S6 Ep26: Minibuses, major gains: Rethinking urban transit

In the second of our special episodes recorded at the 5th annual STEG conference, Lucas Conwell of UCL talks to Tim Phillips about how the private minibus networks, such a distinctive feature of urban transit in developing country cities, can improve their service when there is little room for public investment or regulation. 

If you have ever tried them, they can seem chaotic, but would require large or small policy tweaks to make them work efficiently, and what would those tweaks be? Lucas has mapped both the service and the opinions of passengers for Cape Town’s public transit minibuses, and discovered that minimal intervention could improve services, increase security, and decrease wait times.

Read the full show notes: https://voxdev.org/topic/infrastructure/minibuses-major-gains-rethinking-urban-transit-developing-countries

Find out more about STEG at https://steg.cepr.org