20110630-urban transport in the developing world

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Dimitriou, H.T. and Gakenheimer, R. (ed) (2011), Urban Transport in theDeveloping World. A Handbook of Policy and Practice. Edward ElgarPublishing Lim ited, UK.Cha pter 9, Xavier Godard, Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward anew understanding.


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9 Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosistoward a new understandingXavier Godard

INTRODUCTIONThe objective of fighting poverty, which has bec ome the p riority of devel-opment aid is contributed to by work on urban transport in developingcountries. The implicit hypothesis, for those concerned with promotingdevelopment, was that development was a mea ns to reduce poverty and tosatisfy better the basic needs of urba n pop ulations, on the cond ition thatbenefits would trickle down to all people. As stated by Bourguignon: 'arecurring issue in discussions on dev elopment is whether the ma in focus ofdevelopment strategies should be placed on growth, on po verty and/or oninequality' (Bourguignon, 2004: 2 3).During the 1990s a noticeable evolution in international interests wasregistered about the so-ca lled develop ing wo rld. In short, actions aga instpoverty w ere put centre stage on the agenda of dev elopmen t aid actions.This new approach, promoted in particular by the World Bank whichmad e it its prime objective, led in the 2000 s to new funding program mesbased on the p rincipie that the fight against poverty should be given pri-ority in return for cancelling or converting some part of the debt of thepoorest or most heav ily indebted countries.W e could think that the two approaches poverty alleviation and develop-men t are both the same thing, but they can differ in their logic. D evelopmentand econo mic grow th do not mean the same thing, and do not filter throughautom atically to the who le of the society, as was stated by ma ny expertswh o placed their trust in the so-called `trick le-down effects' of econo micgrow th. Sharing the benefits is never an automa tic process. Acco rding toBourguignon (2004), many have attempted to analyse the relationshipsbetween these three dimensions (poverty, distribution and grow th). His ownconclusion is that one would need to combine redistribution and growthpolicies, but focus more on wealth redistribution than on mon etary incomeredistribution. Yet the diversity of contexts and of initial conditions preventsexperts from c oming up w ith simple and universal recommendations (ibid.).In the urban transport sector w e need to exam ine the potential contribu-tion of urban travel facilitation to the above-mentioned goal of poverty

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Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 233reduction, and to the larger dynamics of development and economic growth.This chapter first discusses whether this focus on `poverty and urban mobil-ity' comes a little bit too late, and w hy this may be the c ase. It then examinesthe notion of poverty, distinguishing between `poverty' and 'clestitution';1and the notion o f mo bility, distinguishing between `mo bility' and `acc es-sibility'. Following these co nceptua l considerations, the discussion look sat the travel conditions of the urban poo r and the co st of transport in thehousehold bu dget, raising the que stion of public transport afforda bility.Finally, a num ber of principies for action in the field of urban transport tocontribute to pove rty or destitution alleviation will be considered.This chapter is based mainly on various analyses of African citiesconducted by the author (Godard, 2004) or studies in which he has par-ticipated in the past. The most recent, conducted for the World Bank in2003-04 dea l with the cases of Cona kry (G uinea) (SITRASS, 2004a), andD ouala (Cameroon) (SITRASS, 2004b).

LATE INTROD UCTION OF TRANSPORT INTOSTRATEGIES AG AINST URB AN POVERTYThe question examined here is whether the objective of poverty reductionis a new priority in urban transport policy-mak ing, and if so, why? W hilstpoverty reduction has been an early concern for the W orld Bank , the linkbetween pov erty and transport was only introduced in 1997 (G annon andLiu, 1997).2 Urban poverty has been neglected, as the priority of develop-ment aid wa s for a long time in favour of rural areas and agriculture. Thisposition was influenced by the `urban bias' thesis which viewed urbandw ellers as living from the c apture of the rural surplus. The first actionstaken in the field of transport were, as a result, as a means to fight povertyin rural areas (for exam ple, through rural road building and access to low -cost transport means), before the imp ortance of urban areas and urbaniz-ation processes in development strategies was recognized.The evo lution in the urban transport sector in develop ment is outlinedby the document published by the W orld Bank in 2002 on urban transportstrategies, entitled Cities On the M ove. This was prepared after many yearsof dialogue with the international com munity on the subject. This reportespecially links the urban development and transport sector strategieswith a strong poverty focus' (W orld Bank , 2002: xi). As such, its orien-tation is very different from the equivalent strategy paper published in1986 (A rmstrong-W right, 1986) w hich emphasized efficient management,private sector invo lvement, and reductions in subsidies, com petition andreduced regulation.


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234 Urban transport in the developing worldThe action progra mm es promo ted by international funders in general,and the W orld Bank in particular, have prom oted national strategies for

reducing pov erty introduced at the beginning of the twen ty-first centuryin African countries. Urban transport, however, has only been introduced(rather late in the process) as a potential component in these strategiesdealing with poverty reduction. This has been so because within inter-national organizations there seems to have been a difficulty to convinemacroeconomists about the potential contribution of transport to povertyreduction; one reason is that mobility is often not considered by suchparties as a 'basic need' but as a derived one, as explained below.This is not, however, a new issue. Past research d ealt with the subjectsome time ago, as in the case of the first study on mobility in Quito inthe 1980s (see IRT and FL AC SO, 1982) or w ork ca rried out in India (seeFouracre and Maunder, 1987). But there was no link between these explor-atory pieces of research and the much m ore focused action programmes.Som e academ ics, how ever, displayed continuous attention to the issue ofurban mobility of the poor Dimitriou, for instance, in a paper presentedat the Codatu VI C onference , stressed the importante of urban transportsustainability in the wider problem of pov erty. He a rgued that: 'transpon-related problems among urban low-income group s will be exacerbated byrising transport co sts, and the rapid phy sical growth a nd spread of c ities'(D imitriou, 1994: 3 23, 324). In the same c onference, Godard concludedthat the crux of the pro blem of developm ent is never-ending pov erty, andthat the most sustainable factor is also probably p overty, thereby conc lud-ing: 'that the mobility of these people is increasingly endangered whenpolicies that entail cov ering the true cost of public transport by user-paidfares are applied' (Godard, 1994: 15 , 16).On the basis of the abo ye, one can reasonably c onclude that the inter-national transport professional community has lagged behind when.com pared w ith other sectors (such as ho using) in its doctrinanan po sitiontowards poverty. The M illennium D evelopment Goals announced by theUN in Sep tember 20 00 reiterated the claim that the fight against poverty(the first in a list of eight goals) was a m ajor one. The im plementation o fM illennium D evelopment Goals program mes has subsequently directedattention to m any urban services such as education, water supply, sanita-tion, housing, energy and electricity. Notwithstanding this, transport wasnot explicitly introduced in the agenda of these program mes.This difficulty to integrate urban transport into form al strategic actionsand efforts for poverty reduction is illustrated by numerous recentD ocuments of Poverty Reduction Strategy (D PRS ): for instance the stra-tegic document of Guinea (Rpublique de Guine, 2002) did not coverurban transport at a11. 3 In the Senegal D PRS, the theme of urban transport


