Law and Mobility: Ethnographical Accounts of the Regulation of the Segregated Cycle Facilities in Mexico City

Abstract

This paper seeks to explain the operation of and the reactions to the everyday regulation of the segregated cycling facilities in Mexico City. Specifically, through an ethnographic approach, this paper tries to illustrate how social practices, everyday legal interpretations, and police practices intersect so as to reinforce the preeminence of the automobile at the expense of other forms of mobility, such as cycling. This question is essential in the ongoing efforts to develop a more sustainable and inclusive world. Research findings suggest that, in contrast with an isolationist image typified by the recurring figure of the law as a static tool for encouraging a bike-friendly society, urban traffic regulation actually represents a complex aggregate of actors, practices, and institutions which are constantly in motion and in which alternative ways towards a more varied and sustainable world are recursively enforced or resisted.

Key Words:

• Segregated cycle facilities
• law and society
• urban regulation
• Mexico City

Notes

1. For the purposes of this article, I take ‘segregated cycle facilities’ to mean the marked lanes, tracks, shoulders, and paths designated for the use by cyclists from which motorized traffic is generally excluded. The term includes bike paths; cycle tracks/separated bike lanes; road shoulders; and side paths located within a road right-of-way.

2. Although the regulation of traffic behavior constitutes an age-old case study on the relations between law and society (i.e. Feest 1968), there is only one article focused on studying the socio-legal dynamics of urban bicycle facilities (Blickstein 2010).

3. For instance, while some organized actions and governmental projects have successfully achieved a more bike-friendly public environment, several cyclists, urban designers, or academics still claim that the law may play an important role ‘to erode the potential for alternative means of transportation and citizenships to flourish’ (Blickstein 2010). And this is why analyzing the regulation of segregated cycle facilities helps understand the everyday dynamics between law and society.

4. ‘Law in books and law in action’ is one of the oldest and foundational gaps in socio-legal studies. As noted by Nelken (1984, 162–165), ‘“Laws in books” refer solely to rules and norms [and] it is only in this way that it can be distinguished from the “law in action”.’ But, behind this gap there is a particular conception of the law as ‘a tool for social engineering in the sense that it could help to prevent and resolve social conflicts with the least waste and inefficiency. With these purposes in mind, it was essential to define law in terms of its effectiveness,’ that is to say, in its own motion.

5. While the bike path was formally inaugurated in December 2010, its construction and formal operation started in March of the same year.

6. For example, during the bike path’s formal inauguration, the main city authority (Jefe de Gobierno del Distrito Federal [DF]), Marcelo Ebrard, declared ‘[This] is infrastructure that helps promote the use of the bicycle and will allow the population to move in a fast, safe, and sustainable manner’ (NOTIMEX December 14, 2010). My translation.

7. Article 6, fraction XVI and XVII; article 8, Fraction II; Article 12, fraction 9 of the Reglamento de Tránsito del Distrito Federal (GDF-RTM 2011) amended by decree published in Gaceta Oficial del Distrito Federal on 17 February 2010. Even if the amendment was formally valid the day after it was published, up until October 2010, authorities accepted that the number of vehicle drivers sanctioned for these was zero. This could account for the problems that the implementation of this regulation has experienced (SSP-DF, Respuesta a la solicitud de información pública No. 0109000167710).

8. On the convenience of visibly identifying a measurable transit violation, at the moment of realizing ethnographic work on the function of the law on the streets, see Feest’s growndbreaking work (Feest 1968).

9. The main city authority (Jefe de Gobierno del Distrito Federal) Marcelo Ebrard officially inaugurated Paseo de la Reforma’s model bike path (Ciclovía), measuring 6.8 km, on 14 December 2010. According to local authorities, at the moment of its inauguration, it was the first path to comply with all the necessary specifications for the mobility of bicycles. These specifications guaranteed the path’s reproduction in other city zones (El Universal, December 14, 2010) one that they will attempt to replicate in different parts of the city. Therefore, the empirical analysis of its regulation and functioning may help understand the limitations and reach this project of urban mobility has in Mexico, as well as in other Latin-American cities.

10. There are, at least, five Latin American cities that already have an officially designed bike path. These cities are: Santiago, Chile; Bogotá, Colombia; Buenos Aires, Argentina; La Habana, Cuba; and Mexico City, Mexico.

