Sustaining Mexico City’s Air by Expanding Hoy No Circula

Sustaining Mexico City’s Air by Expanding Hoy No Circula

Environmental sustainability is not only a gargantuan social concern, but it is also a major economic issue because the costs of losing much of our environmental resources are quite higher in the long run if we do not apply measures to curb environmental degradation. Economics can indeed have a pivotal role in solving environmental problems because in dealing with the environment we will need to reallocate our resources in directions that generally move from consuming and growing in positive economic ways to preserving and living with economic slowdowns. Although it is not difficult to come up with a plan to reduce pollution, the implementing and the minimizing the economic costs of such government policy will be a tough balancing act. This is why, not all government environmental policies have been all-out success because it is not easy to align market interests with environmentalism.

Seeking to improve the declining air quality, a policy in Mexico City was introduced in 29 November 1989 called Hoy No Circula (HNC), which limited “most drivers from using their vehicles one weekday per week on the basis of the last digit of the vehicle’s license plate” (Davis, 2008). Although the intuition of such government intervention over an environment issue is quite remarkable, it seems the policy has not been successful because Mexico City’s air quality is still way beyond the World Health Organization’s (WHO) recommended 8-hour average ozone levels in 92 percent of all days from 1986 to 2005 (Davis, 2008). In exploring the intuition of Hoy No Circula (HNC), we will focus on the different aspects that spelled its failure for 19 years. And with this, it is aimed that we will be able to draw up some recommendations and solutions of either replacing HNC with a new directive or improving on the current policy to make it work better for Mexico City.

Literally translated in Spanish, Hoy No Circula (HNC) means “today it (your vehicle) does not circulate” and it is also known as “One Day Without a Car” or “No Driving Day”. This program sprouted as a grassroots initiative by an environmental group Mejora tu Ciudad (Improve Your City) that convinced vehicle owners in the metropolitan Mexico City to join a voluntary program to stop using their car once every week. In 29 November 1989, this program became mandatory because the ozone concentrations in winter months were seen to very high. Since 20 percent of all private vehicle were banned every week day (except weekends), studies during the first few months of HNC drew positive results because fuel consumption dwindled, while the use of public transportation ballooned and there was a significant increase of 8 kph in traffic speed. As a result of the temporary success, HNC received widespread recognition and it became permanently employed in Mexico’s national air quality management program in 1990 (Molina and Molina 2002, p. 333).

Obviously, the intuition behind HNS was quite noble because it limited the use of private vehicles once every week. A Mexican federal report confirmed that vehicles produce “99 percent of the carbon monoxide, 81 percent of the nitrogen oxides, and 46 percent of the volatile organic compounds in the atmosphere” (Conner, 2008). When these private vehicles are decreased 5 to 6 times a week, the program aims to improve Mexico’s worsening air quality. Ranked as one of the world’s most polluted city, Schifter et al. (2005) informed that the “most important air pollutants of Mexico City are ozone (O3), sulfur dioxides (SO2), precursors like nitrogen oxides (NOx), and particulate matter” that are produced from exhausts of motor vehicles. Some epidemiological studies have already proven “that air pollution in Mexico City affects urban air quality and health of the inhabitants”. It was also established that the average level of particulate matter in the city exceeded WHO’s international O3 standard by a factor of two for 212 days during the year 1999. The increasing population also contributed to the worsening air pollution of Mexico City because more people meant more vehicles to use, as well as its geography itself. At 7,500 feet above sea level, the city is in a mountain valley where high-altitude air is heated by the sun-trapping cooler air below producing thermal inversion. Normal wind patterns that can clear pollutants are also blocked because of the mountain ranges that surround the city. Thus, with HNC, the government expected that air quality will be enhanced as well as improve the health of Mexico City’s inhabitants.

Despite all the good intentions of HNC, the program was not only failure, but it literally worsened the air quality in Mexico City. Since vehicle owners were restricted to drive their cars once a week, they opted to purchase one more car that they can use on the day they cannot use their first car. In fact, a Mexican government study revealed that 22 percent obtained a second car because of the ban (Molina and Molina 2002, p. 333). Since most vehicles they purchased are second-hand ones, this move had contributed to worsen the city’s air quality. Also, most people in Mexico City do not want to take public transportation (subway and buses) because these are congested and regarded as “inefficient, inconvenient and unsafe”. Also, because of the ban, more people transferred to nearby unpolluted areas, which even increased the magnitude of Mexico City’s pollution to these areas where they now lived. Lastly, HNC is currently not strictly imposed. Although the law stipulates that vehicles that violate the ban are to be impounded for 48 hours and their owners are to pay a fine equivalent to US$200, these penalties can be avoided by paying a bribe to the police officers (Davis, 2008).