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Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 235only represents half a page (R publique du Senegal D PRS, 2003) o f a totalof around 6 0 pages. The urban section of this docum ent only introducedthe major actions carried out under the PAM U4 a programme fundedmainly by the W orld Bank , financing the renewal of m inibus fleets, urbanroad construction, and so on. Yet in spite of the findings of studies onthe mobility of the urban poo r, there w as no specific analysis made o f theactions needed to fight poverty by improving the travel opportunities ofthis section of the comm unity M oreov er, the question of affo rdability ofpublic transport was absent from both the D PRS a nd PAM U documents.One fears that as a result of such programmes, the access of poor people topublic transport will ultimately deteriorate over time, as improvem ents intransport supply involve an increase in the average fa res.This app arent oversight in thinking w ith regard to the role of transportin poverty alleviation strategies appears to threaten the ability of thetransport sector, notably urban transport, to benefit from developmentaid funding through debt cancellation and redeployment mechanisms.5Although it must be acknow ledged that the path towa rd poverty reductionthrough transport is very difficult to achieve.

POVERTY: NUMEROUS DEFINITIONSMany approaches have been proposed to tackle poverty and help theurban poor, thanks to years of debate amongst development specialists,including economists and sociologists. Yet poverty as a concept is veryelusive. According to W inter (2002), Sen (see Sen and N ussbaum, 1993)introduced the notion of `capabilities' into the concept of poverty,6 theexpansion of which ultimately provides the basis for the definition ofdevelopm ent. The aim here is not to discuss in detall the various conc ep-tualizations of poverty, but instead to consider the main approaches towealth creation and poverty reduction in a simple manner by drawingfrom a number of sources (see Bourguignon, 2004; Godard and DiazOlvera, 2001). These various approaches emphasize different aspects of`poverty' as follows:

Absolute poverty this is a definition of poverty in mo netary terms,based on co nsiderations of the available monetary resources/meansper person com ing from incom es or from transfers. Pov erty here isdefined in relation to a threshold expressing the resources necessaryto meet essential needs (food, housing). This definition can be exem -plified by a standard, such as people w ho do not ha ve mo re than $1per day to live on.


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236 Urban transport in the developing worldRelative po verty this definition refers to resource distribution. Itapplies to the proportion of the population with an income inferiorto a particular percentage of the average or median income of thewhole population (typically 10 o r 20 per cent).Huma n development this indirect measure of poverty is promotedby the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), whichemploys the Human Development Index (HDI) as a basis forjudging pov erty. It is compo sed of va rious indicators chara cterizingliving conditions: life expec tancy and literacy are introduced here,for example, as well as available monetary resources.Access to essential services and opportunities this proxy measure ofpoverty assesses access to essential services such as water, education,nutrition, health and employ ment. Such indicators were introducedby the UNDP in 1990 in order to build a Human Poverty Index(HPI). This approach is similar to the HDI but is more focused onaccess to services as a condition to achieve welfare objectives.Social links or social capital these offer additional proxy measure ofpover ty and welfare. Their use is based on the premise that wea lth orpoverty is heav ily rooted in the social relations that people have (rela-tives, friends, neighbours), that can lead to different types of so lidarityCitizen involvement and emp ow erment in this context poverty isredefined as being excluded from collective choices, whereas beingwealthy is defined as being able to be involved in the choices of alarger community This approach is included in the set of capabili-ties which, acc ording to Sen, have to be prom oted as an expressionof development (Sen and Nussbaum, 1993), and is now supportedby the W orld Bank.

Out of these approaches various methodological debates have arisen,particularly with regard to the measurement of monetary indicators ofindividual resources.7

SOME CRITICAL APPROACHES TO POVERTYThe deba te on poverty is by no means confined to the developing world.In fact the increasing poverty which is observed in the richest countriesis a paradox that raises many questions about development models. Butthe notion of pov erty itself has to be qu estioned too . Two sets of criticaldebates will be discussed here.The first can be found in sociological analyses which consider thatpoverty is an inherent dimension in the process of building social


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Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 237integration: in short, our society needs to identify `poo r groups' as a pre-requisite to build its cohesion in the action against pov erty. W e refer hereto the recent analysis proposed by the sociologist M ichel Messu (200 3),who insists on the 'instrumental distortion' of the discourse about povertyin a game of institutional power, where `distortion' means ca tegorizing (byincome) the identification of the poor before dealing with their socially rel-evant cha racteristics. The predom inant discourse that considers pove rtyas an intolerable and exceptional fact to be eradicated from a country,such as France, is actually only stating the inequality in the distributionof wealth which frames our society. Whether we take into account anabsolute or a relative threshold, it merely co ncerns an abstrac t construct,whereas 'the absolute and vital needs actually are depending on variouscontexts' (Messu, 2003: 60).

According to Messu, poverty is 'a social and constitutive construct'(M essu, 200 3: 44). The po or call for mea ns of solidarity, and it is via theimplementation of these means that the sense of com munity is reinforcedand the desire to live together is expressed. This mediation role of pov ertyalleviation action could be more important than the persona of the pooritself. It can be a rgued that poverty beco mes necessary to soc iety seekingsome k ind of social cohesion, reflected in the fact that it requires a perm a-nent effort to reduce it. The conc ept of `exclusion' is said to suffer from thesame c riticism in that: `the notion is vague an d confused . . it becom es anon object for a sociologist whose w ork begins w ith the assertion that anysociety is structured in social groups' (M essu, 2003: 77, 83 ). This analy-sis, based on French society, may potentially be transferred fruitfully todeveloping countries and to the poverty a lleviation programm es by inter-national organizations, raising m any questions.The second critical debate comes from analyses dealing with thedevelopment-oriented issues forwarded by Majid Rahnema (2003) whointroduces an essential distinction between `poverty' and `destitution'. Headvo cates distinguishing betwee n `poverty', which is considered to havea positive side and is defined as satisfying the basic needs and keepinggood social relationships but avoiding superfluous goods; and `destitu-tion' (French misre), which is co nsidered to have a negative side, definedby both the absence o f resources to satisfy basic needs and the absence o fsocial relationships and netw orks w hich could help provide them.Poverty m ay also be seen to represent the state of being free from artifi-cial needs that have been created by society and its economy. This kind ofpov erty is associated w ith concerns about social relations, sharing valuesand the solidarity this offers. It is based upon a vernacular belonging tosmall communities and partnerships built on exchanges and identicalrites. The w ord `vernacular', conceptualized by Iva n Illich (19 80),8 refers


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238 Urban transport in the developing worldto independent activities, outside of the formal commercial sector, whichenable people to satisfy their daily needs. There is a close associationbetween the shift towards a traditional, immobile society and the shifttowards a subsistence-based economy (which arises if there is excessiveacceptance of the vernacular society).

