Frequent public transport coverage of the population in Latin American capital cities

Introduction: Frequent public transport service is central to urban accessibility, yet the share of the population that can reach it on foot is rarely quantified with open data in Latin American capitals. Methods: Cross-sectional ecological study. Twenty Latin American capitals were screened against the open GTFS feeds of the Mobility Database catalog. For the capitals with a downloadable urban feed, the average weekday headway (07:00-20:00) was computed per stop and stops were classified as frequent at 15 minutes or less. The 800 m walking buffers of frequent stops were overlaid on the 2020 GHSL population grid within a 10 km disc around each city centre. Results: Five of the twenty capitals had an open urban GTFS feed. The population-weighted coverage was 90.4%, ranging from 99.8% in Santiago and 99.7% in Bogotá to 88.9% in Managua and 34.3% in La Paz. Stricter thresholds reduced coverage mainly in Managua (73.5%) and La Paz (18.7%). Conclusions: In capitals with consolidated frequent networks, coverage is near universal within 800 m, whereas coverage is markedly lower where the open feed describes only part of the network. The availability of open schedules restricts the sample of cities.