Guadalajara and its infernal mobility

By Sonia Serrano Íñiguez

For some years now, driving on the streets of Guadalajara has become a living hell. And when we say Guadalajara we are talking about the streets of the polygon that already formed at least five municipalities of the Metropolitan Area, which are the capital of Jalisco itself, Zapopan, San Pedro Tlaquepaque, Tonalá and Tlajomulco de Zúñiga.

Recently, the U.S. company Inrix published its study on traffic in the main cities of the world during 2022. For Guadalajara, the result indicates that its inhabitants lose an average of 52 hours a year in the car. Imagine, more than two and a half days of your life wasted in traffic.

The same study indicates that the speed at which it is possible to travel in the city decreased from 37 to 32 kilometers per hour during peak hours and from 48 to 41 kilometers per hour during the rest of the day. In fact, the difference between peak and off-peak hours was practically diluted. It is difficult to travel at any time of the day.

The factors that have brought the city to this paralysis are diverse. The first is the increase in the number of automobiles in the face of the authority's inability to offer alternative means of transportation.

Twenty years ago in the Guadalajara Metropolitan Zone (ZMG) there were four people for every car; twenty years later, the number of automobiles grew more than the population and records show that for every car there are two inhabitants.

According to data from the 2000 Census of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi), at that time the population of Guadalajara, Zapopan, San Pedro Tlaquepaque, Tonalá and Tlajomulco de Zúñiga was 3.5 million people. In that same year, there were 830,843 registered vehicles in the five municipalities, so for each vehicle there were 4.3 inhabitants on average.

Data from the last census, the 2020 census, confirms that in the last two decades more vehicles than people have been added to the city, since while the number of inhabitants reached 4.8 million, the number of registered vehicles exceeded 2.4 million. This represents less than two people for each vehicle.

The authorities have not implemented effective policies that would allow the private car to be dispensed with. The mass transit system has grown slowly, as the city has only three light rail lines and two BRT lines,

clearly insufficient.

As for conventional public transportation, it is concessioned to private companies that decide the routes and number of units, where the premise is that profit is guaranteed. Thus, there are important areas of the city that are served by unregulated transportation such as pirate cabs, motorcycle cabs or vans without permits.

In addition, during "rush hours" the bus stops that connect to the mass transit system have long lines where the wait can exceed one hour.

As for platform transport, as in many cities, the authorities have given in to pressure from conventional cabs. In order not to fully accept platform services, they stop monitoring them.

Another determining factor has been the growth of the bureaucratic apparatus in the state cabinet, which has led to a distribution of responsibilities and decisions regarding mobility in different agencies.

The tasks entrusted in the previous government to the Mobility Secretariat are now dispersed and the lack of coordination between the different areas directly affects citizens.

While the Instituto de Planeación y Gestión del Desarrollo del Área Metropolitana de Guadalajara (Imeplan) is in charge of designing the plans, they are not reflected in their execution.

It is true that the current authorities have made a commitment to non-motorized mobility with the construction of bicycle lanes and widening of sidewalks, but the infrastructure has been limited to some areas, leaving out the east, where most of the popular neighborhoods are located. To this must be added the lack of articulation of bicycle routes and public insecurity. Also, under the pretext of the construction of bicycle lanes, lanes have been cut to establish more parking spaces on public roads, since the governments of Movimiento Ciudadano granted them to a private company.

In addition, the current government decided that the Highway Police would be sectored under the Public Security Secretariat which, given the high levels of insecurity and violence in the state, has neglected it, so that we now have an environment of total anarchy in the streets and avenues.

In addition to all this, the traffic light system was transferred to the Metropolitan Infrastructure Agency for Mobility, which stopped synchronizing them. Thus, we can have streets with a few cars in off-peak hours that must stop every one or two traffic lights, which in rush hour translates into real chaos.

This mix of decisions and omissions leads the people of Guadalajara to dedicate up to four or five hours a day to basic transportation. In general, getting around in Guadalajara is hellish.

The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of Opinion 51.

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