In Rahnema's view, poverty is valued and should not be resisted. It isdeeply rooted in monotheist religions. In Christianity, it is reflected bythe expression from the Gospel (Matthew 5:3): `Blessed are the poor inspirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'. The understanding of poverty,as well as its consequences, has been the subject of arguments throughoutWestern history. Rahnema gives additional examples and referentes fromIslam. He quotes Iranian Sufism, which gives form to these messages,seeing poverty as a fundamental condition that has been distorted byeconomics and the economists. It has been transformed into a hegemonicterm, void of compassion and completely foreign to the conditions of themillions of individuals it is applied to. The poor, in these terms, are con-sidered merely the beneficiaries of inadequate income, its amount beingcalculated according to a poverty threshold, with the identity of the poordefined by what they do not possess.

In contrast, the term `destitution' (misre in French) reflects the destruc-tion of needed social linkages and of the state of material endowment; thatmeans the lack of resources combined with a state of negative dependence.Destitution, according to Rahnema, is then the result of market-led eco-nomic development distorting ancient forms of social cohesion withutproviding an access to resources for everybody. The provocative viewsof Rahnema raise major criticisms within a wider debate about economicdevelopment, considering the seemingly traditional, conservative view-point which the author's message carries. However, it introduces an essen-tial distinction between destitution and poverty that should help tostructure any analysis and help to question the assumptions of any devel-opment project. The distinction is thus very relevant to the role played bytravel and mobility in reducing poverty, when also referring to destitution.In the following sections, the word `poverty' will be used when referringto `destitution' in the sense outlined by Rahnema, in order to make thereader's task easier in spite of the ambiguities referred to aboye.

MOBILITY AND ACCESSIBILITY

Urban mobility can be defined as the action of moving in order to carry outactivities located in urban space. Mobility is the focus of many conceptsand approaches that underlie urban transport planning and associated


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Poverty and urban mobdity: diagnosis toward a new understanding 239policy-m ak ing which w ill not be discussed here, as it is assumed that thereader is familiar with them. One do es need to apprec iate, how ever, thatthe classical approach to mobility deals with the simple monitoring ofmovements. The basic indicator is the number of daily trips per person,whilst other indicators introduce no tions of travel time or travel distance.These other approaches integrate the social and economic meaning ofmobility: the activities made possible through travelling, the fact of reach-ing different localities, the activation or maintenance of social linkages,and the experience of the process of movem ent itself.

Travel is often only considered as the result of the balance betweenthe need to carry out specific activities (that is, related to work, school,visits, food purchases and so on) on the one ha nd, and on the other handconstraints and costs of access to the places where these activities arecarried out. Mobility is not considered as a basic need but as a derivedneed that depends on the location of dwellers and of their places of activ-ity. Time availability and trav el costs are the tw o m ain constraints limit-ing potential urban activities and mobility in the classical perceptions ofmobility employed by transport policy-makers, planners and engineers.The presum ption here is that a reduction of travel cost generally leads to agrow ing rate of m obility, but that mobility in itself canno t be a g oal. It isalso presumed that high levels of mobility can be co mp letely co unterpro-ductive if expressed in terms of furthering the places of ac tivity rather thanreinforcing the variety of these ac tivities. As stated by Vasconc ellos (2001:221): ligher mobility does not necessarily represent better living cond-itions. W hat ma tters is the acc essibility to desired destinations, which canbe obtained with less movement'.

It should consequently be stressed that depending on the perspectivetaken, travel can be considered either as a value, a development factor,thanks to the activities and exchanges it induces or, on the contrary, anindividual and a collective cost, a constraint to be reduced aboye all ifone is concerned with sustainable development and the expansion ofmo torization on a global scale. The increase in urban m otorized mo bilityrates in developing cities stand in sharp contrast w ith new environm entalprotection goa ls and legislation aimed at the reduction of greenho use gasemissions.

Notwithstanding the aboye concerns, the basic premise adopted hereis that every perso n needs to mov e in space to carry out ac tivities wh ichallow him or her access to at least basic resources and to satisfy basicneeds, including social exchanges (Goda rd, 1998). From this perspective,urban travel is seen as a potential mea ns of freeing people from poverty.9Acc ording to D iaz Olvera et al.:s essential to ma ke daily travel easierand cheap er for the poo r (to provide acc ess to jobs . . . use of basic facilities


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240 Urban transport in the developing world. . . maintenance of social networks and community based solidarities)'(2008: 2). This message is reinforced by a simple statement made by awom an interviewed in Do uala for the SITRA SS Study who explained: 'Iam now the one in charge of the house so I need to move around a lot'. IAccessibility is determined by the nature of the relationship betweentransport supply and the spatial setting of places of activity. If the aimis to m ake access to urba n transport easier and better, as is the case w ithtransport-based anti-poverty strategies, then action has to be based on twolevels (Mbara, 2003):

transport actions to reduce the time and the costs of mov ing (withlocation remaining constant); andactions to provide infrastructure and basic services close to low-income residential areas.

These two types of action are co nfronted w ith problems of urban p lan-ning and governance, given the measures taken by governm ent to try andcontain the growth of illegal urban settlements where most of the poorlive. Difficult access to housing in urban areas of the developing worldleads the poo r to unplanned and illegal settlements, usually characterizedby poor accessibility. The question which arises is whether one shouldattempt to legalize these settlements by bringing various services to them,such as w ater, electricity and roads, at a high c ollective co s, in contradic-tion with official urban planning efforts. This suggests that in the shortterm urban man agers and planners (and politicians as well) are faced w ithvery d ifficult contradictions, which call for co mpro mise solutions in thelong term.How ever, accessibility is not merely p hysical, it is multidimensional andevery dimension can be an obstacle to the urban poor, as the followingdimensions of ac cessibility suggests:

Travel time is not a ma jor constraint in itself for the urban poor, butcan become one w hen physical accessibility is problematic or settle-ments are remote.Transport cost represents the classical obstacle for the urban poor inthat it can mak e accessibility unafforda ble.Co gnitive accessibility, for example kno wledge of ava ilable trans-port service for illiterate persons faced w ith written information, is aclear constraint on mo vem ent, as are the problems o f the ability tonegotiate a ticket fare, and other forms of spa tial know ledge regard-ing services.


