Principal Voices Mexico City Round-Table - Debate Transcript

The debate was held in the Four Seasons Hotel in Mexico City. It opened with introductions from Robert Friedman of FORTUNE Magazine, Michael Holmes of CNN and Mr. Cornelis Van der Bom, President of Shell Mexico.

Robert Friedman: Buenos dias, my name is Robert Friedman, I am the international editor of FORTUNE Magazine and we have my co-moderator Michael Holmes from CNN and all of my colleagues at TIME, FORTUNE and CNN, I want to welcome you here this morning to the fourth instalment. There are still some empty seats here, I suppose our remaining guests are stuck in traffic. One of our panellists this morning told me she took two hours getting here which I suppose is typical of a commute in Mexico City. But we are going to begin anyway and those who get here will join us late.

This programme started early in this year, we have had three previous round tables, the first one was in Singapore on urban environment. The second one was in Beijing which I had the privilege of moderating which was on innovation, the third one, this fall was in London on economic development and we are here today to talk about the fourth topic in this series, sustainable transport. In a way it's fitting that this is the last one because it does relate to the topics of the other three sessions. Without sustainable transport, you really can't have economic development. Without innovation you can't really have sustainable transport. Without urban development, you wouldn't need it anyway.

One only has to live in large cities like I do in New York, like we are here today in Mexico City and the other cities where we had these previous sessions to realise that transportation is a vital, although often overlooked, aspect of modern life. Whether it's how we get to work in the morning or how we move goods around the world in this increasingly global economy.

So we are privileged to have a wonderful panel with us this morning to talk about this subject from a variety of perspectives in a variety of geographies. But before we get into introducing them I want to have an opportunity to show a video tape that will just give you a little sense of the Principal Voices programme, so can we roll that.

A video introduction to Principal Voices is played.

Michael Holmes: I'd like to begin if I can by introducing Cornelis Van der Bom who is the president and director general of Shell here in Mexico to give us a few words.

Cornelis Van der Bom: Thank you. The Principal Voices programme is all about airing the views of some of the world's leading experts on issues that really matter. Today we are here together in Mexico City to talk about sustainable transport. It's an appropriate topic because we are one of the largest cities in the world and every day traffic congestion and pollution are obvious issues for all of us. However, Mexico City is not unique, these are problems that every large city faces today and that people like us will have to address. The theme of sustainable transport is something that strikes a cord with Shell. Shell operates the world's largest single brand retail network, serving 25million customers each day from over forty thousand retail service stations in more than 90 countries around the world. As a company we are working with governments, car manufacturers and others on a wide range of options to make transport more sustainable for the people that use it.

Primary challenges as we see it in the early part of this 21st Century, are to manage the transition from the current fuel technology to the general availability of renewable energy sources. During this period we expect that the potential of the internal combustion engine will be maximised, a more diverse and innovative mix of transport fuels will become available to support these cleaner and more efficient engines. Shell is committed to play a key role in developing solutions throughout its world network of research laboratories and working in partnership with the automotive industry and other key stakeholders. Shell is already active in developing new opportunities in a range of different fuel types, however there a number of other initiatives as well. The one I would like to mention is EMBARQ.

EMBARQ was created in 2002 with a grant of the Shell foundation and its mission is to serve as a catalyst for sustainable solutions to problems of urban mobility in developing cities. Shell Mexico was in particularly pleased when EMBARQ chose Mexico City as its first major partner for its program. The EMBARQ model is simple, it is to work with politically and financially empowered authorities and to bring in business DNA, best practices in managing large complicated projects. To reduce the cost risk time and complexity of reaching solutions. We believe that progress can be made and the business opportunities from sustainable transport captured by working actively on all aspects of the problem together with the broadest possible spectrum of stakeholders. So I am delighted to welcome you here today and to hear your own views and recommendations.

At the end of the event we hope to have a better understanding of some of the challenges we face as we operate our businesses day by day and share our own perspectives and experiences during the course of the discussion. Thank you again for joining us today and sharing your views.

Robert Friedman: Thank you, we are going to introduce the panellists now and begin our discussion. We have a number of experts up here on stage but we also have a number of smart experts out of the audience as well and I am hoping that you should all feel free to speak, ask questions, challenge the speakers here and let's have a dialogue, this is not just about us talking to you.

So to begin, on my far right over here, a voice you heard up on screen just a moment ago, Dr. Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan from India. He is the chief architect, principle engineer and boss of the Delhi Metro. This is an amazing accomplishment. Dr. Sreedharan actually retired from public life after completing a remarkable career with the Indian railroad system and building a quite magnificent stretch of the remaining piece of the Indian railway system connecting Mumbai and Mangalore right? But the price of success in India as elsewhere is that they don't want you to go away and retire so they brought him back to supervise the construction of the Delhi Metro.

And if any of you have been to India, I was there myself earlier this year, India is a place where infrastructure doesn't work too well. There is inadequate funding, projects are delayed beyond belief. It took seven years just to figure out where to build the new airport in Bangalore. Corruption is endemic and the infrastructure system is a mess. So to learn that Dr. Sreedharan supervised the construction of the Delhi Metro system on budget and ahead of time is a remarkable accomplishment. It was so remarkable that they still won't let him retire that they've brought him back to stay on and supervise phase two. We'll hear about that shortly but it is a pleasure to have a visitor from India, who has accomplished so much, to be here this morning and participate in this discussion.

Michael Holmes: And on my extreme left, Hugh Somerville. We are delighted to have Hugh here too. He's a renowned microbiologist, but perhaps best known for his work in the field of aviation and sustainable transport in that area, subjects on which he is well recognised around the world. He worked for British Airways for many years as head of the sustainable business unit, a man who's not just interested in aviation but also in the effects of climate change and how transportation impacts on climate change. We'll be hearing from him on that as well. He also tried to retire in 2002 but is still extremely active, visiting professor at the Surrey School of Management, and author of numerous articles and papers on aviation and sustainable transport and we're going to be hearing a lot from Hugh as well.

And just re-iterating what Robert said, we are very keen to get your input into today's discussion so at any time feel free to get involved, ask questions of all of our guests.

Robert Friedman: Over here on my left most of you from Mexico City probably know Adriana Lobo who is the director of the Center for Sustainable Transport, a non-profit organisation that has been active in coming up with solutions to Mexico City's transportation problems. Adriana is not from Mexico, she grew up in Brazil and began her career dealing with traffic problems in San Paolo which is another huge city with transportation problems. She left there and came to Mexico City and has been very successful here, particularly with a new bus transport programme which she will be talking about and focusing the attention both the private and public sectors on Mexico City's transportation problems.

Michael Holmes: And our final guest is Dr. Claudia Sheinbaum, to my right and Robert's, who has a long list of achievements to her name. Dr. Sheinbaum is the Minister of Environment for Mexico City, responsible for many initiatives that have taken place in Mexico which of course has its own unique problems with pollution and she's a major proponent of developing clean and sustainable transportation in Mexico City. As I say, she has a long list of achievements: she has been advisor to the Mexican National Commission for Energy Savings and the Mexican National Electric Utility, and worked on the greenhouse gas mitigation plans for Mexico and Honduras. She's been a very busy lady. In 2000 she became a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, she has a PhD in energy engineering from UNAM and has a doctoral thesis from Berkley. So Dr. Sheinbaum rounds out our panel for this discussion.

Robert Friedman: So since this is a discussion about transportation let's get things moving. I'm going to start with Dr. Sreedharan. You would probably agree with me about my description about India's infrastructure problems, my question to you, and I'll give you a little time to give us some of the history here, how were you able to cut through that and get this project in Delhi, we'll start with that, done so efficiently, economically and on time?

