Welcome to your eighth issue of Pop Transport, the fortnightly newsletter of the Global Partnership for Informal Transportation.
Informal transportation is very, very popular (e.g.widespread, and for the people).
It overwhelmingly dominates the rapidly growing towns and cities of the Global South. It moves billions and employs millions of people around the world.
That’s why we call this newsletter “Pop Transport.”
In this issue, we’ll share:
Video from a webinar showcasing research from the INTALInC network;
Three notable articles 1) on the role of drivers in planning minibus routes in East Africa, 2) on why the motorbike delivery driver is a symbol of our times, and, 3) on why Africa should develop its own vehicle electrification agenda;
A quick analysis from SLoCaT on the role of transportation in newly released country climate committments; and,
We’ll also tell you about an upcoming workshop on Informal Transportation from Mobilise Your City.
Emerging ideas of transport justice and equitable mobility in the global south
Our research partner INTALInC, or the International Network for Transport and Accessibility in Low Income Communities, recently conducted a webinar to showcase the ongoing studies of early career researchers in their network.
You can watch the whole session (2 hours) or skip to the links below for specific presentations. (Most of the presentations are about 5 minutes long.)
Is Informal Transit Flexible?
Tamara Kerzhner (UC Berkeley)Streets for mainstreaming womens’ access to mobility in cities
Rithvika Rajiv (The Urban Catalyst)Rethinking sustainable and just mobility from below
Aline M. Fernandes Barata (Oxford Brookes University)The cost of job-seeking in Cape Town
Tracy Mutugi (University of Cape Town)Environmental Mapping and Modeling of Vehicular Emissions and its public Health Impacts on Selected Corridors in West African Cities
Samuel A. Ajayi (Kwame Nkruhmah University of Science and Technology)Women commuters and their unequal access to mobility infrastructures in Delhi
Dr. Saakshi Joshi (Manipal Academy of Higher Education)Alternative travel mode for commuters with disabilities in Accra: the lived experiences of Uber users
Kwame Odame (University of Cape Coast)Looking beyond transport: understanding ageing and mobility in the urban periphery
Prajwal Nagesh (Utrecht University)From mansplaining to manspreading: understanding the transport poverty of middle-income women in Karachi
Sana Iqbal (Coventry University)Children’s independent mobility: a child-oriented perspective on walking, playing and socialising in Cali, Colombia
Maria Clara Trujillo Pérez (UCL)
Who plans transit in African cities? Ask the bus drivers
Tamara Kerzhner, one of the researchers who presented at the INTALInC showcase, also posted an interesting article on the Digital Transportation for Africa (DT4A) site.
Entitled Who Plans Transit in African Cities? Ask the Bus Drivers, Tamara’s piece looks at how much autonomy informal transport drivers have in selecting routes. Tamara’s research uses digital mapping and interviews with the drivers of minibuses in secondary and tertiary cities in East Africa.
Her research finds that, although in theory drivers could independently choose routes, the business model of vehicle leasing gives them very little leeway in experimenting with new routes. The precarious incomes reduces their appetite for risk.
When I ask drivers how they decide their routes and whether they change them – the answer is resoundingly that they don’t. In many cities, there’s nothing stopping drivers from choosing which route to operate on, but there are strong incentives to stick to the routes and passenger bases they know they can count on. In Lubumbashi [the second largest city in the Democratic Republic of Congo], the daily fees of leasing and operating a bus are so high that missing out on just one full trip – minibuses make an average of 15 per day – would mean the workers take nothing home. The risks involved with scouting new passenger locations, destinations, and service niches that would expand the network is just not feasible under this type of contract.
Passenger demand plays a role in deciding a route, but this is hard to measure. As money changes hands from passengers to drivers to a myriad of other actors in the economic labyrinth that’s signature to public transit in African cities, keeping track of incomes and expenditures becomes a herculean task. The length of the route, traffic conditions and the quality of the road are also important factors when choosing destinations and are sometimes snap decisions drivers make in the moment. Forging a new route and establishing a passenger base also requires buy-in from dozens, sometimes hundreds, of independent bus operators. These complexities make developing new terminals and routes a slow, opaque process.
But, if the workers and operators are able to organize:
….they can not only improve working conditions, but also the quality of services for passengers. Individual drivers do compete, but carefully. Crews are highly coordinated and can be mutually respectful, with strong management and rules, when it comes to operating on the same routes.
She continues:
Planning public transit is neither bottom-up nor top-down – it’s the middle. Organizations, firms, cooperatives and associations can collectively manage terminals and routes, keep track of queues, balance the number of passengers and vehicles, and serve as a source of welfare and advocacy for drivers. But, more invisibly, it is also they who take initiative and make plans – transport plans.
…Where workers remain fully individual in their operations they remain caught in the competitive spiral of exploitative working conditions that mean creating new and better services are punished, not rewarded. If cities want to reform and expand their public transit they need to start with the transportation workforce. Firms, associations, and unions are not the antagonists to the planning process, not even partners to be recruited. They’re already doing the work. Government regulators need to start by meeting them where they are. (Emphasis added.)
Why the Motorbike Delivery Driver is a Symbol of Our Times
Afshin Molavi writes the newsletter Emerging World and one of his pieces last week was Why the Motorbike Delivery Driver is a Symbol of Our Times.
From Santiago to Singapore, from Johannesburg to Jakarta, from Brasilia to Beijing, the motorbike driver weaving through traffic in a colorful, branded uniform with a parcel of food attached to the back of the bike, has become an ubiquitous site - and that buzzing sound ever more present.
