SIA was awarded with a project in Valle de Bravo, Mexico. With local and regional centre of activities, this city has very active weekend activities and has been one of the main destinations for weekends for the inhabitants of Mexico City. Valle de Bravo is situated in the State of Mexico and is around 200 km from the city. There is a lake for sailing or other water activities and many kilometres of paths for hiking, cycling, and many other outdoor sports.
The town is around two hundred years old, so its infrastructure is not very adequate for cars. There are a lot of motorcycles and many mobility problems needed to be tackled. The government officers defined that there should not be a project without the population’s participation, including local residents, as well as regional tourists and weekenders, making Valle TeTransporta a comprehensive and inclusive study and SIA was in charge of the project.
The study consisted in having workshops with all the stakeholders, to define problems and solutions in a participative manner, as well as joining the different results to one statistical analysis. This includes social groups with interests and permanent rejecters to participate and that tried to push toward their own side.
The main objectives were to define what mobility, congestion and safety for people in the city’s context meant for the community. This was accompanied by prioritising concerns and issues around mobility. The scope of the discussion included themes related to design and engineering, local services, road operations and modes of transportation.
After this first analysis, SIA worked with the community to do participatory maps related to some of the concerns, co-produce guidelines for potential solutions, as well as to validate technical projects proposed by the state and local government. Some of the topics discussed were signalling, policies and rules for heavy vehicles and suppliers, livelihood rules, taxies regulations, parking alternatives, public transportation both by roads and by water.
Other subjects attended in the workshops and the polls were related to tourism, schools, religious festivities, markets and street salespeople, emergency services, public area maintenance.
For some of the topics, we created online and face to face polls for specific groups related to some of the potential solutions.
Once the workshops were finished, SIA prepared a plan for the State Government with all the alternatives mapped and defined by the community, creating guidelines to direct the technical and feasibility projects that followed.
In the end, the new mobility strategy for Valle de Bravo is a participative plan made by the community but directed by road operations, mobility and social development professionals. It also connects to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
This strategy will guide the new technical teams, as well as the government, to first include what is important to the city’s people, to bring solutions that acknowledge their concerns, and create social capital for further collaboration. The result will mitigate common social risks in the region an achieve the state’s vision of enhancing the community’s well-being by a comprehensive mobility and infrastructure project.