Dr Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Well Mr Friedman, you are right. In India the Government projects are notorious for cost overruns and time overruns. So when the Government asked me to take over the reigns of the Delhi Metro project I was already handling another prestigious railway project, namely the Konkan railway which is 750km long railway line from Mumbai to Mangalore along the west coast through one of the most difficult terrains ever encountered in the railway history. Therefore when I was asked to take over the Delhi Metro project I put three conditions to the government. One was that I should have free freedom to run the organisation and I must have full freedom to pick up my own tea. And thirdly that there should be no interference from the politicians and the bureaucrats in the function on the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation is a government company jointly owned by the government of India and the Delhi government and therefore I felt that these conditions were very essential to enable me to successfully implement the project.

I soon realised that the country did not have the experience or expertise to plan, build a modern, world-class metro. Therefore we decided to engage international experts and in the process a consortium or international consultants were engaged by us, six consultants were engaged by us, who helped us in the planning, design and the project supervision. Well the other major success, major contributing success of this project was the assured and timely availability of funds for the project. The project is being funded about 35% by the government of India and government of Delhi on a 50/50 basis and the remaining 65% is coming as a very soft loan from the government of Japan with a 10-year moratorium period and a 20 year repayment period at a very low interest rate of 1.3%. With my background from the Indian railways and the background I had in the early stages of planning the Calcutta metro I was able to pick up a really competent team of people to help me in the project.

The first thing I did was, send out the team to the various metros of the world, get them exposed to the respective areas, gain expertise, proficiency in their own work and get them back. And then after the help of the consultants we were able to accomplish this project which was originally scheduled to complete in 10 years time, which we are now completing in exactly 7 years, 2 months time.

Robert Friedman: That's remarkable, how were you able to convince the government to give you the freedom and to keep their hands off the project. You are just one man and you're dealing with entrenched interests that have messed up many other projects. What was you negotiating strategy?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Well I found that the government was unable to find a proper person to help the Delhi Railway Corporation. There was, a team was set up but they were unable to find a proper person. And in the meantime, the government of Japan were going to withdraw their loan assistance unless a competent person was posted in time to help the project. So I was selected by the government, of course the government agreed to the conditions I put forward in the early stages but you know the government was changing and different parties came to power so the earlier promises, or the earlier assurances given to me were not really kept up throughout the project period. But the VV organised the project and with the VV we started showing results. The government found that they were unable to find another replacement for me so they gave me all the support and I think the credibility was established by proper delivery of the project.

Robert Friedman: All right, thank you, we'll come back and hear more from you. Dr. Sreedharan spent yesterday touring the Mexico City Metro so somebody might want to ask him about his observations about that but we'll get to that later.

Michael Holmes: Lets bring in Hugh Somerville now for some opening thoughts. Hugh to start off with you're sort of known around the world for you expertise in the aviation industry, I'm curious how an industry that is growing so fast, how can it continue to grow without creating its own problems without congestion and pollution. Is it a sustainable growth?

Hugh Somerville: Well, thank you first of all to Shell and CNN for the opportunity to be here and thank you Michael for the question. The aviation industry is perhaps the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas within the transport sector which is the fastest growing in its turn contributor to climate change and I think that it's quite opposite that today we have a very small expert meeting on transportation at the same time as 10, 000 people are gathered in Montreal for the 13th Conference of Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change. And I would like to return to the climate change question because I think that's one issue that's over-arching and absolutely vital to the future of transportation.

Aviation faces particular difficulties because its affect on the climate is not the same as terrestrial sources because the emissions are emitted at cruise altitudes, there are other effects that are not well understood at this stage. There are effects of nitrogen oxides, which are regional in nature and to do with ozone formation and removal in the upper atmosphere.

There's also effects arising from condensation trails, with which everyone will be familiar, and from cirrus cloud which can arise as a secondary effect of emissions at altitude. Some people have said that the effect of the cirrus cloud alone could be as great as that of the carbon dioxide that's emitted from the industry. However, there's a lot of uncertainty there. That's not to say that the industry isn't facing up to its problems and are very happy to be part of a strategy that has just been developed for the UK aviation across the sectors of airports, manufacturers, air traffic service providers and the airliners which faces up to this but it is particularly difficult for aviation in that the solutions are not, there's not so many options for aviation, for example, you can't really think in terms of hybrid aircraft because of the weight problems and looking at alternative fuels introduces problems of its own as well and the solutions have to be looked at in going down the agenda of operation improvements, new technology, possible fiscal measures.

The one measure that will contribute more in the medium term than anything else is emissions trading. That's a firm belief of a lot of people across the industry and it's something that we hope will happen in Europe by 2008. Then of course there is the personal aspect that human aspirations for access to mobility are ever increasing and it is quite difficult to face up to. Fifty percent of people in the UK fly at least one time per year. It's no longer in developed countries something that the rich get and we will have to face up to that. One way of doing it is, and I have to introduce an initiative from British Airways, that you can offset your personal travel by buying into some measure that such as, and the simplest example, but not the best, of buying trees or something like that and British Airways has recently introduced this. And this is the sort of thing that can be done in the short term by individuals who are concerned. It would be a good idea I think actually to ask this audience how many people have actually offset some of their greenhouse gas emissions.

Michael Holmes: Richard Quest did a story on that for Business Traveller, exactly that sort of thing, offsetting your own pollution. It is happening very small obviously. I'm curious also, with the plethora of low cost airlines, which the consumer demands and uses, of course - this has lead in part to enormous costs for the airlines and we see airlines in bankruptcy in the United States and in financial difficulty around the world. How does that impact their ability to make air transportation sustainable and efficient?

Hugh Somerville: Well, it's a sad observation that most people when they embark on a journey by air, seem to throw their environmental credentials out the window. It's almost as though they're regarded as not their problem. I've experienced that and it's been backed up by recent evidence from opinion surveys. I think a recent survey in the UK said that 80% of people like to recycle at home but 20% of them want to recycle when they are on holiday. And it just shows that there's a huge area of communication that has to be crossed to get the message over to people. It's as much a matter of individual action as collective action.

Michael Holmes: All right, let's bring this discussion back to ground and lets bring it back to Mexico City. Adriana, you have been working here for a number of years now on sustainable transportation issues and I want to ask you how you have been able to and what difficulties you have encountered in getting this agenda through. You are dealing with bureaucracies both on the local and national level, you are dealing with people's own habits of transportation which are often wasteful. You are dealing with financial issues. How do you get your voice and your agenda heard?

Adriana Lobo: First of all I would like to say that the Center for Sustainable Transport is part of a very interesting venture because it joins EMBARQ which is Shell foundation supported and it is the agency that is working for transport and environment at the world resources institute and they are associated with Claudia Sheinbaum, with the ministry of transportation in Mexico City and also SABA which is a local NGO and all those parts together they form the centre for sustainable transport as a project. So we have an agenda that is common of NGO and there was a very big interest in the city for this agenda, especially Claudia and so we had a voice since the beginning and I think this has been very important. We had a voice in government, we were partners in this project. After that it's not so easy to work with the people who are involved in the project itself, which is a large number of people, because transport deals with a lot of different people. We have to talk to the concessionaries, there is a need for the users, the neighbours also have different needs so there is a whole bunch of people involved in all the solutions.

Which kind of things we have been doing. First of all it's necessary to understand which kind of problem we are talking about and it's a little bit what we were talking. We spend every day in transportation here in Mexico City, two and a half hours in average. If we add this up, if we live 50 productively and we join all the time we spend in our cars, we will get to five years altogether which is a lot of time inside a car. So there is a time of our lives which is 10% of all our time which we are spending just to move, only to transport from one side to the other. Of course the transportation itself is what gives us access to a lot of important things, to our works, to the services and to something which is very important which is human interchange. We, I think mostly people say, ok if we work with internet maybe we are not in the streets, we can reduce the number of travels but what we see is that as society is developing, the number of trips has always been increasing, even if we have more communication because we also feel the need for more activity and for more human interchange. So it's not a question of controlling the number of trips, it's a question of knowing how we can make all the system sustainable altogether and this is not easy, it goes through a lot of things, cultural things and a lot of action in terms of projects.

