One of the first questions many people have about Mexico City is what the quickest and safest way to move about here is. I've personally crossed the city by metro, bus, metrobus, taxi, Uber, and in our own car, and experienced many of the quirks, frustrations, dangers and advantages of each mode of transport. I also walk about quite a bit, often with baby in tow, and have written about my despair when it comes to Mexican pavements in a previous post. The only one I haven't dared try yet is the bicycle; normally one of my favoured ways to get around but bordering on total insanity here (you do see the odd nutter cycling hopelessly against the flow of the rush hour traffic--presumably the rest have been removed by Darwinian selection).
I should also say that four months into my third trip to Mexico, despite the handful of near-miss stories you'll hear about below, I've yet to experience anything particularly dramatic when it comes to crime while out and about in the city. My own feeling is that people worry too much about the risk here; yes, bad things can and do happen, but with some basic precautions to avoid being pickpocketed in crowded places you're as safe as in any other big city (Mexico's famous drug cartels basically stay clear of Mexico City, in case you were wondering). Perhaps I'm not really qualified to write about safety and I've just been lucky so far, but here goes.
Option 1: Your own ride
As mentioned there are numerous options for moving around the city, with wildly varying prices and associated levels of comfort and security. Perhaps the safest of all is to have your own car, but this comes with the downsides of spending hours stuck in horrendous traffic and searching furiously for somewhere to park the damn thing, and being reduced to a nervous angry wreck by the actions of other drivers, cutting in from three lanes across to make an impossible turn, while equally not allowing you to cut in from three lanes across to make that crucial exit you only saw at the last minute (bastards).
The parking situation is sometimes alleviated by the fact that many places have valet parking where you just hand over your keys at the entrance and a professional will park your car for you. It strikes me as something of a contradiction that the same people who tend to keep such close guard of their valuables are willing to hand over their cars worth hundreds of thousands of pesos to a complete stranger. A few weeks ago we left our car (actually owned by my parents-in-law) to a 'valet' parking guy in the street in San Angel after a long fruitless search for a better option. Arriving back several hours later and with no sign of the guy anywhere in sight, we realised we had essentially been stopped by a random person, not wearing any kind of uniform or in any way official-looking, and just surrendered the car, keys included, in exchange for a flimsy bit of paper masquerading as a ticket. We approached a more official looking valet nearby who pretty much laughed and declared no knowledge at all of this person. Panic began to set in, but the story ends happily: our guy was a few hundred meters up the road smoking a cigarette with his mates and retrieved our car in perfect condition for a few pesos. We'll probably be a little more careful next time in any case.
Option 2: Public transport
At the other end of the spectrum is Mexico City's public transport, consisting of the metro, 'regular' buses, and the metrobus (a special bus with its own lane). This is by far the cheapest option: the metro 5 pesos (a whole 20 British pence), the metrobus slightly pricier at 6 pesos (you do the math), and the bus varying between roughly 4 and 7 pesos, depending mostly on the whim of the driver as far as I can make out. This can be a pretty effective option in certain cases; from our place to the historical centre for example the quickest option is a quick bus ride (hailed down directly outside our front gate as I described here) followed by a dozen or so stops on the metro for a grand total of 11 pesos. I have seen the metro and metrobus relatively calm--late at night or just after the morning rush hour--but for the vast majority of the day they're uncomfortably overcrowded. The phrase 'packed like sardines' couldn't be more appropriate. You should be careful of pickpockets, especially while getting on and off where it's really easy to lose concentration for five seconds. My pro trip is to put all you belongings in one place; phone, wallet and keys in a single pocket or a bag which you guard with your life with one hand; the other hand to cling on for said life to the nearest railing.
A little while ago my wife and I witnessed something very fishy at a metro station: a young guy swiftly exiting a train before furtively handing off a handbag to another guy waiting at the top of the stairs, who immediately hid it from view. Out of their sight we decided to tell a nearby police officer, bolstered by the fact that there are signs all over the place encouraging any suspicious behaviour to be reported. Big mistake. The policewoman insisted that we shouldn't have reported something that hadn't directly affected us. When we explained as calmly and politely as possible that we just wanted to let someone know what we'd seen and it was up to her whether or not to do anything about it, she turned on us, accusing us in a raised voice of being rude (we really weren't; she really was). Her reaction put is in a state of paranoia, wondering if we'd inadvertently walked into some criminal conspiracy, and for the next few minutes we were convinced we were being followed by pretty much everyone who happened to come close to us (this was all while lugging several suitcases and a baby home from the airport after our trip to Mazatlán). Thankfully a short time later we were safely home and left to reflect that it was probably just a particularly moody police officer we happened to catch on a bad day who didn't want to do her job properly. But this experience reinforced something many people have warned me: it's best to avoid authorities here as much as possible. Only interact with police officers and other security personnel if absolutely necessary. It's just not worth the hassle.
Option 3: Taxi/Uber
Traditional taxis are also relatively cheap in Mexico, more expensive than the metro of course, but we rarely have to fork out more than about 50 pesos (£2) for the privilege. Personally however this is the form of transport I feel least comfortable with. I only take taxis during daylight hours and on short routes that I know well. As I said earlier, I think the risk of anything violent happening is very small, but I generally prefer to take the higher risk of having my phone snatched on the metro to the smaller risk of being kidnapped by a rogue taxi driver. I can always buy a new phone.
During my first few weeks in Mexico I was standing in line at the post office to collect a package when a young frantic-looking guy burst in and wondered in a broad American accent "Do you speak English?" His story was that he'd just been robbed by a taxi driver, who'd deliberately driven off with his backpack in the trunk with all his belongings including passport and money. He'd only been in Mexico a couple of days and needed to borrow enough money to get back to his hotel and call his Dad in the US. The police who he'd try to report the story to hadn't been at all helpful (notice the pattern). To this day I'm not sure if this is a story about a guy getting robbed in a taxi or a story about me getting scammed. There seemed something odd about the guy and his story and the way he approached me, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and enough money to get home (and a little more). When I think about what happened, 50% of the time I think I'm a bad person even for questioning this poor guy; the other 50% I think I'm an idiot for believing him. The one surefire moral of the story, invented or otherwise, is don't put stuff in the boot of a taxi.
That just leaves Uber--the newest player in the game of course. I was an Uber virgin before arriving in Mexico but we've been using it more and more as time has gone by. It's more expensive than a regular taxi of course, roughly twice as expensive I estimate in most cases, but it certainly feels a lot safer. I have heard stories of people having bad experiences, being driven round in circles or even falling asleep and having their driver steal from them (posts on this Facebook group for Foreigners in Mexico City), but for me it's worked very well, even with the odd glitch in the software. The extra layer of safety compared with taxis comes from better, newer cars, including the presence in most cases of seatbelts (almost impossible to find in taxis), a review system for drivers, and the display of the map and GPS location at all times on the dashboard. It's perhaps not perfect, and I don't really like supporting a company which seems to have serious issues with the way it treats its female employees, but in terms of getting home safely after dark I think it's the best option out there at the moment.
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