Observatório da Mobilidade: Plano de Ação Integrado para cidades seguras, inclusivas e democráticas

Abstract

Thinking the city with all its nuances, all its problems and possible solutions is one of the characteristics of Geography, which was established as one of the sciences guiding the most accessible solutions for each reality, due to its ability to analyze both, the historical process and its consequences. That is reinforced by its dichotomous characteristic, which subdivided it into specific areas, such as the Geography of Transportation. This unique area of geographic science is capable of find solutions, both to the ways of moving people and goods, and to the safe and possible means of this movement. According to Pons and Reynés (2004, p. 70), the most striking characteristics of Transport Geography in the 21st century are the result of multiplicity of approaches, methods and themes, in addition to the inter-modality. Nevertheless, life in urban areas must be considered with all the implications it brings, such as the expansion of this space, the distribution of goods, consumption, meetings, contact with nature, in short, all the relationships that we develop in the city, which depend directly or indirectly on roads, paths, crossings, trenches, sidewalks, squares, parks, and it is not possible to imagine our survival without traffic and transportation. However, one of the great contemporary concerns is how to solve the urban problems caused by the culture of automobile use, for decades understood as the only alternative to the problem of displacement in urban areas. To solve the problem of mobility in the cities, roads were created with wide lanes, which initially made traffic enough fluent, but then they suffered from traffic jams, increased traffic accidents and deaths of victims of that violence. In this context, WHO studies indicate that in 2009, 50 million people were injured, and 1 million deaths were reported among the victims of ATT worldwide. Brazil is among the 10 countries with the highest number of victims. As a way of containing this violence, the WHO presented the “Decade of Action for Traffic Safety” (2011-2020). The main objective to be achieved is to reduce the number of deaths by 50%, and one of the proposed measures is the creation of a National Traffic Observatory, as well as regional observatories. We found that some Brazilian cities that have established Mobility Observatories have a statistical survey, that is indicated by a historical series and an integrated commission. Both are fundamental for the management of travel demand, as well as for reducing the number of deaths, which in some cases approached the 50% forecast. We also stated that without the continuity of the work of the Observatory of Mobility of the Municipality of Uberlândia, the public administration will be unmanned on urban traffic, maintaining the ascending growth of the fleet. This may cause a chaotic traffic, with the increase of bottling points in the peak hours and the increase in the number of victims of ATT. Furthermore, the lack of an integrated transport to the transit, makes impossible the migration of the individual transport to the public. That in the long term tends to be disastrous, if we consider that the fleet and the population are growing.