Robert Friedman: So can you talk just for a minute - and maybe we can come back to this later about the metro bus project specifically - about how you were able to get that project in place, and what the response has been so far?

Adriana Lobo: First of all it's very important to say that of course metro bus is a government project and the leader of the project is Claudia, so we were partners of the project, we were partners with EMBARQ, EMBARQ has also been a very important part of it.

The project has been a three years project. Even though it has been planned for the city for a long time to make a more efficient bus system it has been a very efficient project in terms of time and also economic, economy, in terms of money. We planned for the project for two years in terms of how we were going to do the infrastructure, what was going to be done in terms of institution, which kind of financial structure it would be given because these projects, they usually don't fail at the technical part, usually the problem is very much institutional or financial. So two years we have been studying the secretary of environment was responsible for the project and has done a lot of work. We have been helping and supporting all the effort. And afterwards it has been launched by June 19 this year and what have we found out? The first weeks were quite hard to tell the truth because it was a lot of change for all the people, for the concessionaries, for the people who use the buses, for the institutions who need to run the system.

But now what we have found out through an independent survey is that the qualification the users give to the system is 8.26 out of 10, which is a very good qualification. So people, and 70% of the people say that they would like to see the system implemented in other areas in the city.

Michael Holmes: Claudia we'll bring you in, the metro of course was your baby in a way. It's a very complex transportation system here, would you be able to talk about what lessons you learned that might help other cities and systems around the world?

Claudia Sheinbaum: Well it's very difficult to transport the experience to other cities. Mexico City is very special in terms of its transportation system and first of all, I would like to say that transportation is not only how people move from one place to another. Transportation, in terms of sustainable transport, deals with several issues. It deals with the economy, the economy of the city in this case, in terms of transportation of person, the transportation of goods too. If something happens to transport then something's going to happen to the economy of the city. Also, transportation is very related to social issues. If people don't have access to transportation, then poverty and social inequities are going to be bigger. Again, transportation is related to environment which is obvious in terms of air pollution but also in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, but also in terms of waste and transportation is again related to urban planning. It's very different transportation in Mexico City than in other cities where the planning of the urban space is very different and also it's very related to lifestyles, to culture. So if you think about that it's very difficult to say that the experience of Metrobus or the experience of Metro in Mexico City can be exported to other cities, I mean every city has its reality, of course you can learn from other experiences but we have a special thing in Mexico City.

Michael Holmes: What's been the impact of the Metro on Mexico City?

Claudia Sheinbaum: Metro transports about 4 million people. Mexico City...

Michael Holmes: A day?

Claudia Sheinbaum: A day, yeah that's right. Mexico City it's what we call a federal district which is the capital of the city, but it's surrounded by another state that is the state of Mexico and around in the whole metropolitan area we have around 18 million people and in the federal district we have around 9 million people. So you have to talk about the mobility of around 20 million people everyday and metro is very important because it moves around 4 million people. The biggest share of the mobility in Mexico are the microbuses. Small buses which are very inefficient in terms of mobility, in terms of environment, but represent about 50% of the mobility of the city.

Michael Holmes: So has the Metro impacted on the traffic problems here?

Claudia Sheinbaum: I would say that we have a lot of problems because we have a lot of parallelism. In the same street you have metro but you also have microbuses and you have cars moving in the same direction. So probably if the metro didn't exist then we would have bigger traffic problems but in terms of, metro is very important in terms of mobility, metro in Mexico City costs 2 pesos which is more or less 10cents of dollar. So it's very important to people who doesn't have access to other kinds of transportation and it's very efficient.

Robert Friedman: All right, after this opening round lets see if we can connect some of these dots. Dr. Sreedharan you mentioned when you were speaking that you, that before you set out to do the Delhi metro sent teams of people from India to look at other metros. Do you agree with what Claudia said that you can't transport good ideas from one city to another? What did you learn to do and not to do?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Well, my effort was to gather a team of experts first of all and since the country didn't have any experience or expertise, it was necessary to get people educated in regard to the metro particularly in respect of fears. So that was the purpose for which this team was sent to make the study of metros to make a study in their own particular chosen field of expertise. There are a lot of things to learn from each of the metros. I don't think we can duplicate one metro exactly in another country, it's not worth attempting it but there are good features that can be picked up and then they can be put together and we can make a modern, nice, world class metro. That is what we have done in Delhi.

Michael Holmes: It boils down not just to who needs a metro, but who should have a metro. I live in Atlanta which has.........well they call it a metro, it's not. It has one line north/south, one line east/west, very little in between. It's a city that cries out for a metro but Americans are married to their cars. How do you convince the public to use something like a metro which, as I was saying in a city like Atlanta.....in New York City it works great, but in Atlanta they can't build it because nobody wants it. Everybody wants to drive their cars.

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Well the situation in Delhi is a lot different. The mobility is really a real daily issue in the city. The streets are heavily congested, the public transport system is totally inadequate, so in that context a metro that gives a reliable, very safe and very fast and comfortable service, people naturally want to switch onto that service. That's why we are able to wean away people from the road onto the metro system where a metro has been commissioned.

Michael Holmes: Has that actually happened in New Delhi?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: It actually has happened.

Michael Holmes: Any statistics that you can say?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Well I would say, I don't have the precise figures, but approximately I would say about fifty percent of the people who use roads in the metro corridor have switched to the metro. That's obvious from the way the congestion along these roads has considerably eased.

Michael Holmes: But the point is in a developing country, it's often a matter of need, of finance. It's cheaper to use the metro, a lot of people don't have cars or whatever. How, do you convince Americans for example, to want a metro and leave the car at home? Have you got any thoughts on that?

Hugh Somerville: Well, I think the thoughts is you have to make using a metro easier and using the car more difficult.

Michael Holmes: Which in London has happened, central London

Hugh Somerville: London has started, there are some cities which of course have come a lot further in taking measures to make use of cars less attractive and in the end, it's....

Robert Friedman: Sorry for the audience, could you explain what's going on in London and what the effect has had on this congestion.

Hugh Somerville: Well, what they have done in London is they have got in a congestion charge for any car entering the centre of the city. And this has been coupled to other measures such as dedicated lanes for buses.

Michael Holmes: And it's a lot of money

Hugh Somerville: All of which makes it less attractive

Michael Holmes: So if I wanted to drive my car into the west end of London what's it going to cost me?

Robert Friedman: It's eight pounds

Hugh Somerville: It's eight pounds a day.

Michael Holmes: That's a lot of money

Hugh Somerville: It is a lot of money and it has had a singular effect and whereas five years ago it was quite unattractive to me, at least, to take a bus through London, partly because of the pace and slow progress, now it's quite attractive to take a bus because the bus very often makes better progress than the cars that have paid the charge.

Michael Holmes: And you're saving eight pounds.

Hugh Somerville: But other cities, I think Singapore is a very good example...

Robert Friedman: What is London doing with all that money it's raising? I'm asking because........are they using for public transportation or are they just putting it into the general treasury?

Hugh Somerville: The idea is that it will go to improve the overall public transport network, but as we know the public transport is a very useful sink for money and I think it's in Delhi, it's a singular cause for congratulation that it's meeting its operational cost from the start. Not many public transportation systems do that.

Michael Holmes: I'm interested in coming back Adriana on something you said, about the impact of commuting on productivity. That's obviously a very significant thing, have you got any figures on that, what it costs the Mexican economy or...

