The need for a social pact to facilitate urban mobility planning

In this article we have sought to identify strategies to facilitate urban mobility planning in Brazilian cities. These plans follow bold guidelines, such as giving priority to active and collective public transport modes. The challenge, therefore, is to overcome the resistance of social agents who are unwilling to make sacrifices for the benefit of the community. Among the methodological procedures, the authors analyze the main challenges facing urban mobility in Brazil, introduce Mancur Olson's ideas on the logic behind collective action to transport engineering and evaluate two proposals for an urban mobility pact: that of the then President Dilma Rousseff and that of the Ipea. The result of this analysis points to the need for an urban mobility pact following “win-win” reasoning. A pact that involves not only the public authorities, but also various private social agents, and according to “win-win” reasoning: they win if they participate and the community wins with their participation.