Traffic and Pollution:
The Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City
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Mexico City is supposed to have a severe traffic problem that contributes significantly to the city’s dangerously high
levels of pollution. With the city’s population around half that of the whole of Great Britain, something had to be done to
ease this congestion and, more importantly, reduce the pollution that was quite literally choking the city. One temporary solution
that was introduced several years ago was to ban each car from being driven in the city for one day every week (according to the
last digit of its number plate e.g. nines and zeros are forbidden on Fridays). Our guide told us that this solution was fairly
short lived as people simply bought or used another car. A World Health Organisation study recently showed that the lead from the
traffic fumes was also contributing to the nation’s already high infant mortality rate and so an aggressive conversion to
unleaded fuel was implemented. This is now visible in the very high percentage of green taxis (which dominate the traffic): taxis
can only be painted green if they are running on unleaded fuel. Finally, Mexico City has an excellent, clean and safe underground
network which costs virtually nothing to use. Now, maybe we were lucky, but I honestly don’t think that the traffic was
that bad and neither of us noticed the pollution despite breathing the thin air at the city’s high altitude. One thing we did
notice, though, was the large number of VW beetles being driven in the city - about 1 in 4 cars were beetles including almost all
of the taxis. They are apparently still being made in Mexico.
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