Adriana Lobo: Yeah, the cost is actually huge for many reasons. When you are losing two and a half hours of your productive day inside your car, it's very hard to think of a lot of productive activities at the time, so this is obviously a very important problem which is time. A second thing is that pollution is really making people sick. Two thousand or three thousand people a day are dying faster or they have a pollution, or pollution is making them die fast. Or there are a big number of days that people cannot go to work because they are sick in terms of air, respiratory system. Of course we have been improving in that but we still have problems of health related pollution in the city. A third thing that is very important is that car accidents, vehicle accidents are the second major cause of non-natural death in the world said by the organisation of health, the world health organisation. So it's also a major problem, and there is another thing. Walking was a very important activity for us to be healthy. When we were walking to work or walking to someplace we were healthy and today we do not move our bodies and we are getting fat and diabetes and other health problems.

So the whole range of things is saying to us the consequences of our human health are very important so we should work a lot for sustainable transport.

Robert Friedman: Would congestion charges work in Mexico City or New Delhi?

Claudia Sheinbaum: No, not that kind of policy.

Robert Friedman: Why not?

Claudia Sheinbaum: Well, it's a hard question. We have done different things. Pollution in Mexico City over the last 5 years has reduced in about 30% in terms of the days that we are over the health standard and this is because of a bunch of policies that we have implemented such as a very intensive inspection program to cars, substitution of public buses, substitution of public taxis, the metro bus, new infrastructure for the city. So there are several policies that are applied that have been reducing pollution concentration in Mexico City that is very important. Probably later on we could start thinking about charges in some parts of the city but right now they are not implemented.

Robert Friedman: What about in Delhi?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Before you bring in these congestion charges, the city must have a very efficient public transport system which Delhi doesn't have today. Possibly, or hopefully by the time the Delhi Metro master plan is fully completed by the year 2020 we can think of these congestion charges but not before that.

Robert Friedman: You mentioned last night that, or actually this morning, that Delhi has also converted all of its buses to compressed natural gas and that that has had a huge impact on the pollution levels. That was pretty dramatic that they did it all at once and got it all accomplished and that seems to be a pretty good model for at least fixing one piece of the urban pollution problem.

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: That's true. There has been a lot of hue and cry about the heavy pollution taking place in Delhi, in fact Delhi was the fourth most polluted place in the world. And then...

Robert Friedman: Before or after Mexico City?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: I think perhaps after Mexico City, Mexico is much better I feel. But then a lot of dominant initiatives were taken to control this position but nothing was giving good results. Ultimately the judiciary has to step in and the supreme court passed an order that all public transport vehicles, including all buses and three wheelers, there are lots of three wheelers in Delhi, about 60, 000 three wheelers in Delhi, all this should be converted into compressed natural gas, and a deadline was set for this purpose and the government had to take very special measures to see that all these vehicles were converted to CNG and this has been accomplished for the last one and a half years. There has been a very impressive and distinct improvement in the pollution level. But still things are not very satisfactory, I personally feel CNG also pollutes atmosphere, they're not the same level as petroleum and diesel but at least to a large extent, but still the pollution continues.

Michael Holmes: I'm curious whether anyone has got any questions so far.

Robert Friedman: Yeah, let's bring the audience in.

Man 1: I have a question regarding subsidy for the metro systems in India and in Mexico. Does it subsidise the metro?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Delhi metro there is no subsidy at all from the government and fortunately from day one we are making an operation profit and...

Man 1: Is it true the metro was built for middle class people?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: It is true, it is basically for the lower and middle class people, the metro was built. To wean away the upper class people who own cars is rather difficult in the Indian situation today because cars are a sort of prestige symbol. It goes around with that. And cars have the facility of door-to-door service which metro doesn't provide so it would be difficult to wean away that type of people unless some very stringent regulation methods are brought from the government for this purpose. But the way the metro project has been financed, mainly because of that, the way the project has been financed and the way the project has been exhibited and the type of exemptions and assistance the government has provided for the project, it has made it possible for us to see that we make and operational profit from day one.

Robert Friedman: Wait a second. You said, I think you said last night, that you get all the power for the Delhi metro for free. Wouldn't that be the same as subsidy?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Yes, the main concessions given to the Delhi metro are the lines, all government lines have been given at a very cheap rate for the Delhi metro project but they have a transfer rate which is only about one-tenth of the normal commercial rate. There's one concession that we got. The other major concession the government made was complete remission of all duties and taxes for all procurements and all services given to the metro. And a third and foremost is the energy, the power is given to the metro on a no profit, no loss basis.

Man 1: What is the cost for one person, a fare?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: The minimum fare is 6 rupees which is approximately 1.5 peso here and the maximum is 14 rupees which is about 3.5 peso for a distance of 24 kilometres. The fare is based on the distance.

Robert Friedman: Do you want to answer the question as far as Mexico City is concerned and also your feeling on what is the role of government subsidies.

Claudia Sheinbaum: Some people approach subsidies as if they were the devil or something like that. "I don't want to talk about subsidies, I don't want to hear about subsidies!" What you have, a population in Mexico City where around 30% of the population lives under the poverty line and you know that that people have to move, then subsidies are quite another perspective. I think that probably Metro has to be more efficient in terms of the institution of the Metro and probably they can reduce costs but I don't think that the Metro in Mexico City can work without subsidies.

Because you need to move, the people that it's moving in the Metro and they cannot pay more. That's one thing, the other thing, if you think that the taxes that pay, the people that use private car, the income to the government in terms of taxes, it's about the same that is given to the Metro, so it is not directly that you use that for that, but if you think, you are thinking, that at some point that it's people that are using private cars that are subsidising the Metro, cause it's the same amount of money. And the third thing is, probably thinking in the future for the city, probably and it's a thing that we have done, that to think in a different kind of system that in terms of investment and operational costs are cheaper than the Metro and that's the Metrobus. So Metrobus, it's a very, very low subsidy, just in terms of it's institution, it's mainly that the system works by itself and I think for the future of the city, Metrobus is probably more in terms of public transportation than Metro because still Metro is very costly.

Michael Holmes: Anyone else have a question?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Can I raise a question?

Michael Holmes: Sure

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Madam, don't you think this heavy subsidy, this subsidy, leads to inefficiency in the system?

Claudia Sheinbaum: I think you need to know very much about the Metro in Mexico City and I don't want to take too much time on that, but you.......I mean we can have a more efficient in that sense but I don't think that we can stop subsidising the Metro because in any case you will have to pay double, triple, quadruple for the metro to work, even though you have more efficient institution.

Jefferson Storm-Mesa - Personal Education Managers: I'm an expat, twenty-five years here in Mexico City. It's a pleasure to talk to two people who are involved in the Metrobus which I think is fabulous, so congratulations on that. I have a question for you: The issue of transportation here in Mexico City is essentially a class issue and I'm sure that nobody in this room came here on public transportation. If this were a meeting in New York City some of us would have arrived on the Metro, so my question for you is and maybe it can also be directed to the representative of the New Delhi system, how can we change the mental attitude regarding public transportation, how is it achieved there in New Delhi and how can it possibly be achieved her in Mexico City where it is not an issue of transportation but an issue of class.

Adriana Lobo: I think we have first of all, we have to design transport systems that are designed for everybody. I mean, the system needs to look as a system that is proper for everybody to use, this is one very important part. There is a social problem, we know that everywhere in the world, people will not use their cars because they want to, if there are no restrictions. After they have some constraints to use their cars and then you offer a nice alternative then you will start to see a shift. So it's a question of providing, correcting infrastructure, for example, we cannot bike in Mexico City, it's very dangerous in general to bike. Public transport, a lot of people do not feel safe in public transport or do not feel comfortable because it's not the same class.

So it's a question, one of infrastructure and design, if we do not have cycle-pass, we have advanced it a little bit in this administration, we need to do a lot more for cycling because it is an option for short trips, for trips that are shorter than 5km it is very efficient. So we need to design a system that is for all transport modes and we need to restrict car circulations a little bit.