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Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 241Finally, the access to urban services additionally depends on the mo de offunctioning of these services: their queuing an d w aiting time, the cost ofthe service, the quality and a ppro priateness of the service, and so on (seeD imitriou, 1992 : 165). This is notably the case for basic services such ashealth centres and schools, for which some arbitration problems m ay arisebetween pay ing for travel to a rather faraway but free service, and payingfor a close but costly service (SITRASS, 20 04a, b).

Whilst some basic needs can be catered for or provided at home (forexample electricity, water services), other services call for travel wha teverthe location policy is in terms of serv ices and equipm ent. These includeacc ess to schools, medical and com munity centres and places of wo rshipin the area. W here urban arcas are relatively well equipped with such serv-ices, the need fo r mo torized travel is typically low. This has been revealed(see Table 9.1) by the travel survey in D akar (see Kane and Godard, 2001)which show s that the accessibility of ma ny of the facilities was easy for asignificant part of the urban po pulation. This suggests that many deprivedpeople could not be co nsidered `poor' from the point of view of acc ess toservices. This is expressed by both the high level of walking trips and thelow level of motorized travel.

THE URBAN TRAVEL CONDITIONS OF THE URBANPOORThe travel conditions of the urban poor are discussed and illustratedhere on the basis of data from Conakry and Douala drawn from theSITRA SS Study (2004 a, b).11 The m obility indicators of the poor (that is,the average daily trips per pe rson) reveal no sp ecific results for the poo rwhen o ne includes walking. They differ, however, when c onsidering onlymec hanized trips (see Tables 9.2 and 9.3), with rates of 0.8 and 1 .0 dailyfor the poor in Conakry and D ouala against 1.2 and 1.9 for the non-poor.Gender accentuates these differences, with rates of 0.7 trips for poorwom en as against 1.4 for non-poor men in C onakry; and 0.8 against 2.1in D ouala.The av erage w alking trip time in these places is reasonable (around 15minutes), whilst the motorized trip time is high (40-44 m inutes in Conak ryand 33 -37 m inutes in D ouala), w ith these trip times being slightly higherfor the poor. These averages can, however, be deceptive as shown by theshare of w alking trips that take m ore than 30 m inutes. These trips repre-sent more than 10 per cent for the poor in each c ity. W hen one considersthe bad wa lking conditions in each settlement (there are very few pedes-trian facilities, especially in the periphera l arcas), this reveals ve ry difficult


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Table 9.1 The accessibility of urban services in Dakar (by% of the population)Serviceistance of access to serviceime of access to serviceode of transport< 100 m 100 to500 m 500 m to1 k m 1-5 km > 5 km < 10min. 10-30min. 30-60min. > 1 hour Walking MotorizedTelecom shop 67.4 27.6 1.7 9.7 0.2 94.9 3.6 1 .1 0.1 98.1 1.5Koranic school 48.3 40.5 5.5 2 1.4 87 7.6 0.8 0 93.5 1.8Children school 23.2 47.8 14.5 10.4 3.3 74 16.8 4.3 0.4 86.4 9.2Primary school 20.8 56.8 16.2 4.6 1 .1 7 1 25.9 2.1 0.4 93.9 5.4Market 23.7 38.1 19.3 17.7 1 66 30.4 2.6 0. 6 85.4 14.2Health centre 11.4 40.5 25.2 19.4 3 58.5 37.6 2.9 0.5 75.3 24.2Secondary school 7.3 33.6 24.6 27.9 5.4 39.3 44.3 10.9 1.4 73.9 21.9Post oflice 3.6 13.8 15.7 48.4 16.9 41.3 49.3 6.6 0.6 46 51.8High school 2.8 5.6 8.2 25.2 56 13.5 32.9 21.5 11.2 29 56.8Specialized health

centre2.8 6.5 10.3 31.9 44.4 23.2 35.9 22.9 2.9 21.9 63.1

Source: Kane and Godard (2001) based on Dakar Household Survey, 2000.


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Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 243Table 9.2 Overall travel characteristics of Me poor in Conakry andDouala, 2003

City Group Sedentarity Travelrate* (%)ate Travel time budget(minutes)Walking Mechanized TotalConakry Student 8.0 4875Employed woman 10.9 5099Unemployed woman 2 1.0 3358Employed man 5.3 53024Unemployed man 23.4 3448Douala Student 2.1 6102Employed woman 10.2 4213Unemployed woman 22.3 3124Employed man 3.8 430952Unemployed man 2 1.5 3920Note: * The `sedentarity' rate is the proportion of peo ple who did not travel during thesurveyed day.Source: SITRASS (2004a, b).

Table 9.3 Daily travel rates for the poor and non-poor in Conakry andDouala, 2003

CityonakryoualaPoor Non-poor Poor Non-poorOverall travel rate 3.8 3.9 4.4 4.8M en 4.1 4.2 4.7 4.8Women 3.5 3.6 4.0 4.3Percentage walking 78% 61% 77 % 52 %Percentage walking trips

of more than 30 minutes11% 9% 13 % 4%

Motorized travel rate 0.8 1.2 1.0 1.9M en 1 1.4 1.2 2.1Women 0.7 1 0.8 1.5

Source:ITRASS (2004a, b).


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244rban transport in the developing worldTable 9.4verage travel time budget in Conakry and Douala, 2003City Average trip time

(minutes)Daily travel time budget

(minutes)Walkingechanized Walkingechanized TotalConakryDouala Non-poorPoorNon-poorPoor 1 801 541 13147 421034460287054674Source: SITRASS (2004a, b).travel conditions for the urban poor whose trips are made almost 80 percent on foot.It is not sufficient to consider only the trav el time of each trip, as it canbe meaningful to have a view o f the daily travel time budget. This budgetis high across all groups, but it is higher for the non-poor than for thepoor, wh ich results from a higher rate of mobility (Table 9.4). How ever,this difference does not hold true when one co nsidera only the category ofemployed men: the travel time budget is very high for poor employed m en(124 m inutes in Conak ry, 154 minutes in D ouala). This means that accessto employment is paid for by the poor at a high cost in terms of traveltime n (and often also in fares, see below).

