Creating an Informal Transport Route

Problem, research strategy, and findingsThis study shares the results of a test I established of a new minibus route in Kampala with the Uganda Transport Operators Federation (UTOF). Informal transport provides the bulk of urban mobility in the Global South but may be limited in the connectivity and spatial coverage it is able to provide. I tested the effectiveness of market response by temporarily subsidizing operations in an unserved location and found that even a limited expansion of routing found passenger demand, showing a countercurrent of travel against the existing pattern of radial, central business district–to-suburb travel. Female street vendors were a particularly important previously unserved group of passengers. For operators, the study revealed that establishing new services can be difficult, requiring organizational capacity and substantial investment and risk in terms of time and money. In parallel, when such investments are made, other formal and informal actors, such as police, government bureaucracy, and competing operators, can act to extract the benefits, further slowing the change and growth of the transport network.Takeaway for practiceI describe the implementation steps and lessons learned from a small-scale pilot project that could be scaled for use as a planning intervention as well as to assess the equity of market-driven public transport and identify mobility gaps. This study expands the body of evidence on the effectiveness of informal transport systems for diverse mobility needs and spatial coverage, providing unique data and a methodological approach to address latent and hidden mobility needs for urban residents. It develops a potential avenue of intervention for regulators and planning practitioners for a cheap, light-touch intervention that collaborates with informal transport workers to expand accessibility and equity for passengers.