Over-drive

Yes, Mexican streets and highways are more crowded. According to the Secretariat of Agrian, Regional and Urban Development (SEDATU, for its Spanish acronym) there are now 40 motor vehicles for every urban dweller in Mexico… and the number of motocycles — the smallest of the motor vehicles crowding the streets — has risen from 1.3 million in 2011 to 5.9 million in 2021… a 500% increase in just a decade!

In 10 years motorcycle use increased four times, going from 1.3 million in 2011 to 5.9 million in 2021

In the country’s urban areas there are more and more automobiles, Daniel Fajardo, undersecretary of Urban Development and Housing of the Ministry of Agrarian, Territorial and Urban Development (SEDATU for its Spanish acronym) estimates there are 4 motor vehicles of some kind for every 10 inhabitants in the country, although “there are enormous differences between regions and cities”. The result of all those motor vehicles is not only that Mexicans spend “an average of 118 hours per month due to congested roads” but that road accidents are becoming a crisis:

Mexico ranks 7th worldwide in traffic accident deaths. “380 thousand traffic accidents were registered that left 126 thousand victims; On average, 15,000 people die a year and the financial cost of these traffic accidents oscillates between “1.8 and 3.5 points of gross domestic product,” he specified, citing World Health Organization statistics.

Although SEDATU has adopted a program which aims to reduce the number of deaths by fifty percent by 2030, to have any chance of success depend on the political will of the local governments. Which is even more of a challenge when you consider that , as Fajardo points out, “”74 percent of the financial resources” allocated by the federal, state, and municipal governments go to “infrastructure for motorized vehicles; that is, avenues, streets, bridges, overpasses and very little to bicycle paths and to widen sidewalks” and “when it turns out that more than 60 percent of people walk,” but “30 percent of the streets in the country have nowhere to walk.

Source:

Carolina Gómez Mena, “Suman 400 vehículos por cada mil habitantes en zonas urbanas: Sedatu” Jornada, 23 June 2023