SOCIAL CAPITAL AND TR AVELThe soc ial capital dimension is essential for the ana lysis, since the richnessof this capital is dependent on physical meetings and the need to travel,in one way or another. This is consistent with the views propoSed byRahnema (2003) in his notion of a vernacular society and the importanceof com munity solidarity.Netw ork s of social relations may be confined within the living localityand delimited by walking; however, the nature of the city and the urbangrowth w iden the scale of needed social links, implying the necessary useof mo torized means on many o ccasions. This type of travel may be con-sidered as 'non-essential' if we have a restrictive perspective on societythat is focused only on econom ic productivity and work is within wa lkingdistance. If we have a perspective, however, that is turned more towardaspirations of social cohesion and social exchanges, the link betw een traveland social ca pital becomes c ritical. This can be illustrated by the examp le


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Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 245of the Dakar widow living in poverty with many children, analysed byW erner (cited in D iaz Olvera and Godard, 2002 : 253) who identifies fourtypes of social links bearing different kinds of suppo rt that are essentiallymaintained by long walking trips. H e comp ares them to concentric circleswith the hum an individual at their centre, whereby :

The main network is scattered in the city and in other places, as itis composed o f close family relations and friends who sup port theindividual emotionally and materially on a long-term ba sis and w hocan be alw ays relied upon.The secondary network , however, is spatially very close and includesthe neighbours who can bring immediate support.The incidental network consists of relationships as a customerwithin the whole city.The latent network consists of relationships that are potential forunanalysed reasons, and set within the whole city.The crisis that exists between the m odes of transport on offer a nd thehigh costs of motorized travel may contribute to reduce the reality of thesesocial networks if the network s need to be maintained or extended by visitsto the members of these networks, forcing up urban travel. Monetarypove rty is therefore more an d more an ob stacle to keep ing this network

alive; it can lead to the loss or breakdow n of k ey social networks and theshift to a situation of destitution (as defined aboye).

IMPORTANC E OF TRANSPORT IN THEHOUSEHOLD 'S BUD GETConsideration of the monetary dimensions of poverty is the classicapproach to poverty alleviation (based by now on a great amount ofaccumulated knowledge). Whether it is appropriate to go beyond thisdimension that is, to take into account the other aspects of poverty anddestitution discussed earlier, and to w hat extent is a significant issue.Considering that urban populations are integrated within the economicsystems of monetary exchange, the availability of financial resourcesto pay for the cost of urban transport becomes a major issue. Researchon the share of transport costs in household expenditure confirms this,and the tension betwe en travel needs and the a bility to pay fo r the costsof this travel. `Affordability' is defined by Carruthers et al. (2005: 1,2) as: 'the ability to purchase and make necessary journeys to work,school, health and other social services, and ma ke v isits to other family


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246 Urban transpon in the developing worldTable 9.5 Share of household budget consumed by transpon t expenses in

Dakar and Ouagadougou, 1996

Bottom Quintile Quintile QuintileopotalQuintile 1uintile 5Dakar.2.1.5.82.1.2Ouagadougou.9.71.93.71.85.6Source: Godard (2002a).members o r urgent other journeys w ithout having to curtail other essentialactivities'.13The share of transport expenditure in the household budget varesaccording to cities, and to social groups within the settlements under scru-tiny. An impo rtant dimension to investigate here is the difference in pat-terns between the `poorese and the `richesf. An issue is whether the shareof the household budget dedicated to transport is low er or higher amo ngeach respective group. From the African cities reviewed in this chapterone m ay no te contrasting results showing that there is actually no simplerelationship between the share of household budget spent on transportexpenses and the income level. The data drawn from consumer surveysconducted in Dakar and Ouagadougou suggest that transport occupiesa low share of the household budget among the poorest. This rises fromthe bottom quintile to the top quintile (see Table 9.5). The share of thebiggest single budget line, food, decreases w ith rising quintiles. This typeof data supports the view of man y econo mists who neglect the transportsector in their strategy of poverty reduction: transpon does not seem apriority.Figures drawn from sources other than those already cited convey avery different message. In a study of B uenos Aires, the transport share isdecreasing from the bottom q uintile to the top (see Table 9.6). A similarbut less pronounced trend w as registered in M umbai, where the first quin-tile has a higher share than the other quintiles (see Table 9.7). In otherAfrican cities, one can also find cases where the w eight of transport on thehousehold budget is very heavy for the urban poor on average around 20to 25 per cent and more important for people w ho live in areas with lowaccessibility (see Ta ble 9.8).The observed variations depend very much on the role of walking intravel patterns. By definition, walking is free of charge. Various thresh-olds of the user cost between the three principal modes of transpo rt havebeen established according to a hierarchy yielding only pa rtly comp arablemeasures. These are as follows:


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Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 247Table 9.6 Expenditure on travel to work, Buenos Aires, 2002Income range Average household Average fam ily Per cent of

income per week in expenditure on income spent onUS$ travel to workper week in US$ travel to workBottom quintile 1 211.2 66.8 31.6Quintile 2 449.2 107.8 24.0Quintile 3 564.1 86.4 15.3Quintile 4 902.4 96.5 10.7Top quintile 5 1748.7 149.0 8.5Average 833.5 106.5 12.8Source: Carruthers et al. (2005).T able 9.7 Expenditure and income share on transport in Mumbai, 2004Units in Monthly Monthly Monthly Monthly Monthly Averagethousands income income income income income monthlyof Indianrupees below RpSk Rp5-7.5k R p7.5 -1 0k R p1 0-20 k >Rp2Ok incomeExpenditure

on bus43 49 53 67 65 52

Expenditureon rail 25 3 1 40 53 72 38Expenditureon taxi 27 33 43 78 100 46Expenditureon fuel 1 3 33 52 134 378 7 1Expenditure onmaintenanceand other2 6 1 3 33 92 1 7

Total 110 153 201 365 707 22 4Share 14.9% 9.6% 9.4% 10.3% 9.2% 10.2%Source: Carruthers et al. (2005).

Walking. This presents no cost, but for long-distance trips thismeans o f travel is problematic because of its low speed, insufficientsupporting infrastructure, the fatigue generated and numero us otherobstacles.Public transport. This mode of transport takes place at moderatecost in some cities; it is mo re costly in others, with various m odes


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248 Urban transpon in the developing worldTable 9.8 Share of transport expenditure in budget of poor households in

Conakry, 2003Urban arca ofnnual householdnnual transport Share of householddwellingncome (US$)*xpenditure (US$)ncome spendon publictransport (%)Centre60525.9First periphery80519.4Second periphery16440.2Third periphery98840.4Acc essible ateas00547.0Isolated areas68580.5Note: * Revenues and expenses are converted from Guinean francs to US dollars on thebasis of the official rate of 2000 G F in January 2004 (parallel market change ratewas approximately 2400 GF).Source: SITRASS (2004a).

(bus, minibus, etc.) having different fare structures. Minibuses canbe cheaper than the normal bus (see Table 9.9) but their costs can,however, still prove unbearable on a regular basis for the poorest(see the discussion on the affordability index below).Individual transport. Higher costs are associated with these meansof travel. Such modes are typically not really accessible to the urbanpoor, except for bicycles and sometimes motorcycles (as observed inOuagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso).

Various questions may be raised with regard to the monetary approach.These, in particular, include concerns as to whether:

The analyses are distorted by the underestimation of householdincomes as measured in the surveys.The poor are in reality so poor.The expenditure on transport is not as highly underestimated as hasbeen observed in other household surveys in some African cities (seeGodard, 2001).There is a systematic bias in such surveys. The part of the householdbudget spent on travel expenditure is often neglected by the inter-viewees as the interviewers tend to focus more on other expendituresuch as on food, health and housing.