They work for Uber Eats or India-based Zomato or Beijing-based Meituan or Singapore-based Grab or one of dozens of other regional or global start-ups with catchy names and snappy logos that provide food delivery on demand to a rising middle class. Many of these tech platforms have grown fabulously rich and several more will join their ranks as they prepare initial public offerings.
…Consumers have developed a taste for real-time, on-demand ordering of everything from car rides to groceries to food and beyond. The global food delivery service is big business, clocking in at roughly $110 billion today, and rapidly growing toward $254 billion by 2028.
…But that upside also has a downside, and one place to look is the backbone of the food delivery service in the emerging world: the motorbike driver. Troubling questions mount about the human cost to overworked, often underpaid, and uninsured delivery drivers hurtling onward to the next delivery, the next milestone, the next bonus, simply to eke out a living.
The motorbike delivery person might be an apt symbol for our times. They rush through growing urban centers atop a motorbike, linked by smartphones and unprecedented connectivity, delivering food for a rising middle class, while algorithms track their movements to maximize future efficiency, and ever more powerful tech platforms benefit from these Uber-ized gig workers.
Transport in the new national climate plans
Nikola Medimorec, SLoCaT Partnership’s data and research analyst, has a twitter thread on the transportation strategies outlined in the updated NDCs (National Determined Contributions) from 80 countries.
The NDCs are essentially the decarbonization targets of those countries. (Read Nikola's whole unrolled thread here.)
SLoCaT’s assessment shows that 54% of the mitigation measures in the submitted NDCs mostly focus on the IMPROVE side of the equation.
The Avoid-Shift-Improve framework is a three-pillared approach for decarbonizing transportation. IMPROVE measures focus on:
…vehicle and fuel efficiency as well as on the optimization of the operational efficiency of public transport. This includes the attractiveness of public transport. Additionally, improvement of the energy sources required for their operation is key. Introducing renewable energy sources into the transport sector must become a basic principle for motorized transport.
Nikola’s thread has links to Changing-Transport’s Key Insights and Recommendations which also references the Ten Key recommendations for raising transport ambition in countries’ Nationally Determined Contributions.
Only one of the ten recommendations hints at informal transportation. Recommendation #8:
Accelerate electrification - Include goals on increasing electrification of buses, cars, vans, and two and three-wheelers; and accompany this with low carbon electricity supply and advanced grid integration
Electric vehicles (EVs) are cheaper to run than conventional vehicles, thanks to lower fuel and maintenance costs. The higher the vehicle utilisation rate, the stronger the economic case. Setting electrification sub-targets for specific use cases, such as public and private sector fleets, helps drive market momentum, especially captive fleets with predictable driving and refueling patterns. The shortfall of EV supply from manufacturers and the lack of charging infrastructure are commonly cited barriers to electrification, so policy measures should aim to stimulate EV supply and deployment of charge points.
Africa should develop its own electric vehicle agenda
That brings us to our last article of note. This one is from Edna Odhiambo via Aljazeera. Edna is a climate change lawyer, is the Kenya Lead for the Climate and Development Knowledge Network, and is a lecturer at the University of Nairobi.
Edna’s sets out an argument for why Africa should develop its own electric vehicle agenda:
Before taking further steps towards transitioning to electrical vehicles, African governments need to answer some important questions: Will they impose stricter regulations on the imports of secondhand internal combustion engines to prevent Western nations, who are phasing these vehicles out, from dumping them on their countries? Will they ensure that the secondhand electric vehicles they import have a long enough lifespan? Do they have the capacity to safely dispose of the lithium-ion batteries electric vehicles run on? Are there regulations in place to ensure the ethical mining of raw materials that are used in the production of electric vehicles?
To benefit from the global move towards electric-powered transport, Africa should ensure that it is in control of its own electric vehicle agenda. Commendably, there are already initiatives across Africa aiming to localise vehicle electrification. In Uganda, Kiira Motors has launched locally manufactured electric buses. In Kenya, the National Youth Service has supported the development of an electric three-wheeler prototype and there are ongoing electric bus pilot schemes in Cairo, Addis Ababa and Nairobi. Such initiatives should be encouraged as they will go a long way in helping Africa build an electric vehicle agenda that is considerate of local realities and challenges.
Upcoming workshop
Mobilise Your City has Virtual Workshop on "Informal" Public Transit (quotation marks are theirs) this coming Thursday, May 20, 2021.
Speakers include:
Dario Hidalgo - World Resources Institute;
Dayo Montalbo - University of Philippines;
Dayo Mobereola - Almacht Inc., LMATA; and,
Gershwin Fortune - City of Cape Town.
You can register for free via this link.
That’s it for this week. Do leave us a comment.
And if you’re enjoying Pop Transport, go ahead and share.
Pop Transport is a fortnightly newsletter of the Global Partnership for Informal Transportation. The Partnership works hand-in-hand with informal urban transportation systems of the Global South to advance innovation, improve services, and change business models. By leveraging new technology and innovative policies, we believe these informal networks can confront climate change and make our cities work for everyone.
The Global Partnership for Informal Transportation is a project of NewCities, initiated by Agile City Partners, and, supported by CoMotion Inc.
Our Strategic Partners include: WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities and the Shared-Use Mobility Center.
Email us at contact@newcities.org if you are interested in becoming a partner. (Make sure to include “GPIT” in the subject line.)