I think there is a very interesting experience that is a car free day. Some cities do that, they do this in Europe but they do this in Bolivia which I think is a very nice approach and what happens on this day is the city works perfectly nice even though nobody is allowed to use their cars. I know this is a very big city and there are other difficulties, but it's very nice to see how the city really works this day, because for 80% of our people everyday is car free day because they do not own a car.

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: The metro has to be very efficient, very comfortable, quite safe and of course very reliable, and it must cover the whole city. Just like Madrid. Madrid, now the metro system has spread in such a way that a metro station is available within 400 metres of every citizen in the city. If that sort of coverage is available metro will be well utilised. And then of course this status consciousness that people like to have, they would want to move in the cars because of status consciousness. That will come only when there is a good alternative available. In Delhi that is what we want to bring in, a good alternative in which the people will like to travel in the Metro and that is happening already where the lines have been opened. Delhi, the trains are fully air conditioned and you don't have air conditioned cars in Delhi, very many, the public, the buses are not air conditioned, so people like to travel in the metro which is fully air conditioned and very reliable. To the second, people know that they can reach their destination, they can time it very nicely.

So we are seeing now, a lot of people do the park and ride. They bring...to reach the metro station they come in their cars, park their cars and take the metro, this is happening. But I am very sure now we have covered only a very, very small segment of the city. We expect to cover the whole city only by the year 2020. We started rather very late, I would say 30years late in Delhi, we should have started the Metro system, like Mexico, in the 60s we should have started the metro building, we did not do that. Now the success has gone to everyone, the government, the public, everybody, they know that the system has to spread and naturally the government, even before phase one is completed the phase two has been already sanctioned. So I am sure, once the system spreads and a good alternative is available, people will switch over.

Robert Friedman: In New York City where I live, and you mentioned people like us here in this room going to meetings on the subway, this is true but the New York subway system is not that attractive, it's not that safe, it doesn't look that good, the cars break down, but given all that, it is still the most efficient way to get from point A to point B. Parking is expensive, traffic is terrible and if you want to get to someplace in a reasonable amount of time, you take the subway in New York. So there's a calculus that people do in trading off but as a society, we have historically made it too easy for cars and I think that some of the comments we have heard today suggest that there are things that governments can do to discourage private cars but again if you don't have a fully developed public transport system it doesn't do that much good to get people out of their cars, you still have to get them to work.

Hugh Somerville: I'd just like to make one comment about something that we've experienced. Ten years ago, when you applied for a new commercial development in London you were obliged to provide one parking space for every person virtually that was working there. Now you are lucky if you get away with 30% and at the same time you are forced to invest in bus systems to bring people to and from work. And there is a huge rule for people who grant planning permission for new developments in this idea of modal shift, I think. I'll point out there are numerous things that can be done around that but that's a simple thing that can be done.

Michael Holmes: I know we've talked a bit about environment which is a separate issue, but at the same time intertwined with transportation. You are very concerned about the impact that transportation is having environmentally, in terms of greenhouse gases etc. Can you talk about that?

Hugh Somerville: Well, it's going from the local to the global I think. Transport accounts for 20% of greenhouse gas emissions and I think it's, as I said earlier, it's the fastest growing source in Europe for example, they predict that transport will grown from 2004 to 2010 by 30%. That's over six years and when you look at some of the predicted statistics for countries for countries like China and indeed India where the GDP is rising very rapidly and car ownership shows a direct relationship with per capita GDP, it's quite a chilling thought to see how many cars might be on the road in China and India in 15 - 20 years tome and that's not to mention the aviation. So, I think the interesting thing perhaps is the social aspect. Before the industrial revolution man was dependant on his own horse or wind and current to get around the world and apart from allegations that horse manure made the city centres very unpleasant in these times, there were no real environmental problems associated with it. And now we in the OECD, we've been talking about mobility, people move, OECD people, move on average 3.5-5.5 times per day and that average is rising and that is a singular effect of course on transportation of all sorts whether it's metro, whether it's car, whether it's air or whichever.

And this, I believe, is tied into demographics, population growth being the one issue that politicians won't tackle and population growth is probably the single biggest driver. I don't know, I think the population of Mexico City has doubled in the last ten years or something?

Claudia Sheinbaum: Twenty years.

Hugh Somerville: Twenty years and one wonders what would have happened if the population would have stayed the same. And industry is very good at talking about its performance and saying, we'll improve our fuel efficiency or get our fuel efficiency down. And yes, the aviation industry has improved it's fuel efficiency by 70% over 40 years but behind that the growth has forced an enormous overall growth in overall absolute amount of emissions and what we have to do is to get in perspective both the relative and the absolute.

Michael Holmes: When it comes down to things like that though, to persuade industries like the airline industry to become more efficient and therefore more sustainable, you get into the battle of profits versus what's best, what's going to encourage those companies to do the right thing as opposed to making sure that the bottom line is preserved and protected?

Hugh Somerville: Well, I think it was Warren Buffet who said that if he'd had his say he would have shot down the Kitty Hawk. Airlines are a very poor business model, they have not made a net profit since they were invented overall. Yes, manufactures, yes airports which tend to be little monopolies in many ways, have made a lot of money but airlines haven't done very well and fuel efficiency is a huge driver in the cost, so don't worry about that. I think the problem comes when you look at this absolute growth in aviation and when you look at the options that are open to the aviation industry. The aviation industry does not want special treatment, it does not want to be treated separately but it will need to be looking at things like emissions trading and maybe over ten, twenty, thirty, forty years, radical changes in technology perhaps even into hydrogen fuelled aircraft and things like that.

Robert Friedman: Hugh doesn't the airline industry get special treatment now in not having to pay fuel tax and should that change and would it have any impact on what we are talking about today?

Hugh Somerville: Well, in the US it does pay a tax of sorts. I think it's four cents gallon actually, and in the UK we pay a tax, passenger duty that contributes a substantial amount, I think it's a billion pounds a year to the UK treasury. There are arguments about that.

Robert Friedman: If you compare it to the taxes on gasoline for automobiles though it's tiny no?

Hugh Somerville: Well, yes, you've got to remember and aviation pays for its own infrastructure through on-route charges and airport charges which doesn't necessarily apply to ground transportation although the private motorist tends to pay more than his share of the infrastructure costs for ground transport. But it is a very difficult area and I think for aviation, it may well be inevitable in the long term, the cost to the consumer has to go up if the effect on the environment is going to be controlled.

Flavio Lias, General Manager Flashman Heeler: I believe that the debate here has been much more around the technical issues and economic issues and the social issues, but in Mexico City we suffer a tremendous political problem when related to developing transportation. There is a lack of communication between the metro union and the government of Mexico City, the metro hasn't gone through any major work since the early nineties, there is a tendency to develop political clients. For example the minibus system was developed merely for political reasons, about twenty years ago and now we are paying the consequences of that and the government hasn't been able to cope with that yet. The Metrobus, which is clearly highly politically efficient because you can see that. You can finish the work in a short period of time, but honestly I don't believe the solution for a city like Mexico City is to develop further underground infrastructure. So I would like to ask our guest from India, how did you cope with politics on that regard? How is it that a city like Delhi that suffers very much the same problems as Mexico and I believe that we must learn from experiences from all around the world, decided to engage into huge work like the metro instead of going to half way solutions like the Metrobus?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Well, Delhi is a city of more than 14 million population, and as I mentioned earlier, we should have started the metro in Delhi thirty years back. Everybody realised that metro is very, very essential for the survival of the city and all the political parties were unanimous in this conclusion that a metro has to come and come fast. So for the present there is good political support for all the activities concerning the metro, whether it is the acquisition of land or whether it is cutting the trees or deciding on the road, there is political consensus. We are not at the stage of Mexico where the system is already set out and well established, then politics will probably start playing, we are not at that stage. Today, everybody wants metro and everybody wants the credit for Metro, that is the important thing. Whichever is the party in power they want to take credit that they have brought the metro in the city, they have brought in world-class metro. So there is a good political support for the metro as it is in Delhi today.

