Building sustainable transport futures for the Mexico City Metropolitan Area

Abstract

The Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) urgently needs a more sustainable, low-carbon transport system. The objective of this paper is to elicit ways of building sustainable, low-carbon transport futures for such a system. Using stakeholder narratives as basis, this paper identifies the main driving forces shaping sustainable transport futures, develops four plausible transport scenarios for the MCMA; and assesses whether stakeholders frame driving forces in a certain way. Driving forces stakeholders identified focused especially on cooperation among political entities and negotiation levels with internal transport stakeholders. Further driving forces included regulatory framework of vehicle use, recognition of sustainable transport as political priority, and urban growth and planning. Four scenarios based on political cooperation and internal negotiation were generated using stakeholder narratives. Three stand out: Scenario 1, where both political cooperation and internal negotiation develop positively, leading to low-emission, sustainable transport futures in the city; Scenario 3, the ‘worst’ scenario, where neither political cooperation nor internal negotiation function, is frequently identified by stakeholders as the way it is now; and Scenario 4 with functioning political cooperation and a lack of internal negotiation is the most unstable scenario and would quickly collapse were it to develop. Overall, stakeholders framed driving forces as more political than technological (e.g. political cooperation was seen as more relevant than upgrading vehicle technologies). Consensus regarding this reached across institutional stakeholder categories. We found that stakeholders’ views gave unique insights regarding how to build sustainable, low-carbon MCMA transport futures, including policy measures and interventions needed. MCMA scenarios developed reveal the need for common political ground as a priority to guide decision making towards sustainable, low-carbon transport futures for the MCMA.