The Five Challenges of the Comprehensive Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (PIMUS)

CAF—development bank of Latin American—and KfW (Germany’s Development Bank), with European Union funding and the support of the international consulting firm Steer, completed the PIMUS on David and suburbs after one year. Counterparts in the study including the ATTT, the Miviot, the City of David, and CECOMRO (as civil society representative). This PIMUS makes David the second city in the country, after the capital, with such a plan.

The Plan pursued two main goals: Obtaining a diagnosis of mobility in David and suburban areas, and developing proposals to address existing challenges due to David’s unplanned growth, which has increased distances and travel times to surrounding cities.

The diagnosis revealed that in the surveyed area the 206,858 inhabitants make 343,640 trips every day. Around 15% of these trips are made entirely on foot, 43% in cars, as a driver or passenger, 11% by individual or collective taxis, 24% in collective public transport and 2% on bicycles.

With all the quantitative and qualitative information (resulting from a citizen participation strategy), five major challenges were identified:

• Inequity in access to transport: Not all socioeconomic groups have the same facilities to commute. The survey found that 98% of bicycle trips are made by men, that only 25% of women have a driver’s license (compared to 45% of men) and that 69% of people with some sort of physical limitation say they find it hard to move around in the city.
• Precarious road safety conditions: There are no accurate figures on road accidents or incidents. According to the mobility survey, an estimated 2% of residents have been involved in some type of road accident or incident. There are places with conflicts between vehicular flows, such as the Pan American Road, that warrant urgent attention.
• Deficient public spaces: Although 15% of trips are made on foot and all public transport trips involve some walking, pedestrian infrastructure is precarious or non-existent in some places. Due to the lack of spaces for public leisure in the city, the airport has become the most popular spot for recreation. Some 70% of people who go to the airport do so for recreational purposes, not to travel, pick up or drop someone off.
• Public transport with inadequate infrastructure: There are areas in the city without public collective transport coverage. The average age of the fleet of buses and taxis is over 15 years; user information is non-existent, there are few bus stops (and the existing stops are in bad shape), and there is taxi oversupply in the city center.

• Limited road connectivity: The city center has an adequate grid-shaped road network. This type of network allows for different possible routes to go from A to B. But in areas outside the city center, and in new developments, the road layout is not adequate, with little connectivity between roads. In this type of layout, there are several collector roads that lead to few arterial roads, which will likely produce bottlenecks in the future.

Based on the challenges identified in PIMUS, nine programs are proposed for the next 20 years, covering comprehensive issues such as road safety, public transport, walking and bicycle transport and road infrastructure. Implementation will be possible with the efforts of the Government of Panama through ATTT, MIVIOT, MOP, the City of David and organized Civil Society of Chiriquí.

“We hope this effort will help transform David into a city recognized nationwide for its attractive, efficient, inclusive, safe and environmentally friendly mobility system, and a role model for mid-sized cities in Latin America,” said CAF executive Harvey Scorcia,.  “At CAF, we are working on channeling funds for the preparation of projects proposed in the PIMUS. We will also develop a pilot urban acupuncture exercise in David to demonstrate how low-cost actions can have tremendous effects on mobility.”