Welcome to your seventeenth 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 shared transportation in 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.”
Pardon our brief hiatus since the last issue. In this issue, we’ll share:
UNDP’s announcement of our partnership;
The recording on UNDP and Hyundai’s “(Dialogue) for Tomorrow: Grassroots innovation and informal transportation”;
MobiliseYourCity’s Side-Event at the UN Conference on Sustainable Transportation;
A paper from Oviedo, Pérez Jarmillo, and Nieto on governing ride hailing in emerging markets;
A paper from scholars in Stellenbosch University in South Africa and Makerere University in Uganda on electrifying and solarizing minibus taxis;
A survey of research literature on motorcycle taxis; and,
News about Gogoro’s riding the SPAC bandwagon to be publicly listed with a valuation of $2.35B.
Researching grassroots innovation in informal transportation
UNDP’s Accelerator Labs announced that informal transportation was on their research agenda through a partnership with NewCities’ GPIT.
UNDP Accelerator Labs and NewCities will work together to learn how homegrown and frugal innovation in the field of transportation can be harnessed to empower communities. Through the MOU, NewCities’ Global Partnership for Informal Transportation becomes a strategic knowledge partner of the UNDP Accelerator Labs.
“As the Accelerator Lab Network advances its learning strategy, we see that many roads are pointing to informal sectors as the great unknown in development. When we looked at available policy offers, we saw gaps: most assume that those in the informal sector need protection, but they don’t see the ingenuity and creativity in the sector. Which is why I am excited to see how this partnership will help us progress on this important research agenda. Partnering with NewCities will give us insight into informal innovation and help leverage the knowledge and creativity of the people who build and operate informal transportation services,” shares Gina Lucarelli, Team Leader, UNDP Accelerator Labs.
Dialogue for tomorrow
UNDP also featured a discussion of informal transportation on the (Dialogue) for Tomorrow. The For Tomorrow Initiative celebrates bottom-up innovation and is a project of Hyundai Motors and UNDP.
The Dialogue featured Paolo Constantino, head of solutions mapping for the UNDP Accelerator Labs in Guatemala, and Benjie de la Peña, chair of GPIT. Gina Lucarelli moderated the discussion.
Informal transport as a Side-Event
Benjie was also on the panel for MobiliseYourCity’s Side-Event at the UN Conference on Sustainable Transportation. The Side-Event focused on Integrating informal transport for a just transition to sustainable mobility in the Global South. Benjie shared the panel with Dario Hidalgo, head of Fundacion Vision Cero 3, and GIZ’s Patricia Mariano.
The objectives of the session (were) to raise awareness about this complex but extremely important problematic (sic) and shed light on its relevance for sustainable urban transport and sustainable development overall. The speakers will be invited to formulate key messages and recommendations for the donor community and international development organizations on action that can be taken to support the integration of paratransit in mobility planning.
We’ll post the recording as soon as it is available.
Hopefully next year, discussions about informal transportation will be a main event at the Conference because, you know, that would be inclusive.
Governance and regulating ride-hailing in the global south
Daniel Oviedo, Daniel Perez Jaramillo, and Mariajosé Nieto released a Technical Note for the IDB’s Transportation Division on the Governance and Regulation of Ride-hailing Services in Emerging Markets: Challenges, Experiences and Implications
In their Conclusion, the authors state that their evidence points to a “path-dependency of transport governance…created by the categories through which governance is thought and enacted.”
They continue:
The emergence of new forms of technology-assisted urban mobility can open the room to… ‘Epistemic experimentation’…fostering new ways of governing a new phenomenon by testing new ways of understanding it. [The] paper represents an attempt to provide a multidimensional analytical lens to the understanding of the phenomenon of ride-hailing in Latin America that enables both researchers and practitioners to ‘put all cards on the table’ when approaching regulations of new mobility services.
The solar-energy potentials and requirements for minibus taxis
Earlier this year, Chris Joseph Abraham, Arnold Johan Rix, Innocent Ndibaty, and M.J. (Thinus) Booysena from Stellenbosch University and Makeree University published “Ray of hope for sub-Saharan Africa's paratransit: solar charging of urban electric minibus taxis in South Africa” (automatic pdf download).
