EMOV Pushes Back After Interior Minister Proposes Stripping Traffic Authority from Municipalities

Cuenca's transit authority is drawing a line.

EMOV, the municipal agency that manages traffic enforcement, vehicle inspections, and driver licensing in Cuenca, has publicly rejected a proposal by Interior Minister John Reinberg to strip traffic management authority from municipalities and return it to the national government.

What's Being Proposed

Minister Reinberg floated the idea of recentralizing traffic authority, arguing that some municipal transit agencies across Ecuador have been plagued by corruption. The implication: local governments can't be trusted to manage traffic enforcement.

If implemented, the change would shift control of traffic violations, vehicle registration, licensing, and enforcement from municipal agencies like EMOV back to a centralized national system.

EMOV's Response

EMOV General Manager Lenín Guzmán wasn't having it.

"That we not be put in the same sack," Guzmán said. "The minister's opinion is respectable, but not shareable."

Guzmán argued that Cuenca's EMOV has demonstrated years of "administrative and operational efficiency" and that problems identified in other cities shouldn't be used to undermine agencies that are functioning well. Cuenca has managed its own traffic authority for years and built systems—vehicle inspection centers, the SIT transit system, and a network of traffic cameras—that work.

Why It Would Be Hard to Do

This isn't a simple policy change. Traffic authority was transferred to municipalities through constitutional mandate and is codified in two major pieces of legislation:

• The National Land Transportation, Traffic and Road Safety Organic Law
• COOTAD (the Territorial Organization Code that governs municipal powers)

Reversing it would require constitutional reform—a lengthy process that would face opposition from every municipality that has invested in building its own traffic management infrastructure.

What This Means for Expats

For now, nothing changes. EMOV still handles:

• Driver's license processing at their offices on Calle del Batán
• Vehicle inspections (revisión técnica vehicular) at the EMOV inspection center
• Traffic fines and citations — still paid through the EMOV system
• Parking enforcement — the SERT system of paid street parking in El Centro

If the proposal ever gained real traction, the concern would be a transition to a less responsive national bureaucracy replacing a local agency that—whatever its imperfections—knows Cuenca's streets, intersections, and traffic patterns.

But given the constitutional barriers, this looks more like political rhetoric than imminent policy. Worth watching, not worth worrying about.

Source: El Mercurio