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Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 249Table 9.9 User cosi of a trip depending on the means of transpon t used in

DakarModeourceodeourceSystraStudy(1998) EmtsuStudy(2000) SystraStudy(1998) EmtsuStudy(2000)Bus Sotrac 181 173 M etered taxi 86 4 66 3PTB (urban train) 9 1 147 Shared taxi 153 157Car rapide(minibus) 99 100 Clandestine taxi 287 20 3Ndiaga Ndiaye

(minibus)120 154 calchelcharrette 114 462

Note: Al! costs are quoted in local currency (Franc C FA).Source: Godard (2002a).

These questions, combined with the high cost of implementing suchhousehold travel surveys, pose many difficulties and, according toCaruthers, call for an easier survey approach. One such approach isthe use of an affordability index that can be calculated for a city. Thisis arrived at on the basis of the number of necessary trips multiplied bythe average cost per trip, divided by the average per capita income forthe group, expressed as a percentage. The approach is very useful for adiagnosis of the situation in cities w here no household survey is available,and wa s used by the author in 2000 for the study of poverty for the W orldBank (G odard and Diaz Olvera, 2000 [2002]).The affo rdability index values prov ided in Table 9.10 reveal huge dif-ferences between the cities under scrutiny. At one extreme, So Pauloand Rio are faced with unbearable situations, with indexes of 107 -and63 per cent, respectively. At the other extreme, Bangkok and C airo havea surprisingly low index, explained by reasons related to their very dif-ferent contexts. The explanation for this is the very low pu blic transportfare level in B angkok and C airo associated with the absence of extremepoverty in the lower q uintile. W hile this approa ch is very useful, it has itsown limitations due to the simplified nature of the indicators employedand to the often questionable quality of available statistics. It there-fore cannot really replace the need for a more precise analysis of actualobserved transport expenditure of the household budget undertaken byhousehold surveys, in spite of their respective inherent statisticalties and biases.


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Percapitaincome

US$ PPP

Bottom quintileincome aspercentageof average

Fare forffordability index10km travel(US centsPPP)City Average Bottomquintileas %2 50 Urban transpon in the developing worldTable 9.10 Affordability index values for the bottom quintile in a sampleof c ities*Bangkok 20 386 3 1 32.2 1 4Buenos Aires 15 493 15.5 87.6 4 26Cairo 7117 43 26.1 3 6Cape Town 14 452 10 75.8 4 38Guangzhou 9 165 30 55.1 4 14Manila 9 757 27 63.0 5 17Mexico 9 820 15.5 39.3 3 19Mumbai 8 585 41 112.2 9 23Rio de Janeiro 14 325 1 0 125.4 6 63So Paulo 8 732 10 130.1 1 1 10 7Note: * This index is calculated on the basis of 60 monthly trips and 12 m onths.Source: Carruthers et al. (2005).

THE EMPLOYMENT DIMENSIONOne of the main features of conventional poverty reduction strategies isto mak e access to places of employm ent easier and more affordable. Thisgoal reflects the priority given to helping the urban poor receive the m on-etary resources they need to fulfil their needs. As summ arized by the W orldBank (2002 : 25): 'the poor peop le's inability to ac cess jobs and services isan impo rtant element of the social exclusion that defines urban poverty'.Ano ther essential aspect of the link betw een transport and poV erty is theemp loyment the transport sector itself may o ffer to the poor. The op por-tunity of jobs in the urban transport sector can be a way for many urbanpoo r to generate resources and build a path tow ards social inclusion.Urban transport in particular small-size operators and paratransitow ners is a great purveyor of jobs in developing cities (see Table 9.11).Jobs created of this kind can be num erous as they typically rely on vehi-des of low capacity for a constant passenger demand. This especiallyresults in a high po tential for jobs in self-employed transport m odes, withemployment a ccess adequate for people w ithout qualifications. This activ-ity sector further co ntributes significantly to the fight against pov erty byencouraging integration, thanks to the role it plays in offering employm ent


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Poverty and ttrban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 251T able 9.1 1stimates of paratransit employment in some African cities

Abidjan*1998

Conakry** Cotonou**2004000 Dakar***2000 Douala**2004Moto rcycle taxisfleet 60 000 22 000Taxis fleet 13 200 5 000-6 000 na 12 000 6000-7 000Minibus fleet 2 700 1 200-1 500 na 4 000 300-400Directemployments 37 000 20 000 60 000 28 000 43 000Sources: * D u p r e z ( 2 0 0 2 ) ; * * S I T R A S S ( 2 0 0 4 a , b ) ; * * * G o d a r d ( 2 0 0 2 a ) .

to the young unemployed, often migrants from rural areas. Such jobsinclude positions as vehicle drivers, conductors, and sometimes on-the-beat coxers who help to rustle up potential passengers. Their number isestimated at a bout 10000 in cities like D akar or A bidjan, and may rise tomore than 50000 or 6000 0 in Cotonou thanks to mo torcycle taxis.The working conditions in the urban transport sector are frequentlycriticized for bearing many disadvantages, explained by good but notcom pletely convincing reasons. The sector is associated with poor directwa ges; no social protection; hard a nd tiring activity involving long da ily

work hours; exposure to extreme levels of pollution; and to traffic acci-dents as a result of widespread unsafe driving behaviour (specially formotorcycle taxis).Having acknowledged these poor working conditions, we should notlose sight of the primary goal of poverty reduction initiatives, which is tooffer remunerated ac tivities and a form o f social integration for the poor.In this regard, addressing these poo r wo rking co nditions is probably bestseen as a second step contributing towards an improvement of the employ-ment co nditions in this sector, and should not argue tow ards the suppies-sion of jobs using the pretext of poor w ork ing conditions. This rema ins atruly com plex and ongo ing issue in urban public transport systems of thedeveloping world.To enhance both employm ent opportunities and public transport oper-ations, industrial training for the newly employed (a s w ell as those alreadyemployed) has become critical to the evolution in this sector. Employmentpolicy mu st, how ever, be controlled to avoid the increase in employ mentbecoming excessive and non-productive, thereby undermining organiz-ation efforts of the transport sector.An approach to capacity-building based solely on a dialogue with

driver or vehicle owner unions risks being distorted by giving too much


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252 Urban transport in the developing worldweight to the less qualified operators in the narre of the principie of eq ual-ity of access to employment. This issue is one of the most com mon whenattempting to orga nize the urban transport sector, as existing organizationdevelopm ent attempts often lead to the exclusion of some ac tors that areunable to respect the internally based rules of the organization.Finally, one should not forget that a longside the small-size bus o pera-tors and paratransit owners, public transport companies are also poten-tially very important sources of employment for low-income eamers, inspite of the fact that the jobs they offer tend to be m ore difficult to get forthe poorest beca use of req uired literacy and professional skills.