Robert Friedman: But was there thirty years where politics prevented Delhi from building the metro?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Absolutely, for 20 years it prevented.

Claudia Sheinbaum: There's a big discussion in Mexico City whether metro has to continue or not and it's very technical, it's not dealing with what the people in the audience says regarding political issues. We don't have to be afraid of politics, it's everywhere, it's not only a Mexico City issue, it's probably a Delhi issue, it's a US issue, let's talk about Kyoto protocol if you want to. So what's happening in Mexico, Mexico has a very important system in terms of Metro, but then you have a very important issue that a kilometre of metro costs $50million and the other important issue is what are the new lines that are needed in Mexico City and you just justify a metro if you have around 400, 000 people that it's moving everyday. And you can't find in Mexico city a very important lines, a very important, what we call corridors, of people that it's moving that move more than 400 000 people a day. So you have very important lines of metro, but then you have another important avenues, important origins and destinations that doesn't move that amount of people.

Then you have to deal with a new system and the new system from our point of view, it's not only a Mexican point of view, but it's a new movement in terms of the international arena, it's this new Metrobus which moves 250, 000 people a day, you have incorporated the older concessionaries of the old buses in the system and you have around 6-8% of the people that it's moving in Metrobus that used to use private cars. So people are moving from one system to another.

Michael Hugh: Are those buses on natural gas or not?

Claudia Sheinbaum: Very few, for Mexico City, well there's another important discussion about fuel, it is CNG or it's diesel with low sulphur content which is....

Michael Hugh: I ask because I was just looking at this, we have some questions that were submitted by people around the world via the internet on our website and I was just looking down at one of them from Hangi Jan-Lee in China who said how long does the panel thing it will be before cars using alternative, environmentally friendly sources of power such as hydrogen and bio-diesel will become the norm rather than the exception, has anyone got any thoughts on that?

Claudia Sheinbaum: It's a question of cost, I mean if the availability of the technology and the cost of the technology...

Michael Hugh: Is it cost or desire, consumer desire as well?

Claudia Sheinbaum: Well it also takes into account, when you talk about aviation, the expert says you need 40-50years to have different technologies and you have to start thinking because it's very difficult to think about structural changes in aviation and to fly, it's reduced times etc, etc. But I think that concerning the 80s was very important in terms of fuel costs whatever and now very few investments are put in research for new technologies even though we have climate change in our faces.

Robert Friedman: I suspect that, this question came from China, I suspect that China and India are going to be the places where these solutions to these problems come from because the need is going to be so great and there is clearly whole industries waiting to be developed, research that will need to get done and China has got the mind set that, yes, right now they are a very polluting country, but I think they realise that something needs to be done and I think the demand will come from developing countries to find an alternative. I don't know if you agree with that but...

Claudia Sheinbaum: Yes I do.

Karen Miasaki - PMI - I just have a question following up from that gentleman's last question. You mentioned the fact that we are not developing I guess the metro system here is because of a cost issue more than anything, cost and demand, but wouldn't that be a little bit like the chicken and the egg because if we developed the right and the efficient transportation systems that were needed then we would get the switch from the population to go into those transportation methods instead of...

Claudia Sheinbaum: You have some lines of the metro here that are moving around 100, 000 people a day. If what you say, build a metro, then you will have the demand is not always true. What I think is, as the colleague says, you need to build a public transport system, and a public transport system is not just metro. It's metro and it's metrobuses and it's efficient buses and it's probably taxis for some areas of the city. But you need to build this system in order to start limiting private cars moving and to start costing more probably private cars.

Adriana Lobo: I really agree a lot with Claudia. It is a technical and an efficiency question for the city in terms of investment. For example, today what we have is first, all the lines that we see are under 300, 000 passengers a day. And the bus solutions that are being developed, what they are delivering are first speeds that are very much.....they are lower than the subway, but not that much. What you can see is a very efficient system. For example Metrobus has 20kph versus the metro which is better which is 28-30kph. But it is ten times more costly to the city, it costs a lot more, it will add to subsidies to the metro if we need more, because what we see is that the users are pretty much the same but they travel longer. This is basically what has happened to Mexico City metro. You build more metro, you get a few new users and you get a lot more extension in the rates so there is no more money coming into the metro and there is a lot more needs, there is a lot more costs. So what has been happening, and it's not only Mexico, is really the need to build a network and to find the most appropriate and cost effective system for each line and you have to think about it individually.

A third thing that must be though is that today with the fare ticketing system which can be quite efficient with technology, you can do a lot of integration, this is also something that is changing a little bit how we use it to think about transportation because we can, with the one payment system we can change buses, we can go from the one, we can really integrate networks in the system. So the whole thoughts is a lot more complex, it's very important to think that we have a lot more options. We are talking about massive transport but we also need to think also of how to use other alternative transport in this system. So to think, driven only by one transport mode is probably today, with all the technology that we have, is probably leading us to a not very cost effective solution.

Robert Friedman: Dr. Sreedharan, you mentioned last night in your remarks at the cocktail party that India has plans to build metros in many other cities now and ultimately in every city with a population with more than one million. This is a big undertaking, an expensive undertaking. Is this the best way to go, is this what India needs or should it be building more highways, or more bus systems, I mean I don't know, how do you allocate your resources when thinking about this?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Well, the cities, Indian cities today with more than 3 million population, the road system has come to a saturation point. You can't even develop further unless you for large-scale demolition of properties which people will not agree at all. So the only solution is to go for a railway system, either elevated or underground. So the government has taken a policy decision that all cities with more than 3million population, to start with, will have a metro system in the next five to ten years time. Thereafter, even cities with more than one million should have a metro system. Now, a metro system cannot be justified purely on financial grounds but it can be easily justified on socio-economic grounds. We are seeing in Delhi for example, the financial rate of return on the system is hardly 3%, 3.5% or so, but the economic rate of return on the Delhi metro is something like 24.5 which means the end term investment on the metro in Delhi comes back to the society in four to five years time. And more than anything else, one phenomenon we have observed in Delhi is, as the metro system is coming and the metro system is expanding, it is creating wealth for the people. Wealth in the sense that property values go up, people along the corridor within say zone of about five kilometres, the property values are going up, they are becoming richer and richer.

The government is therefore now thinking of giving the full area rate as sort of a (?) so the government can collect revenue out of this wealth that is created to fund metros more. So it's true, a metro cannot be the final and full solution to a city, there should be other services also necessary but the basic transport mode should be metro although it's very expensive, it has got a long gestation period, but I feel the benefit of that goes back to society in no time.

Michael Holmes: I'm wondering if you can talk for a moment about how airlines can fly smarter, not just airlines but the industry itself, including airports, how the airport system works now, the hub system versus point to point travel, long haul, we're seeing the planes now that will eventually do London to Sydney, how they can fly sustainably in the future?

Hugh Somerville: Surely, I'd like to start by supporting the case for efficient inter-modal transfer and illustrated by the story about Heathrow airport where the operators were very keen on developing bus systems. It now happens that Heathrow airport I think has the biggest bus station in Britain and very many people never go near an aircraft because they are using it to transfer from bus to underground, metro or bus to bus and getting to other places. It used to be in Europe that railroad stations were built around the periphery of the centre and they were the transfer points and now I think increasingly it's the airports that are taking on the role of being the hubs for inter-modal transfer. As to aviation getting smarter, I belong to a group called greener by design which is a sort of ginger group for bringing up ideas and we have images of aircraft that might be flying in twenty years which might make you quite uncomfortable for you to look at at the moment. More or less flying wings and it's very well designed to be very efficient but we're not quite sure where the passenger will go.

