# Methodology to Assess Sustainable Mobility in LATAM Cities
## 4 Discussion  
In the previous sections, a methodology to assess sustainable mobility was presented, and the results of implementing it for the case of Saltillo City were described. In the process of establishing and implementing the methodology, several key characteristics of the methodology were identified:  
* The objective of the methodology is to assess the current situation of city mobility as a first step to identify the most effective sustainable strategies that the city should implement to improve the mobility of people and goods within the city. * Sustainability is a key part of the methodology. Thus, the pillars aspects of sustainability (social, economic, and environmental) were included. * In the process of defining the methodology, the special circumstances of LATAM cities related to urban mobility were taking into consideration. In most of these cities, people's mobility is based on buses. Cities are spread and located at high altitudes over mountainous regions. There is a marked social stratification with most of the people in the low-income segment. These low-income people usually live in the periphery of the city. These aspects influence the definition of the categories to consider and the reference values used for each \(\mathit{KPI}_{i}\)  
Figure 14: Assessment of the sustainable mobility in Saltillo. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c} \hline
**Pillar** & **Category** & **UMI** & **Classification** & **Interpretation** \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{**Accessibility**} & Physical & 18.6 & E & Very low sustainable mobility \\  & infrastructure & & & \\  & Economic scope & 51.8 & C & Medium sustainable mobility \\  & Energy Supply & 14.3 & E & Very low sustainable mobility \\  & Vehicles for the & & & \\  & mobility of people & 37.6 & D & Low sustainable mobility \\  & and goods & & & \\  & City distribution & 43.5 & C & Medium sustainable mobility \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Government**} & Structure and & & & & Very high sustainable \\  & regulations & 100 & A & mobility \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Environmental**} & Energy and & & & & \\  & emissions & 27.4 & D & Low sustainable mobility \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Mobility**} & Mobility patterns & 44.1 & C & Medium sustainable mobility \\ \cline{2-5}  & _Overall_ & 46.5 & C & Medium sustainable mobility \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 8: Urban Mobility Index (UMI) per category for Saltillo. * The methodology aims to ease the assessment process, at the lowest possible incremental cost, in a reproducible manner and producing results free from subjectivities. In this sense, the methodology is based on data. We propose the use of web map services, telematics data, results from the city's air quality monitoring network and from its inspection and maintenance program. All these data can be obtained at a reduced incremental cost. This essential characteristic of the proposed methodology will allow it to become a Monitoring and Reporting System (MRS) that continuously assesses the effects of the mobility strategies implemented in the city. However, looking forward to a uniform, well-accepted, and eventually standardized methodology to access sustainable mobility in any city, several issues still need to be resolved:  
_Need for a reduced set of KPIs:_ there is a need to identify a reduced number of KPIs that truly capture the effects of the relevant categories on sustainable mobility. As its name indicate, each \(\textit{KPI}_{i}\) evaluates observable results (performance) related to the considered categories. In order to assess sustainability, the proposed pillars and categories should evaluate the economic, social, and environmental aspects related to mobility. Increasing the number of KPIs could mislead the conclusions of the assessment, dilute the relevance of the truly key indicators, and increase the difficulty and cost of carrying on the assessment. In this work, we kept the indicators most frequently used in the literature but only used a few of them as KPIs (Table 3).