Nuevo León unveils new transport model with CNG buses in Monterrey
As part of the studies carried out within the Comprehensive Sustainable Urban Mobility Program (PIMUS) for the Monterrey metropolitan area, the High Specification Routes (RAE) model was presented, which will be the beginning of the restructuring of public transport. There are 16 routes (including three that will feed Metro Line 3), which must be applied in the coming months in Nuevo León, and will be carried out by buses running on natural gas. The tender for companies interested in operating these routes and their respective vehicles will be announced shortly.
Manuel Vital Couturier, Secretary for Sustainable Development, said the new buses must be comfortable and spacious, offer technology capable of providing users with real-time information for timely decision-making, guarantee passenger safety and be environmentally-friendly, so they must be equipped with clean fuels. “These vehicles will have to be fueled by compressed natural gas, like the entire system that we currently have (in the Express Route buses). We will begin with the tenders and then we will enter into operation,” he added.
Moreover, Noé Chávez Montemayor, Director of the Institute of Mobility and Accessibility of Nuevo León, explained that the RAE are routes that do not need their own infrastructure, but it is considered to maximize the offer in their implementation by optimizing the frequency and the type of vehicles according to demand considering hourly variations. It is estimated that this service network will benefit 2.6 million users, covering a total of 574 kilometers, with 1,045 bus stops and a coverage of 1,442 neighborhoods.
As part of the PIMUS plan and at the same event, the State also launched the “Program for the inspection of ostensible emissions from mobile sources,” with units equipped to detect polluting vehicles. Within this project, state-of-the-art equipment was installed in six patrols of the Mobility and Accessibility Institute, which now will be able to measure the pollutants generated by cars, according to the criteria established in the official Mexican standards: hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, carbon, nitrogen oxides and oxygen for gasoline vehicles, and also opacity for diesel vehicles.
