Hello,
Welcome to Pop Transport, your new, fortnightly newsletter from the Global Partnership for Informal Transportation.
Thanks for inviting us to your inbox! And if we’re not in your inbox yet, please sign up. It’s easy.
If you’re reading this on the web, it’s likely because you think informal transportation has an important role to play in creating sustainable, inclusive and resilient cities that leave no one behind.
Maybe you’re a transportation professional, or a researcher, or someone working in the sector; or maybe you’re a citizen who uses some form of informal transport, or you love cities, or you’re a technologist intrigued by the exciting innovations coming from the Global South, maybe you run a mobility startup. Maybe you’re all of these, and then some.
For whatever reason we’re in your inbox or you’re on this webpage...welcome!
We’re very glad to have you with us for the journey.
We’re still in the very early days of building our Global Partnership. We want to create a movement and a platform dedicated to putting the spotlight on informal transportation. We want the world to see that ojeks, bodabodas, auto rickshaws, tuktuks, jeepneys, matatus, colectivos, etc. are not just transportation relics or curiosities for tourists. They ARE transportation systems. They overwhelmingly dominate the rapidly growing towns and cities of the Global South. They move billions and employ millions of people around the world.
Informal transportation is very, very popular (i.e. widespread, and for the people). That’s why we call this newsletter “Pop Transport.”
Every two weeks you’ll get a dose of news we’ve gathered, some links to relevant research, and we’ll share some of our current thinking.
Are you ready to dive in?
News from the Partnership
We are very excited to announce the first seven incredible transportation thought leaders who have joined our Board of Advisors. They are:
Ani Dasgupta, Global Director of the WRI Ross Center For Sustainable Cities;
Heather Thompson, CEO of the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy;
Henrik Nolmark, Executive Director of the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations;
Jinhua Zhao, Director of the MIT Mobility Initiative;
Mohamed Mezghani, Secretary General of L’Union Internationale des Transports Publics (UITP);
Mariana Alegre Escorza, General Coordinator of Lima Cómo Vamos; and
Mimi Sheller, Director of the Center for Mobilities Research and Policy.
We’ve invited a few more outstanding individuals and we’ll let you know as soon as they confirm.
One small step for the Encyclopedia, one giant step for Informal Transportation
We’re joining forces with Costa Rica based Centro Para la Sostenibilidad Urbana (CPSU) to stage a Central American Datathon. The Datathon will crowdsource information on vehicles, and routes of informal transport systems across Central America.
CPSU will recruit volunteers and researchers and crowdsource an effort to catalog informal transportation in Central America. This is the first step towards our plan to assemble a Global Encyclopedia of Informal Transportation Vehicles.
The Encyclopedia will show the global scope and scale of informal transportation. We will catalog local names and etymologies. (Have you heard about Jamaica’s robot taxis? Turkey’s dolmuş?) We will also collate information about vehicle types and form factors (three wheels or four?). We will list fuel, engine size, and how and where each vehicle operates.
All of this will help us understand the local and global nature of informal transportation. It will also give the world pathways for innovation and transformation.
We can build on the information to get to more effective decarbonization strategies, better management and regulatory approaches, better governing models, and even better street designs that will be more inclusive and sustainable.
Help us thank the British Embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica for funding this project. Follow us on twitter and stay tuned for more details.
If you or your organization are interested in funding a datathon for your region (or any region), drop us an email or leave a comment.
In the rear view mirror
ICYMI, we launched GPIT on November 19, 2020 with an inaugural panel discussion at CoMotionLA with panel discussion, “Are Global South Cities the Future of Transport?”
Of course the answer is yes! Here’s what our awesome panelists had to say:
“In cities, the shared rickshaws are used for 24% of all trips, 91% of all public transport trips, and 43% of all motorized trips. So for us to think that we will introduce a bus service and that suddenly all of these trips will just shift is a sort of misnomer.” - Sonal Shah, Founder, The Urban Catalysts.
“[Bodaboda drivers] are seen as criminals, dirty, not an asset to the city, but actually without the bodaboda industry, people would not be able to get to work.” - Deepa Shekar, Chief Operating Officer, SafeBoda.
“People forget that informal transport is something that has stepped in in the absence of the state being able to provide the subsidized and formal services to meet the needs of the entire population, in particular peri urban areas that are transport deserts.” - Devin de Vries, CEO & Co-Founder, WhereIsMyTransport.
“We changed the concept of ‘informal mototaxi’ to ‘neighborhood mobility’. As government, innovation means changing the way we approach this mobility.” - Nadjeli Babinet, General Director of Transport Operation and Licenses,
Ministry of Mobility of Mexico (SEMOVI)
Essential Reading
If you’re still learning about informal transportation, you can’t go wrong with Robert Cevero’s Informal Transit: Learning from the Developing World (pdf download). It’s two decades old but it still is the ONLY global survey of informal transportation.
If you want a deep dive into how informal transportation emerges, the history of colonialism and exclusion that shape it, you should pick up the book Matatu: A History of Popular Transportation in Nairobi by Kenda Mutongi.
That’s it for our first issue. We’ll be in your inbox in two weeks. We’ll have more news, links to relevant research, stories that highlight the organizations on the ground who are making a difference, a feature or two on companies innovating in this space, and more of our current thinking.
Share your own insights by leaving us a comment.
Do you have any exciting news, research or project regarding informal transportation we should know about? Let us know by replying to this email. (Or click the comment button above.)
Also, please share this newsletter with someone you think would appreciate it.
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.)