March 12, 2021
Bogota, Colombia (captured from Tres Mobility System)
Five Latin American Cities Ranked Among the Most Congested Twenty-Five in the World: Three are Colombian.
March 12th, 2021. Bogota, Bucharest, New York, Moscow and Philadelphia comprise the top 5 most congested cities in the planet and Latin America contributes 5 to the top 25. Three, are Colombian cities: Bogota, Cali and Medellin. Not surprisingly to many, Bogota holds the crown position as the number one, most congested city in the world.
This, according to the recognized INRIX Global Scorecard study, which has just now released its 2020 issue. The impacts of the pandemic have been notorious across the board in a considerable drop in metrics from 2019, but the relative impact is evident. And these Colombian cities are not newcomers to the top positions.
The severity in congestion is a result, a symptom, of the persistent underlying problem which Varon Vehicles has identified as the problem the company is addressing: a Lack of Proper Mobility Infrastructure. “South American cities, like Bogota and Quito, are combating extreme population growth, in geographically constrained environments, with underdeveloped infrastructure”, indicates the study. This underlying problem creates traffic congestion and also other significant symptoms like high pollution levels, inaccessibility and inequality, among others. These, in turn, result in social underdevelopment, restrained economic growth and inhibited progress.
In referring to the symptoms caused in cities, the study explicitly enunciates that “in many cities, the bulk of trip demand is served by the automobile, providing point-to-point travel. Often and at certain periods through the day, demand for car travel exceeds road capacity, leading to externalities like air pollution, injury, property damage, lost time and wasted fuel”. Symptoms of the Lack of Proper Mobility Infrastructure also extend beyond the borders of cities, equally affecting vast regions and communities, with deep repercussions for countries at large.
This is the reason why Varon Vehicles has chosen to implement its Infrastructure Networks in Latin America, starting in Colombia. The needs are greater than anywhere else. By providing one solution to address this underlying problem, the symptoms that can be improved have a much higher potential for beneficial impact.
Varon Vehicles believes in the valuable opportunity to bring forth to Latin American cities the legacy from aviation, which is connection without the need to build anything in between. The company sees Urban Air Mobility in its entirety as a new form of mobility infrastructure. One that has the potential for disruption. A radically new way to alleviate the pressure for city growth and a new instrument to generate value for communities. Harnessing the advantage of not having a cost per mile, Varon Vehicles’ pioneering next generation aviation systems are a radically new, economically viable way to generate connection.