WHAT TYPE OF ACTION?"There is a difficulty in designing action program mes for urba n transportdevoted only to poverty alleviation as many separate skill requirementscharacterize the urban transport system and every urban situation hasits own specificities. For ea ch po ssible action targeting the poo r (areas toserve, modes to promote, persons and system s to subsidize, and so on), theoutcom es need to be judged by considering a mix of the following criteria:

The poo r who benefit from the action. The identification of the pooron a p urely monetary basis is not an easy task.The poor who do not benefit from the action. If their share ofthe outcomes of the action is high, the target is not achieved. Forinstance, the poor are m ostly excluded from p ublic transport whichis supported by the public authorities.The non-poor who benefit from the action. If their share of theoutcomes of the action is also high, there is a reverse redistribu-tive effect. This is often the case w hen subsidies are given to a buscompany.

Another difficulty is the need to clarify the nature of public transportpolicy for a city as ma ny objectives are often assigned to it. One needs toknow , in particular, how to c ombine the objective of facilitating the urbantravel of the poor and the objective of attracting potential users of theprivate car to pu blic transpon , simultaneously. These tw o objectives areoften both on the governm ent's agenda; ho wev er they do not involve thesame k ind of solutions in terms of quality of service and of cost (M itric,2008).In spite of there difficulties, actions toward alleviating poverty throughurban transport initiatives still have to be formulated, designed and


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Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 253implemented. In so doing, it may be more helpful to think about inflex-ions15 in comprehensive programmes of urban transport improvementrather than to design specific programmes dealing only with the travelneeds of the urban poor. A w hole set of possible actions can be consideredin order to address poverty actions that are aimed at the poor but whichcan benefit other social groups as well. These are discussed below.Promoting a Multimodal ApproachPublic service urban transport providers have long been considered acces-sible to the whole population as much to the poor as to the better-off.This consideration is possibly less true in African cities, as the poorestthere have o ften had difficulties in acc essing public bus co mpa ny serviceson afforda bility grounds, as well as in physical terms, or som etimes evenfor cultural reasons. The recent shift towards a new generation of urbanpublic transport and public infrastructure investors worldwide in aneffort by governments and international development agencies to becom eless dependent on public (state or mun icipal) funding will accentuatethis problem since the level of fares that is typically necessary to achievefull cost recovery w ill be so high as to exclude urban p oor users, who a s aresult will merely be occasional travellers at best.

Lessons from the observation of transport systems in many Africancities point to the existence of a multiplicity of types of opera tors involvedin meeting the majority of travel needs. While this is not a handicap initself, the balance betw een these varieties of operators is not stable and cangenerate add itional costs if not well regulated and collectively m anaged.A m ultimodal system/6 involving small comp anies thus seems necessaryto satisfy at least partially the travel needs of the urban poor, since thesupply offered by large companies often cannot or does not satisfy suchneeds. This is because, for example, they (bus companies in particular)cannot serve peripheral areas without paved roads, while minibuses orshared taxis can. The diversity and the adaptability of small-size opera-tors thus helps imp rove the travel lot of the urban p oor, despite the manydrawbacks such as fare segments of routes that can multiply the cost oftravel by two or three times.An interesting example of the situation described aboye can be foundin Abidjan (Duprez, 2002), where several modes coexist. The Sotra buscompany which is still in operation despite the financial crisis it haslong been facing suffered its share of the public transit market decrea sefor man y years during the 1990s, and has probably suffered even furtherdecline since 20 02. M inibuses (called gbakas) which are very p resent onthe ground play a critical role, especially in the large peripheral areas of


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254 Urban transpon in the developing worldAbobo and Yopougon where about 1 million inhabitants live. Sharedtaxis (woro-woros) also operate bo th inside each municipa lity and outsidethe authorized limits. It is ironic that the main mode used by the urbanpoor because the supply of formal bus public transport is more adaptedto travel needs inside municipalities has fares that are much higher thanthose of the formal bus comp anies.Case for Walking and Non-motorized TransponWalking is the principal means of movement in African cities. It canreach very high levels, as in the case of D akar, where w alking represented72 per cent of all trips in 2000. The proportion of persons who walk isunderstandably higher amongst the poor, who only very occasionallyuse motorized means of transport. Walking conditions are, furthermore,deteriorating in m ost African cities. This calls for urgent essential actionto be taken by the public authorities to ease pedestrian movement via abroad set of low-cost measures, which in reality only require a minimum ofspecialized know ledge and dialogue (D iaz Olvera et al., 2002; de Langenand Tembele, 2001).Cycling is not very common in African cities, with some exceptions.Cyc ling should be made easier, especially w here it is already practised suchas in Ouagadougou (B urkina Faso), so as to promo te sustainable develop-ment, among o ther things. W hile cycling should be encouraged in Africa,its image is not yet very good as is noticeable in places such as D aka r Firststeps to encourage cycling, how ever, need not involve the creation of cyclepaths, but merely the establishment of a hierarchy of roads in order tomak e the use of cycles safer. Many low-cost actions can be implementedwhich focus on both walking and cycling facilities, especially in poorlyequipped areas.' Some actions that can explicitly support the introduc-tion of bicycles include government measures to low er or suppress importtaxes on bicyc les, a matter that has been debated in many countries.'8

In Africa, the image o f poverty a ssociated with the bicycle seems to beat the heart of the matter. An interview co nducted in Ouagadougo u someyears ago ( see Cusset, 1995: 6 6) prov ides an invaluable illustration of thisH ere an interviewee claimed: `if a man leaves his motorbike fo r a bike .people will try to find out if he is indebted . .ou are an employee,people w ill try to find out if you have h ad a p rofessional misconduct' (andare banned from driving a motor vehide). In the event neither of theseexplanations are accepted, the interviewee went on to claim that peoplewould then wish to explore the person's mental state, and: `If it is con-firmed that you are not mentally sick, peop le will finally say: he is trying toshow-off or someho w has a desire to become poo r.'


