“In San Miguel de Allende, a World Heritage City, mobility problems are generating negative expectations among tourists”, said hotel representatives in the region. Mayor Luis Alberto Villareal acknowledged that San Miguel de Allende is a city of progress, and accepted that mobility and road safety problems exist in the municipality.
“Yes we do have some mobility issues, let’s see, we are in a city that was founded four hundred and seventy-six years ago, that has an urban layout by which we are part of the Historical World Heritage of the UN, but it is a Spanish urban layout from the XVII Century that obviously was not designed for motor vehicles. We are a city where we have more than 2.5 million visitors a year, plus our own population, so basically that is why there is a mobility problem that we are solving in different ways: First, building new infrastructure; second, we just established that all hotels and resorts in the city now must have private transport to move their guests around, so we can have less vehicles circulating around the city streets”, the mayor said.
(Photo: milenio.com)
He explained that there is a parking meter project for 2019 .” We will install parking meters across the city, in order to avoid having a vehicle parked in the same place all day long, and this will generate more parking space for visitors who will have to pay a parking meter fee as well”.
“This project will be implemented next year and we also want to continue expanding the pedestrian areas, we want people to walk around the city. This town was originally designed for pedestrians and not for motor vehicles. We believe this will make San Miguel more attractive for tourists too, “Mayor Luis Alberto Villareal concluded.
SMT Newsroom with information from milenio.com
