Codatu IX in 2000 - Mexico (Mexique)

Topic of the conference : Urban Transportation and Environment

Nearly 300 propositions of papers have been submitted to the appreciation of the International Scientific Committee of CODATU IX ; about 180 have been accepted ; around 140 have been published in the compendium of proceedings of the Conference, and about 100 have been presented in the technical sessions of Wednesday. Thursday and Friday morning.
These figures clearly demonstrate the interest shown as much by the various authorities in charge of urban and suburban transportation, as by the international technical and scientific professional community in the main theme of the confernce : urban transportation and environment.

Please find below the conclusions scientific of the conference :

The choice for this Organizing Committee seemed obvious ; Mexico is one of the greatest metropolises of the world. Its metropolitan area gathers, on 4,945 square km, the 17 millions of inhabitants of the Federal District and of the State of Mexico ; it ensures the 30 millions of everyday journeys there and represents 38 % of the Mexican GNP ; the average altitude of 2,200 m means that the concentration of oxygen is reduced by a third ; as a consequence, the traffic of 3,2 millions of vehicles of the urban area produces twice as much carbon monoxyde than at the sea level ; more than 80 % of the pollution in Mexico comes from car traffic.
What urban area in the world could, as a matter of fact, better than this of Mexico, symbolize the importance of the awareness of environment in the implementation of transportation policies?
The concerns in terms of environment, in a broad sense, support in a way those of sustainable development which were at the centre of CODATU VIII that was held in September 1998 by our South-African friends of Cape Town. The sustainability of development, related to the implementation of a global policy of urban transportation, depends, for a large part, on the continuity in time of the actions undertaken and on the unceasing research of the changes of direction and improvements to be made so as to preserve the life conditions of the future generations while improving those of the present ones. This attempt to define the sustainable development presented in conclusion of the Conference CODATU VIII is still a current topic in the light of the papers presented and of the debates of CODATU IX.
The authors of papers come from about 40 countries, whereas the participants to the Conference come from over 40 countries. We have learnt a lot from the papers and debates and we are going to try to draw up a synthesis from those.
These conclusions are the fruit of a team's work of the International Scientific Committee ; we would like, Oscar and I, to thank all its members. We would also like to thaNK CODATU and our Mexican friends for having made our mission much easier.
The starting point of these conclusions clearly appears :

On the one hand, the population of the urban areas of developing or transition countries keeps growing ; the number of car journeys often raises strongly ; the consequences in terms of pollution, of noise, of various harmful effects, of congestion don't diminish, neither do the difficulties of functioning of cities ; the established fact of crisis made in CODATU VIII does not need, today, to be reviewed, 18 months later ; nearly all the same items mentioned could then be discussed again.
On the other hand, another element concerning the synthesis of the papers presented should be strongly underlined : it is, of course, in the eyes of the main theme of the conference, the similitude of the sets, of problems between developing or transition countries and developed ones. The problem set by the established fact is the same everywhere, the tracks of solutions searched are of the same nature. This made all the more interesting the exchanges during the conference.

Before studying the tracks of reflection and of action presented and discussed, it would be useful to stress three important points :
First of all, I must underline that very few papers mentioned the questions related to the tools set to measure the harmful effects, mainly pollution and noise. I don't know if this is due to omissions or lack of available means, as well as a rapid evolution of technologies. This is an element which, to my mind, should be clarified on the occasion of a future conference so that a more precise survey-cum-inventory can be made .
Next, about 10 % of the papers, that is to say a very significant figure, concerned the presentation of patterns of choice, of assessment of policies undertaken or of clarification of decisions to be made. They concern mainly the relations between the transport and planning systems, the management of exchange car parks, the aspects related to public transport, the division of the road system. This is, to my eyes, a very important point.
Finally, a very significant paper was entitled : "the challenge of transport pollution : will the technologies be sufficient ?" the conclusion of which I develop here. I quote : "Unless the technicians are not able to produce vehicles which will absorb greenhouse effect pollution and gases, the resolution of the important problem of pollution and of health related to the transport activity will go through a mastery of the transportation of goods and people. The challenge is of importance and reminds of the one of the demultiplication of the increase of activity and of the one of energetic consumption which could be found in certain countries in the middle of the 1970's." Nevertheless, the progress that can be expected in terms of new technologies and especially of implementatio on the field of these technologies must be used at their best. Their effect will, of course, be variable from one country to another and in time.
How is it possible to take up this challenge ? I am thus coming now to the tracks of action and of refection presented and discussed.
They come, to my eyes, after reading all the papers, under four key-words : a first group : planning, institutional ; a second group : multimodality and intermodality.