11. An analysis of the advantages and limitations that the use of digital media has on ethnographic research may be found in (Murthy 2008) among others. Mraz (1992) makes a detailed analysis of what photographs may add to the research of social phenomena or social practice. He states: ‘the type of research that is done through photographs is different from the one done through written documents. Photography shocks, but is mute, there is a need to make it talk [for] a photography is, always a bi-dimensional: on the one hand, it is a piece of reality, it is information; on the other, it is expression of the photographer that chose the topic, framed it, chose the lighting and the moment to shoot, it is syntax. If we are interested in the information present in the photo, we would use it to build a social, political, technological, or even economic history. If what is important to us is the syntax in the photo, then it would be used to generate a cultural history.’

12. A considerable number of these pictures may be found in: https://www.facebook.com/liberenlaciclovia [last accessed on December 23, 2011].

13. Even if taking pictures in the public environment does not constitute a crime or administrative offense, in the DF, I was detained and threatened with a weapon on two occasions during the course of this research: once by a transit police officer who was invading the bike path and the other by private security agents invading the bike path, and, therefore, were also violating the transit law.

14. http://www.finanzas.df.gob.mx/sma/consulta_ciudadana.php [last accessed on January 20, 2012].

15. A revision of the context in which Giuliani was hired by the authorities of Mexico City may be found in (Davis 2007). An analysis of the similarities that Giuliani’s intervention in Mexico City has with like processes that other cities have experimented can be seen in (Mitchell and Beckett 2008; Campesi 2010).

16. Indeed, the so-called ‘Giuliani Report’ specifically indicated that poor people should be removed from the public environment if, on account of their way of life or their appearance, they could come be seen as bearers of urban disorder and as liable to encourage the presence of more serious crimes (SSPDF 2003, 39).

17. The conception of the law as an efficient means to reinforce this type of urban policies has reached such a magnitude in Mexico City that only in 2010, a little more than 26,000 automobile drivers were sanctioned for invading in different ways a confined lane dedicated to the ‘metrobus’ (http://www.wradio.com.mx/noticias). To visualize the weight that this transit offence has had on Mexico City’s regulatory system, it is important to note that during 2010, 1780,173 automobiles were sanctioned (GDF 2011). This implies that 1.5% of the total number of sanctions in that year had the invasion of a confined lane dedicated to the transit of the ‘metrobus’.

18. Prizes such as: the prize for fighting climate change (Fundación MAPFRE–2010); the recognition as the replicable project that enhances quality of life and the environment (Universidad de Harvard–2009); the prize for World Leadership (World Leadership Forum–2007); the recognition as the first transport system in the world in commercializing in carbon bonds (Fondo Español de Carbono y Banco Mundial–2006 to 2010); and the recognition for the best project of the year (Latin American Leadership–2006).

19. In fact, a total of three transportation lines have been created, following this segregated means of transportation. Up to now, these transportation lines cover 67 km divided into 82 stations in Mexico City (http://www.metrobus.df.gob.mx); and in the next two years, two more confined transport lanes are to be completed (www.obrasenmiciudad.df.gob.mx).

20. As one of the main Clear Channel executives noted, this system meant the introduction of this company into the Latin-American market: ‘Our Smartbike systems are recognized more and more as an important means of transportation. This system has the potential to drastically reduce vehicle blockage, while at the same time, contributing to the protection of the environment. We are especially excited about the launch of our first program in Latin-America’, said Paul Meyer, president and executive director of Clear Channel Outdoor América. (http://www.merca20.com/el-programa-smartbike-llega-a-mexico/.)

21. This is clearly specified in article 1 of transit law (Reglamento de Tránsito) that establishes the hierarchy for displacement in public space: first pedestrians, second cyclists, and finally motorists.

22. If only to give a proper dimension to the lack of and diversity of resources mobilized daily, in urban transit regulation, in the case of Mexico City, for example, an estimated four thousand police officers are exclusively charged with supervising the way in which five million automobile drivers adjust to the established juridical rules. This implies that there is one police officer for every 1,250 cars (La Jornada March 2, 2009), out of which only 62.5% is authorized to give a ticket to the population.

23. My own calculations using information obtained through searching in: http://www.finanzas.df.gob.mx/sma/consulta_ciudadana.php.