Harvard honors Mexico City bus system
Award cites lowered air pollution, traffic
For decades, Mexico City’s 18 million people choked in the fumes of thousands of “peseros,’’ the privately owned minibuses that clogged the avenues crisscrossing the capital city.
Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government last night honored the creators of an innovative bus system that has dramatically reduced traffic congestion and pollution in the city - and that could be a model for similar innovation elsewhere in the world.
At a ceremony, the 2009 Roy Family Award was presented to the Mexico City Metrobús project, and to its major partners who made it happen through an unusual collaboration. EMBARQ-The World Resources Institute Center for Sustainable Transport and a major Mexican environmental nonprofit called CEIBA worked with Mexico City’s government to help plan and build the express bus line through the heart of the city.
The dedicated Metrobús route opened in 2005 along a 12-mile stretch of the massive Avenida de los Insurgentes, a principal north-south boulevard often called the longest urban avenue in the world. In 2008, the route grew by about 20 more miles, including a new southern corridor.
Together, the lines have more than 80 stations.
The city’s nightmarish traffic conditions were fueled by the peseros, named for the original small private taxis that charged one peso for a ride along city routes. By the 1990s, Mexico City was already making steady progress in reducing pollution through a relentless focus on cutting vehicle emissions. And as the economy improved, more people were able to replace polluting ancient gas guzzlers.
But the new Metrobús makes a quantum leap toward better quality of air and life.
Harvard’s announcement of the award in September noted: “Metrobús has reduced carbon dioxide emissions from Mexico City traffic by an estimated 80,000 tons a year. The new buses, which operate on clean-burning ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel, make more than 450,000 trips per day.’’
Mexico City’s mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, says he wants to extend the system to 10 bus lines. Ebrard came to Cambridge for the ceremony and for a Harvard seminar on how his city managed to pull its notoriously fractious political players together to make the bus system happen.
Harvard noted that the groups set up the Center for Sustainable Transport in Mexico, a nonprofit providing technical support for the Metrobús system from day one.
The World Bank, Global Environment Facility, and the Shell, Caterpillar, and Hewlett foundations offered financial support.
To make it work, the Metrobús leaders partnered with the owners of the polluting minibuses. After a year of talks, a consortium was set up including about 350 bus owners and drivers. In all, the award notes, “a total of 839 polluting minibuses have been permanently removed from the roads.’’
Nancy Kete, director of EMBARQ, said in a statement, “We always knew that creating a public-private partnership model was necessary to overcome the political challenges that often impede sustainable transportation.’’
She added: “Our goal was to pull the disparate groups together and help them find compromises. We wanted to show that cooperation was a better strategy than competition.’’
