At the subnational level, LAC is the most urbanized region in the world. On top of that, the cities here are physically expanding 3x faster than their population growth. Urban landscapes are rapidly swelling beyond traditional administrative borders, with private vehicle use more than doubling in the past 10 years. The 4.5% rate of motorization (cars per person) in LAC is among the fastest growing in the world. As expected, severe traffic congestion is widespread across LAC cities.
Ms. Claudia Figallo of the Ministry of Environment of Peru opened the discussions, commenting on the challenges and need at hand, “It’s necessary to overcome certain limitations that local governments are facing in regards to technical capacities, access to financing, governance of large metropolitan areas and the design of long term policies.”
The workshop was divided into segments to cover the themes of policy and planning; institutional qualities and capacities; MRV and information systems; and financing. Some of the priority themes that emerged were related to the design and implementation of coordination mechanisms between national and subnational governments, how to ensure public participation at different levels throughout the planning process, producing designs that prioritize the needs of the users of the transport systems, integrated planning to avoid and reduce trips, innovative finance mechanisms, promoting new clean technologies like electric busses, and more.
During the discussions, Rodrigo Rodriguez Tornquist—one of the workshop’s moderators, shared an important insight: the emergence of the need for climate action planning coincides with mounting trends of unsustainable growth, and the commensurate challenges of institutional capacities, planning, financing needs, and new information demands (improved monitoring, etc.) There are many synergies to unlock by improving coordination between national and subnational transportation policies.
Officials from the transport sector in Argentina shared the challenges that led to the creation of the inter-jurisdictional Metropolitan Transport Authority (ATM) in 2012 in Buenos Aires. Stretching across 2,400 km2 and hosting over 22,700,000 daily trips, the metropolitan area of Buenos Aires contains a transportation system with a collection of more than 340 collective bus routes – administrated by municipal, provincial and national jurisdictions; a 7-line network of metropolitan railroads under national jurisdiction; 6 subways under the jurisdiction of the City of Buenos Aires; with taxis and buses under both municipal districts and metropolitan jurisdictions. With no clear institutional boundaries, the collective system was characterized by wide differences in service quality, no coordination of transport schedules or fees, on top of mounting security and accessibility challenges. As an inter-jurisdictional consultative organization for coordinating and planning urban transport and infrastructure in Buenos Aires, the ATM is taking initial steps and realizing interdisciplinary meetings to focus on defining common policies and facilitating the physical, operational and financial, integration and coordination of the previously disparate urban transport modalities. The innovative process seeks to build trust, cooperation and consensus for a long term vision of efficient, equitable, low carbon urban mobility.
Participants shared several additional practical experiences from the region that have resulted in increased system efficiencies, reduced carbon emissions, improved air quality, integrated tariff structures, better investment of public resources in infrastructure, increased equitable access to public transportation, and streamlined administrative procedures.
Aida Figari,
Secretariat LEDS LAC
afigari@libelula.com.pe
Rodrigo Rodriquez Tornquist
Transport Working Group, LEDS GP
rodrigo@asociacionsustentar.org
Scott A. Muller
Sub-national Integration Working Group, LEDS GP
smuller@sig-gis.com