First group : planning, institutional The urban development and transportation policies are two important aspects of a mastered city policy. The necessity of a coordination between these two aspects has been underlined again with strenght by numerous papers. It meets, by certain ways, the institutional questions. It implies the setting of integrated development plans or of planning master plans taking into account all the aspects related to town planning, housing, and urban services, with, in first position, the transports. Several papers expressed the interest that a policy integrated with urban corridors could present. As much for the questions of local development as for the ones of urban transportation, the way the questions are discussed : who decides what ? in which field of action ? who pays for what ? is essential. These questions cover the institutional field . They are complex and come under the public authorities ; they concern at the same time the mastery of the use of the individual car, the questions of urban development, the organization of public trnasport ; they also concern the nature of the actions to be decided according to the planned horizon : short, medium, long term. There is no such thing, of course, as a unique solution, but the problems are posed a little everywhere nearly in the same terms. It seems to me that the following main elements can be drawn from these papers : these institutional questions must be discussed in a pragmatic way, while taking into account the pre-existing context and the importance to make the situation evolve step by step, in a progressive way, so as, if possible, to avoid the failures, which are always harmful. I haven't pronounced, in the previous comments on planning and institutional, the world environment. I have done it voluntarily, because I got the strong feelong from these papers that, globally, the way these two themes are discussed conditions, for a large part, the results of the actions undertaken on behalf of multimodality and intermodality which have a more direct and more visible effect on the questions related to urban transportation and environment. After this first group, the second one : multimodality and intermodality. I resume here the definitions of these two terms which had been given in a paper at CODATU VIII : - Multimodlity comes under the balances between the various modes of transport : individual car, public transport and soft traffic. - Intermodality comes under the coordination, the putting in synergy of the various modes of transport (bus, subway, rail, individual cars, soft traffic) so that the transportation of the travellers (which includes the use of several modes) takes place in the most convenient way.

Second group : multimodality and intermodality The papers on these themes are numerous and varied ; they deal as much with the mastery of the use of the individual car as the one of public transport and soft traffic. The main points that come out come under : - generally speaking, the necessity of global plans of action concerning all modes, be they in the short, medium or long term, and of the importance, at the level of the method to approach the problem, to fix oneself aims to limit or to reduce car traffic; - as far as the mastery of the use of the individual car is concerned, questions of parking, of distribution of the public space, of good functioning of taxis, of search for means likely to increase the rate of occupation of individual cars, of the use of intelligent transport (ITS), of tariffying; - as far as public transports are concerned, the pressing necessity to improve their functioning and efficiency so that they can constitute everywhere it is possible a credible alternate solution to the use of the individual car. The following points should be underlined : - the growing importance of bus networks for the good functioning of public transport ; - the importance to optimize them, which improves the attractiveness and thus makes the financing easier; - the importance of the exemplarity of the conditions of bus functioning in the eyes in terms of polluting emissions ; - tue growing importance for public transport of approaches to the customer ; - the importance, in the name of intermodality, of the questions of the tariffying of public transport, of information of the travellers, and of processing of exchange knots between modes ; - finally, still concerning public transport, several papers discussed the question of minibuses compared to buses without revealing an obvious solution, - as far as soft traffic (pedestrians, two-wheeled vehicles) is concerned, the necessary reminding of the importance attached to integrate them in the global plans, their usefulness, some of the time obvious but also at other times forgotten, must be reinforced.

Conclusion

The conference gave the opportunity to 500 delegates from over 40 countries to debate over the theme of the conference : urban transportation and environment. Through these debates, in round tables and in technical sessions, it is clear, looking at the themes of the confernece, that the sets of problems are similar in all the cities of the world. This makes international cooperation and exchanges at the same time open and constructive.
Excessive car traffic, particularly in the centre of urban areas, is a factor of deterioration of the quality of urban life and environment. Here or there, some solutions exist in order to better master this car traffic.
The present situation as well as the growth of urban mobility, related to the changes in the economic and social environment, make it necessary to improve the efficiency of urban and suburban public transport so that they can constitute everywhere it is possible a credible alternate solution to the use of the individual car. A particular attention means to integrate in the plans of action soft traffic (medestrians, two-wheeled vehicles). Their role must be considered the same way as the other modes of transportation.
In this context, the questions related to the institutional planning and organization seem essential.

To finish with, I would like to underline five points :
- the questions related to urban transportation and environment do not find a solution in such or such miracle measure,
- the gap does exist very often between the targeted aims and the reality of their implementation,
- the difficulties, or even the contradictions, between the development of mobility and the concerns in terms of environment, should not hide the asset that, for the balanced development of the cities, a coherent system of transportation constitutes. This concerns in particular the poor households that are sometimes confined inside their district and do not have real access to the city,
- the priority must be to avoid, notably for financial questions, the creation of a vicious circle leading to the degradation of public transport and of the level of investments devoted to it, which necessarily means some gains in market shares for the individual car.