And there's a whole range of ideas, I mean in flight re-fuelling for example on long haul flights would make it more efficient, even formation flying like geese could be possible because there are so many aircraft that fly across the Atlantic at any one time that you could pick up. Aircraft actually fly at the most efficient speed but they don't fly the most efficient distances and one option would be to have sectors that were designed to be the most efficient sector.

Michael Holmes: How do you mean they don't fly efficient distances?

Hugh Somerville: Well, the optimal sector for a 747 is probably something like eight hours flight and after that point its, you pay the cost of carrying the weight of the fuel for flying that extra bit and it adds, and the fuel efficiency goes down. Of course if you were to do that you'd need more airports and of course there's environmental consequences etc. from all of that. But there's a whole, on a 747 I'm sure you've all noticed these little winglets, not little gismos like that, I think the 747 fuel efficiency improved by 5% just by improving the aerodynamics and use of new materials and all the rest. However, I mean all this technology and one of the things you can do is improve your air traffic control system, now a lot has been done to fly at the optimal height and also to shorten the roots. In Europe many of the routes are as much as 25% longer than they need be because they fly around military zones and things like that.

So there are lots and lots of opportunities but when we add it all together it doesn't quite compensate for the anticipated growth and that's where the challenge comes in. I'd just like to remark about the tax. Taxes are very poor ways of improving environmental performance, I mean the price of fuel for an aircraft has virtually doubled recently and it's had no effect on demand so a tax would have to be enormous. I think a charge where the money was recycled into development, and this could be applied to ground transport as well, into investment into new systems, and new technology and solving the problems. I personally think that that's a very good idea and it sends a very strong signal to the public. But for aviation, probably the best thing is to have an overall cap on greenhouse gas emissions where these industries that perform better, their allocated cap can sell to aviation and aviation ends up paying because as the cap gets tighter, the cost goes up.

Michael Holmes: Is there a willingness do you think?

Hugh Somerville: I think, yes. I mean I think the aviation industry, part of the industry in Europe is very keen to get into this emissions trading system in Europe by 2008. I have to say not all of it and of course the problems with these systems is the devil is in the detail. I mean who gets how many permits to start with and what basis it's all spread around and things like that, these are very difficult. But I took British Airways into emissions trading in the UK within a system there just to gain experience and it certainly seems to work in practice.

Robert Friedman: You mentioned Hugh earlier that the environmental issues from aviation pollution are regional or even global, not just by country. Are there mechanisms that are developing that are crossing borders in considering these problems on a regional or global basis? Or is not enough being done in that regard?

Hugh Somerville: There are local problems like noise and contribution to air quality around airports which are very real, but probably manageable. I think at the regional and global levels we're locked into these bi-lateral agreements which were created post-second world war to make it easy for countries to fly to one another which include things like not applying fuel taxes and really they're a strangle hold on the competitor development of the aviation industry and allow a lot of national carriers to be supported by governments and until these barriers are removed it's going to be quite difficult to progress on a global basis.

Michael Holmes: The private sector is traditionally more efficient that the government sector in getting things done. How important is the role of the private sector in local transportation?

Adriana Lobo: I think they have a very important, they need to participate, they are very important.

Michael Holmes: But they'll only do so if they make money won't they?

Adriana Lobo: Today for example in Mexico City more than 60% of the people are using buses that are privately operated so it is a very large number of people that is dependant on private operated transport. I think though that transportation, local transportation is said to be a public service by law and this is a very important concept, it says that the government has the duty to regulate the system and I think this is a very important duty of the state because it's a little bit like water. You wouldn't let water be completely privately operated and they should choose the fairs and chose everything. Because what would happen in transportation if probably very much the same, the people who are the poorest they live farther in our cities, in European countries the rich people live in the suburbs, but in our cities, the poor people live further away.

Michael Holmes: So they are disadvantaged?

Adriana Lobo: So they are disadvantaged, the transport, if they pay the cost it would be much more expensive to these people also and there is a need for regulation in fares there is a need for regulation in terms of service quality and there are some experiences in the world. For example in Santiago in Chile, they try to leave it only to the private sector itself and what happened was, the war centre, they called. They started to have more and more operators because it's easy to buy a bus and start to operate and invent yourself a route and charge as much as you want and then they start to fight for prices and the prices go lower and lower but after a five year period you have very bad buses which are very high, they consume a lot of fuel, they emit a lot of pollutants because they are not well maintained and they start to have a lot of accidents. So they started everything again, completely new project to make institutions stronger in Chile to be able to give a good service to people.

Robert Friedman: Can we stay with this discussion for a minute about public versus private, I think we would all agree that government has a role to play in regulating transport but many countries, including the UK, the United States, have gone back and forth on these issues about should railways be privatised, should they be run by government agencies, which is more efficient, which is better for society. I don't think anybody has gotten it right yet but I am just curious to know what your thoughts are. Maybe you can talk about that in terms of Delhi, I mean this is all state owned and state run but is that the best model? Do you ever see a role for private industry in operating public transport systems?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: There is room for private participation no doubt. Delhi model is a full government initiative but there are certain areas that are taken out of the government control. For example, the fare fixation is not at all with the government. We have brought in a very unique system, a good innovation I would say where the fare fixation is done by a fare fixation committee and then by a high court judge. So, they take into consideration the needs of the people, the social aspects, what the people can pay, what the system can suffer, all these things are taken into account to fix up a fare structure. Now it's not possible, I feel in metro systems where heavy investments are involved, the best route is government funding, that's the best route. But in a developing country like India, the government cannot find the level of funds needed for metro concession in all the cities so naturally private participation is required.

Now as I mentioned other cities are already looking for metros, Hyderabad and Mumbai. They are going for the metro systems on a biotic basis, getting a concessionaire to build and operate the system and the concessionaire will be given the viability gap funding to start with, that's all, the rest of it is his responsibility. The government is prepared to give him the viability gap funding to the extent of about 40% of the costs of the project. The remaining is his own funds, he can get his own funds, he can borrow, buy his own equipment, whatever it is and he can run the system for about 30 years and the system reverts back to the government at the end of the concession period.

That has been tried in two cities and I think it will have to spread to other areas also. To supplement what you asked earlier, the governments commitment for spreading the metro system. The government of India has what is known as an urban renewal scheme, very recently brought in, worth about $10 billion to be spent in the next seven years in the major cities of the country. Basically the main task is to improve the transportation scenario in these cities. That shows the government's commitment to bring in more and more metros in the various cities.

Robert Friedman: Anyone else want to comment on this public-private aspect, or do we have another question from the audience?

Claudia Sheinbaum: I would like to say a little bit about public and private. When we think private we probably are thinking bigger enterprises or you know, very efficient, and what we have in Mexico in terms of transportation, it's a disorder. You have a private owned bus that it's a concession from the government, but then you have an individual, a person that owns their bus and goes from one place to another, through a concession and through a permission from the city. And these individuals are organising routes but these routes are more a political organisation or a union organisation rather than an operational organisation.

Michael Holmes: So it's inefficient?

Claudia Sheinbaum: So it's very inefficient. So when you go through what do we need for Mexico City, it's not only a question of technology or environment it's also a social question: What are we going to do with all these concessionaries of public transportation that are not organised, that run very old buses? And that's why I think that Metrobus is a very good perspective. It's not only an alternative in terms of technology, in terms of environment, in terms of public transportation, in terms of running faster than private cars, but it's also a social alternative. An organisational alternative to these people that are individuals and they will organise an association that can run differently. So there are several studies in Mexico City and what we want, our period in Mexico City government is from 2000 to 2006 and one of the things that we want to give to the next administration is a programme for the public transportation in Mexico City in terms of metro, in terms of Metrobus, in terms of buses and what are the main origins and destinations of the city and what we have to do to have more sustainable transportation.

