How Latin America Moves

According to a study of the Urban Mobility Observatory (CAF, 2010), the frequency with which Latin Americans move is of two trips per day.

The analysis was made by measuring the total daily trips in the 15 metropolitan areas analyzed. In total, 214 million trips were registeredto determine how people move, and the characteristics of the means of transportation.

When comparing the mobility indices of Latin America with cities in developed countries, the average mobility in the region (2.0 trips per inhabitant, per day) is lower than that in developed countries (3.6), but higher than other developing countries in Asia and Africa (1.7).

The study also reveals that:

• Public transportation is used in most of the trips(43.1 percent), while non-motorized trips and trips in private vehicles are each close to 28 percent of the total.
• Public transportation predominates in nine out of the 15 cities, and exceeds 50 percent in Bogota, Caracas, Mexico City, Lima, and Montevideo.
• Individual motorized transportation has the largest share of the total in the city of Buenos Aires.
• Non-motorized transportation (bicycle and foot) predominates in Curitiba, Guadalajara, Leon, Santiago, and Sao Paulo.
• When distributing the trips made in each one of the types of public transportation vehicles, it may be observed that the standard bus and minibuses are responsible for most of the trips  (68.4 million trips per day), and all wheeled vehicles correspond to 85 percent of the total.
• Railway transportation  corresponds to 14.0 million trips per day, which represents 15 percent of the total daily trips.