Beyond Moving People: Urban Transport as a Driver of City Development
Published 24.07.26
2 mins read
For many years, the success of urban transport systems has been measured through indicators such as passenger volumes, commercial speed, travel time reductions, and network coverage. While these metrics remain important, they are no longer sufficient.
In a context of rapid urbanization and increasing pressure from climate change, transport must be understood as a strategic tool for fostering economic development, social inclusion, and the sustainability of our cities.
Latin America is one of the most urbanized regions in the world, with more than 80% of its population living in urban areas. Globally, nearly 70% of the world's population is expected to live in cities by 2050. This trend presents significant challenges: urban expansion toward the outskirts, longer commuting distances, traffic congestion, air pollution, and mounting pressure on existing infrastructure. Countries such as Mexico, Colombia, and Peru consistently rank among those experiencing the highest levels of traffic congestion.
Against this backdrop, transport planning can no longer be developed independently of urban development.
This need has given rise to the concept of Transit-Oriented Development (TOD), a planning strategy that promotes the concentration of housing, employment, commercial activities, and public services around high-capacity transit corridors. The goal is to create more compact, walkable, and sustainable cities, where mobility serves as an enabler of development rather than simply a public service.
International experience demonstrates that transport projects generate impacts that extend far beyond mobility itself.
In Colombia, for example, the TransMilenio system transformed the way millions of people move around Bogotá and reshaped part of the city's urban structure. At the same time, it provided an important lesson: building transport infrastructure alone is not enough to ensure balanced urban development. To fully unlock its potential, investments in mobility must be coordinated with land-use planning, housing policies, public space improvements, and economic development strategies.
For this reason, the success of a transport system should not be measured solely by the number of passengers it carries or the speed of its services. It should also be evaluated by its ability to generate employment around stations, improve access to essential services, attract private investment, revitalize public spaces, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and narrow territorial inequalities.
In other words, the true impact of transport lies in its capacity to transform cities for the better.
As engineers, urban planners, and decision-makers, we face a challenge that goes far beyond infrastructure design. The mobility projects of the future must be conceived through an interdisciplinary approach that integrates transportation, urban planning, economics, sustainability, and public policy.
Every new metro line, Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor, or railway system represents an opportunity to achieve far more than moving people. These projects can become powerful drivers of productivity, competitiveness, social inclusion, and quality of life.
The question is no longer simply how to move more passengers, but how to ensure that every transport project contributes to building better cities.
Author.
Javier LancherosLatam Director of Transportation