Robert Friedman: We only have a few minutes left and we have time only for one or two more questions and then we'll try to wrap up. I see two hands over here, why don't we go here first.

Hugo Camou, Isa Corporative: I believe that the key word in this process is planning. Why the Metrobus system is so successful in Mexico City is because it was a complete system. They were involved with the status, where the people were moving, how many people they could move, that's the first thing. The second is, they removed all the transportation systems and started just in one way with one direction. This is very important with every transportation system. Mexico City subway system for example is the best proof of a poor planning system. We have three lines that have more than 80million users transporting every month and we have lines in the same subway system in Mexico City that can only transport 3million people at once. Then if we can make the planning in the best way, instead of being directed by what is the easiest way to build then if we are making the right planning we can be very successful on all transportation and I would like to know, what is the studies that the Mexico City has on the way the people are moving right now because if we can answer what is the places the people are moving from, from point A to point B, we can solve all the planning of the public transportation.

Robert Friedman: So your question is how good is the information that the city of Mexico City has to be able to make this planning? Adriana, do you know where the people are and where they need to go?

Adriana Lobo: Well Mexico City has a survey of this nature but to tell you the truth it's quite old, it's 1994. The City really needs a new survey, it is very much necessary but we have to say it's a very expensive study that the city hasn't been able to do in the past few years. What it's very much like is that the origins and destinations inside the federal district have not changed in pattern in a very dramatic way during the past ten years. But for the state of Mexico, this is very outdated information because the patterns have changed so much. The city has kept the same main road, or it has grown but the pattern has not changed that much in the federal district but it is completely different in the state of Mexico.

Michael Holmes: So even if it's expensive for you to do the survey, how can you go forward effectively without doing it?

Adriana Lobo: There are some updates. It would be desirable to have more and new information, but there other ways of knowing how people move, there are studies that are more in focus, I mean you study a certain area and you know in more detail this area, to make a certain plan. So of course, it is ideal to have all the information, but I don't think it's a question of lack of information that's driven us to poor planning of the system. I think we need information, it's good to have information, but we need to have a new model and it's very dynamic because this bus rapid transit, I have to tell you I haven't been to school a very long time ago, it hasn't been so long bus transmilennio system that was built in Bogata is very important because it has changed all the transportation planning books in terms of they always told us that after 20, 000 passengers per hour you need a metro. And the transmillenio is very efficient and it's carrying 42, 000 passengers per hour, so it changed the books, it changed the technology. We are thinking about planning in a different way.

I was taught very much how to control traffic lights and a lot of traffic and today we are thinking in a different way. We do have plans, we have a plan for transport in the city that every new administration makes the plan again, and everything is set again, but we need to know that it is very dynamic, the ideas on planning are changing and we really need to do a lot more on this and to be updating basically on a constant basis.

Man 2: - Besides talking about whether using public transportation is a class system or not, as the Mexico City authorities have made available more options through the last ten years, there still remains the question of safety, of how are you going to get people to use public transportation when they hear ever day about robbery in metrobuses, in the metro, in the buses. What is the Mexico City government thinking about doing about safety because so far I didn't here that the same perceptions or problems happen either in the London tube or in the new Delhi metro or in the other public transportation systems in the world. You can make other alternatives available but still as long as the public remains with the sense that it's not safe to use public transportation in Mexico, cars will remain the most popular mode.

Michael Holmes: It's a good question. I think are crime issues all over the world.

Robert Friedman: Well in the case of New York there was a serious subway crime problem and it was dealt with under the Giuliani administration and the numbers went way down.

Claudia Sheinbaum: I am not the crime expert, but as I said, I would say in three areas. One, the question of crime is very related to social issues, second you have to change the whole system and that's what we are thinking. Crime in metro is not very important in Mexico City, it's more that you hear some crime but the numbers, I don't have the numbers right now, but they are not very big. You probably have the same probability to be assaulted in the car as to be assaulted in the metro.

Man 2:: I'm talking about the whole public system not just the metro.

Claudia Sheinbaum: I know, I was answering metro and then in the other, in mircrobuses, microbuses are unsafe, let's not talk about crime lets talk about the people that are killed in accidents because of microbuses. You have to change the system, in terms of changing the system is what I said, you have to think about microbuses, you have to think about new buses, you have to think of changing the whole conception of microbuses, the whole conception of the concessions and this is not only a technical problem, this is a social problem and economical problem. And we have demonstrated that with the Metrobus you can change the whole system. The only, the thing that we have to do is start changing most of the public transportation in the city and then you are going to go into the crime and other issues.

Raul Gonzales, Mercedez Benz post manufacturing plant: It's clear for me that the transportation system deals with different issues. I mean environment, security, transportation, productivity, social economy and I would like to add also infrastructure. And I mean with infrastructure with bus manufacturing plans. How do you handle with these bus manufacturing plants in order to create this synergy with transportations and mobility?

Adriana Lobo: One of the things that we need to know, for example, that I think that the industry is losing a bit opportunity to sell buses because the industry is set in Mexico. When we have buses that are over ten years old and they are still running, you are missing a buyer. When you have a city that has buses that are four or five years old on average, of course you are selling more buses. So there is a whole industry there that can be developed and can be bigger so you also have a very important role in helping develop this structure and I think in a big way it's organisational structure. It's the problem of how the microbuses, the owner, how they organise it and we really have to work as a whole with the government to change the organisation of the transport sector in order to have a very efficient industry.

Michael Holmes: I'm curious how it happened in India where you did the change over to natural gas, basically at the same time. How was that organised?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Well I told you this was a result of a supreme court order.

Michael Holmes: And that makes things happen?

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: They had to organise a number of things, particularly the kits, the conversion kits. They had the import catalogue, they had to get a number of local manufacturers to have these kits manufacturers. They did not change the buses as such, they changed the kit alone, all the fuel kits they changed.

Michael Holmes: It must have been a feat of organisation though, it's a lot of buses.

Ellatuvalapil Sreedharan: Yes

Robert Friedman: We should probably sum up, we are getting close to noon. For me this has been, not only an interesting discussion, but a learning experience. This is a very complicated subject. We've talked about underground, buses, cars aeroplanes, all moving in their own patterns and all impacting on our lives and in our society in many ways. I think what I've taken away from this is that there is no single solution to these problems, it is a very complicated matrix of solutions from public and private sectors and NGO's pushing and pulling in different ways to get us thinking in new ways. And when you said it's not just about the information but it's about the mindset and the thinking about how you approach these problems and how that's changing and needs to change more whether it's in Delhi or Mexico City or in New York City, we are all dealing with these complicated issues and they are of huge significance whether it's measured in the more than one million people who die every year in traffic accidents around the world or in the effects of pollution on the health of large numbers of people.

These are important questions and I feel that they don't always get the attention that they need and I'm really glad that we had this opportunity this morning here to air them fully and have this discussion. So that's my summation, Michael do you have.

Michael Holmes: Just briefly, my job is really as a field journalist and anchor and I didn't know what to expect coming here, I thought it might be all a little bit too cerebral for me but I found it fascinating to listen to some of the solutions and some of the problems and some of the solutions to some of the problems that have been raised and I'm grateful to Shell, Fortune, Time and CNN for putting on these things because it's great to have the exchange of ideas and even in a very small group like this we can go away and start to think about some of the potential for solving some of the problems that we have. It's been again, like Robert said, a real learning experience and thank you for the opportunity.

Robert Friedman: And let me thank our panellists for their contributions and in at least two cases, they've transported themselves from long distance and in other cases taking two hours to get here by car from short distances. So thank you all, let's have a round of applause for our panellists.

Applause. Debate ends.