As we celebrate the landmark of 100th Moovit Community city, it is only fitting that we tell the story of this special project. Over the summer, Moovit initiated pioneering this Community project together with the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Puebla, Mexico. Over 40 student volunteers enrolled in the Rebuilding Citizenship course at the University which integrated the Mapping Program of Puebla’s transit system into the curriculum and aimed to increase citizen participation in the local community. The students triumphed in mapping Puebla’s transit system in just two short months.
The University was particularly enthusiastic about incorporating the mapping project into the Rebuilding Citizenship course because there is no official open transit data available to the public in Mexico and therefore understood that by participating, the university volunteers would provide public transit riders with access to valuable transit information.
The Program gave the students the choice of several roles, such as project leaders, project managers or general contributors. The position of project leader was taken on by Brenda Plata, who studies Industrial Design. She took an extremely keen interest in the Program as she had previously wanted to devise a way of displaying public transit information for specific cultural routes in Puebla. She expressed her passion amazingly, “For years I’ve been interested in mobility. There is an obvious lack of access to information in our city. Now that this route information is available, it will benefit Puebla inhabitants, visiting tourists and foreign students.” Brenda was responsible for overseeing the entire project, managing the other participants, and was the student contact with the Moovit team.
The project managers – Cristian Alcorhas, Rubirena Vásques, Joseline Jimenez and Victor Cuateco – also played key roles in the Program. To begin the Program, the students first had to obtain the official information from the government, which was no small feat. They went on to map all of the city lines, both the official and non-official routes. Each participant mapped an average of four lines, and together the team has added nearly 250 routes for the city. One student, Daury, elaborated on his experience, “I enjoyed the Program because I learned some of the routes and locations of many amazing places in the city, and more importantly now I know how to get there.”
The Moovit Team was extremely impressed by all of the students’ dedication to the Program. Brenda even noted, “It was impressive to see many students excited and trying to improve mobility across the city.” Thanks to the success in Puebla, the Community team is exploring the idea of reproducing this Program across more cities in Mexico.
If you have an idea for a collaboration project similar to the Puebla project above, we would love to hear from you. Send us a short email at community@moovitapp.com
- .