It is clear that the failure of HNC was due to its lack of foresight regarding the unseen problems that will emanate using the policy of a no driving day policy. Goddard (1999) argued that the HNC induced consumers to purchase more vehicles than they would have chosen in the absence of the restriction. Since there are typically more drivers in a household than vehicles, the increased supply of potential vehicle-use days has quite likely led to increased, not decreased, overall use—thus, failing the original intention of the policy.

One good policy that should be adopted to replace HNC is to increase gas taxes. There is a substantial literature showing that people respond to a rise in the price of driving by driving less. Davis confirmed that “with higher gas taxes, some people are going to drive as much as before. But others are going to stop driving altogether. And that’s efficiency.” He further suggested that because most drivers in Mexico are middle- and upper-class people, raising the price of driving would not adversely affect the poor. However, Landa (2001) warned that:

Taxing an input is a surrogate for taxing a polluting agent or activity itself when quantification of the actual pollutant emission is not feasible. Yet auto emissions are dependent upon variables such as fuel properties, combustion technology, and automotive upkeep. Taxing gasoline would therefore send an inappropriate signal, since the tax per unit of fuel would be the same whether particulate emission per unit was low or high, and could not be reasonably efficient without adjusting for weather conditions. Yet gasoline prices, set by the state-owned monopoly, are a significant part of the consumer price index and cannot, for political reasons, be adjusted frequently.

In this case, expanding the HNC program would be more appropriate. It should add gas taxes and vehicle ownership taxes. By charging the polluter a flat fee on every unit of pollutant discharged, each rational polluter would theoretically reduce pollution to the point at which the cost of reducing one more unit of pollutant is greater than the emission fee. The larger the fee for each unit, the greater the motivation of users to reduce their emissions. Difficulties in monitoring every discharge of the pollutant and in calculating the amount that should be assessed for each unit of the various pollutants are major problems with this approach. The taxes collected for these additional policies can be used by the government to improve public transportation and convince vehicle users to use it, rather than spending more using their cars. Also, the law enforcement agencies should tighten their rules and regulate their ranks to avoid briberies, in order for the HNC program to become more effective.

Although the focus of the HNC is on decreasing vehicle emissions, it is readily apparent that the program should operate on several margins relevant to achieving ecological sustainability. The expansion of HNC would be likely to have an important impact on road congestion, both controlling the base weekday flow of vehicles and diminishing the peak congestion problem. These benefits in economic terms would be quite substantial, as the value of monetary losses from road congestion. However, depending on how tight the air quality constraint is, it is possible that the additional mechanisms described above should imposed in order to discourage people from owning more cars and resort to public transportation instead.. In addition, there would have to be preceding complementary investments made in mass transit systems to accommodate transport mode shifting, thus constituting a solution to the management problem that satisfies both the necessary (mass transit) and sufficient (reduced use of old model vehicles that emits more pollutants) conditions. Of course, educating people about the current environmental conditions would make them more aware about this issue and spark their interest to do their part in doing their share in saving Mexico City’s environment.

Air pollution in Mexico City is already at its worse and the government should do more than seek a cheap, unsustainable solution to a problem that is slowly killing all its residents.  Thus, HNS can be modified to allow the implementation of gas taxes and private ownership taxes to introduce flexibility and cost-effectiveness in attaining emissions targets for the Mexico City metropolitan area. All government policies will be useless if it is not strictly imposed and the people will not abide by the rules being set. In this case, the participation of the Mexico City residents is also vital in assuring the sustainability of the expanded HNC policy that would result to a cleaner air that can last them a lifetime.

Works Cited
Conner, Alana. “A Lot of Hot Air”, Stanford Social Innovation Review, 6.3 (Summer 2008): 13.

Davis, Lucas, W. “The Effect of Driving Restrictions on Air Quality in Mexico City”, Journal of Political Economy, 116.1 (2008): 38-79. 4 November 2008. http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/mfinney/Courses/433/articles/mexico_program.pdf.

Landa , Ramiro Tovar. “Mobile Source Pollution in Mexico City and Market-Based Alternatives”, Cato Review of Business & Government, 2001. 4 November 2008. http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg18n2h.html.

Molina, Luisa T. and Molina, Mario J. Air Quality in the Mexico Megacity: An Integrated Assessment, Dordrecht: Kluwer Publishers, 2002.

Schifter, Isaac, Diaz, Luis and  Lopez-Salinas, Esteban. “Hazardous Air Pollutants from Mobile Sources in the Metropolitan Area Of Mexico City”, Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association, 55.9 (Sept 2005): 1289-1298.