The paper:
…explores for the first time the energy requirements of electric minibus taxis in an urban paratransit system, on journeys within and between towns and cities…(and) the potential charging opportunities at the multitude of formal and organically- formed informal stops locations.
Using a year’s worth of GPS tracking data on minibus taxis in Stellenbosch SA, the researcher calculated the infrastructure and energy requirements of creating a solar charging grid for the minibus taxi fleet.
From the mobility characteristics, we found that a minibus-taxi would use approximately 215 kWh to satisfy its daily mobility requirements. We found that taxis which were stopped for shorter periods, and hence had less time for charging, were also the ones that needed more energy because they were more mobile. Nonetheless, a charger of around 32 kW would be required. This meant that the total fleet of South Africa's minibus taxis would use around 10% of the daily national energy generation. This may not seem like a lot, but it would cover approximately 70% of the country's commuter trips, while incentivising investment into renewable energy infrastructure.
They offer:
Although these results are specific to a scenario in South Africa, the major contribution of this paper is the novel procedure for evaluating the impacts and opportunities of electric-vehicle roll-outs. The software is contributed, and can be easily modified to suit the context of other developing countries. For example, to evaluate the impact of electrification of India's auto rickshaws, the EV model parameters can be modified accordingly, and the PV simulation can be modified to include local weather conditions. The authors call for future work to be done to evaluate the energy requirements in other developing countries. The results of the program can be used not only by researchers, but also by grid-operators, traffic planners, and private entities to obtain the financial, environmental, electrical, and mobility impacts of electric-vehicle roll-outs of varying scales.
A survey of research on motorcycle taxis
William Boose, who is completing his PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Emory University in Atlanta, shared with us his remarkable survey of research literature on motorcycle taxis across the globe (links to a file on google drive).
His paper:
…systematically and critically reviews the transnational and interdisciplinary literatures on motorcycle taxis, and identifies seven themes that emerge across the 85 sampled case studies. It then highlights promising theoretical perspectives in the scholarship, as well as some gaps and possible future directions.
We liked the seven themes he uncovered:
Theme #1: Motorcycle taxis and multi-scalar mobilities
The sampled studies reflect the importance of motorcycle taxi drivers as producers of multi-scalar mobilities; they both provide their own transport services and connect people to other modes of transit…Theme #2: “Informal” transport labor
Across contexts, motorcycle taxi drivers labor in hazardous conditions, have few social protections, and work long hours…Theme #3: Health implications of the profession for drivers, riders, and society
Existing research decisively demonstrates that motorcycle taxi drivers face heightened risks of accidents, largely because traffic is their workplace…Theme #4: Infrastructures and technologies
Researchers interested in motorcycle taxis have made rich theoretical interventions in scholarly debates on infrastructures and technologies, notably in the anthropology of infrastructures…Theme #5: Gender and motorcycle taxi economies
The sampled case studies document that the motorcycle taxi profession is strongly gendered across contexts. [Drivers are overwhelmingly male, but] …one out of every three investors in Lomé is a woman, so in some places it might be specifically the act of driving that is more strongly gendered…Theme #6: Social worlds and public perceptions of motorcycle taxi drivers
State, media, academic, and popular discourses often position motorcycle taxi drivers at a nexus of criminality and anti-modernness…Theme #7: State policies towards and discourses about motorcycle taxi drivers
Despite motorcycle taxi drivers making cities possible and weaving social worlds together, many states frame them as obstacles to their visions of “modernity” and “modern cities.”
We think that last theme holds true for all informal transportation, that they are often seen by leaders and planners of the state to be obstacles to “modern transportation systems” and “modern cities.”
William wants to share and discuss his research and would like to connect with anyone who is as interested as he is. Drop a comment and we’ll be happy to connect you directly.
SPACs and Swaps
Lastly, the Micromobility Newsletter shared a link to the Investor Deck of Gogoro’s SPAC Deal that is valued at $2.3 Billion. Gogoro’s expansion of its battery swapping network will have implications for electrifying two- and three-wheeler informal transportation across the Global South.
The deck was very interesting, especially the parts that discussed the size of the addressable market.
That’s it for this week. We hope you didn’t miss us too much.
Share if you enjoyed this issue.
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. GoAscendal is our Founding Initiative Partner.
Email us at contact@newcities.org if you are interested in becoming a partner. (Make sure to include “GPIT” in the subject line.)