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Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 255This statement wa s surprisingly ma de in Ouagadougou a city whichhas experienced a v ery high rate of cy cle use in recent years. The implica-tion of the aboye statement is that those of the urban poor who would

want to use a bicycle as an efficient and cheap mode o f travel will hesitateto do so, because they do not w ish to be categorized as poor. This culturaldimension perhap s explains a little bit better why bicy cle use is so limitedin African cities.Servicing the Peripheral and Poor A reas, and the F uture of Road TransportEven if one can identify numerous `mixed' urban areas (in tercos of house-hold wea lth) in many cities, some p eripheral areas are charac terized by ahigh concentration of very po or families. Bec ause of rapid urbanization,the location of the poor in peripheral areas is com mon, highly problematicand a product of a com plex dynamic process over time which should notbe interpreted in too simplistic a wa y. Yet when urban renew al policies arecarried out, with a focus on central and we ll-served areas for the benefit ofmiddle or upper classes, they clearly bear with them the risk of accentuat-ing the problems of accessibility of the urban po or (Ba rter and W illiams,2002).The first action to be undertaken is thus to improve the accessibilityof low-income housing areas through adequate-quality roads and spacefor non-motorized movement. The design of such infrastructure shouldbe creatively thought through; for example, decisions need to be madeon whether to prioritize the traffic of shared motorized taxis over bustraffic. Short-term actions must be set w ithin longer-term stra tegic actions.Pedestrian facilities also need to be provided to c onnect periphera l areasbetter. The implementation of such infrastructure programmes to assistthe urban poor is not easy, as was observed in Cona kry w here road pro-grammes were based on labour-intensive methods of construction (seeSITR ASS , 2004a). In man y cities, local decision-mak ers instead tend tomake the case for large and costly road investments, even though somelower-cost improvem ents to roads would also make a lot of sense.Basic Action is Alwa ys GoodThe co st and productivity of urban transport systems, urban mo bility andurban acc ess to basic needs are the crux of the urban transpon problem.H ow to increase productivity w ithout reducing the supply of public trans-port services, and how to decrease the cost of fares, thereby making publictransport mo re affordable, are also critical. Actions designed to enhanceurban transport productivity as a w hole, rather than for privileged groups,


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256 Urban transpon in the developing worldare also critical. How ever, one is faced again w ith the possibility of imple-menting measures w hich will benefit the transpo rt system as a who le butare not nec essarily relevant to the fight against poverty. A s illustrated byM itric (2008), the public transpon po licy ma y focus either or private carusers (quality of service oriented) or on poor users (accessibility and faresoriented): the necessary actions which are involved by these goals are verydifferent. We need to ensure that gains in productivity feed back into alowering of the cost paid by the poorest users. Such productivity gainsare mo re often than not captured by the ow ners of vehicles rather than bytravellers by non-m otorized modes.

It is clear from the preceding discussion that not all modes of publictransport are equa lly accessible to the poor for m any reaso ns. Actions toimprove productivity must rely on a multimodal system which includesma ny com ponents and m odes (such as shared taxis, minibuses operatingon a self-employed basis) which can be integrated within a wider schemecompo sed of com pany-operated buses, and higher-capacity m eans suchas bus rapid transit (BR T) services and even mo re high-capacity rail serv-ices. Gauging the wea kness of the public transport supply in the poorestareas, it appea rs necessary to establish minimum e fforts (and standards)for low-cost transport provision (Koster and de Langen, 2001) at afford-able levels.Organization of dw Transport Sector and the Need for an OyerarchingOrganizing Managem ent AuthorityThe case has already been made that actions to meet the travel needs ofthe urban poor hav e to be part of a w ider set of interventions dealing with,among other things, roads, transport supply in isolated areas, a varietyof public transport o perators, levels of fares, opera tor produc tivity levelsand so o n. In that regard it is necessary to set up a structure coo rdinatingthese multiple actions w hich are usually under the responsibility of m anydifferent public agencies. This is why the poverty reduction strategy is onesupplementary reason to call for the creation of an overarching trans-port management authority. Organizing a multimodal transport systemrequires setting up a hierarchy o f routes with transfer points that shape thepublic transport network , and issuing permits to operate in different zonesor routes. To be efficient, such an authority must cover the w hole transportsystem, including pa ratransit. Such authorities have already been set up insome Af rican cities (Go dard, 2002a ), as the following discussion suggests:

Cetud, in Dakar, was created in 1997. This was done on the basisof the reform supported by the World Bank. It works with many


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Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 257com ponents of the transport system but has not yet been successfulin implementing a real reform of the sector. It has no real decision-making powers, and the issuing of permits for minibuses or taxisremains the responsibility o f the M inister of T ransport. Agetu in Abidjan was created in 2000. It has faced difficulties inlaunching its activities, due to a conflict between the state and thecomm unes over control of the revenues generated from the yearlytaxes paid by the operators managed by Agetu.

These exp eriences demo nstrate the great difficulties that such author-ities confront when seeking to take proactive action. They should not,however, invalidate attempts towards organizational and institutionalreforms of the urban transport sector. An ongoing issue in seeking thisoutcome is the need to clarify what the goals and competences of theorganizing authority are, for often the fight against poverty does not seemto be a part of this mandate.Direct Measures on Fares

There is a degree of scepticism with regard to the efficiency of direct mea s-ures supposedly benefiting the p oor. T his is because, among other things,reduced public transport fa res often benefit the middle classes rather thanthe poor, because the poor still cannot afford the fares even w hen they arereduced. The usual approa ch in developed co untries consists of proposingsome reduced o r free rates to poor or disadvantaged groups, which are thebeneficiaries of various subsidies (for example in France the `minimumintegration income' or unemploym ent benefits or elderly allowanc e). Thisappro ach is rooted in the pursuit of social cohesion and the fight againstexclusion rather than the fight against poverty.Such an approa ch seems barely pra ctical in African cities, as it is basedon a public transport supply w ell controlled by the authorities, and relieson a c omplex adm inistrative system of monitoring individual incomes andresources for targeted people. By contrast, with the formal economy ofdeveloped c ountries, African so cieties rely ma inly on informal ac tivities.Salaried employees are a minority within the active w orkforce. This meansthat only the formally identified low-income groups, such as students,state employ ees and pupils can claim such reduced fares, which is insuf-ficient. These groups are actually not the poorest which of c ourse is nota reason for not helping them, but they should not misrepresent the urbanpoor. A more enlightened and global wa y of thinking should be applied tothis matter. A crucial issue is to define the share of the non-poor w ho w illbenefit from this type of m easure even though they are not targeted, and


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258 Urban transport in the developing worldto define the share of the poor w ho w ill not benefit because they ha ve noeasy acc ess to formal public transport.Other forms of indirect action may have a more noticeable effect;mainly those that rely on a rating (tarif) structure. If the poor are moreand more p ushed out or displaced towards peripheral areas (as is the case),it means that a flat rate on the overall urban transpo rt network wo uld evi-dently be beneficial to them. One should, howev er, be careful in applyingsuch gen eric principies without detailed ana lysis, since the context varesfrom on e city to another. The real terms of cross-subsidy which operateswithin any rating policy have to be analysed.

CONCLUSIONSW hatever definition of poverty w e choose to employ, urban travel trans-port is a major potential component of a strategy to eradicate poverty.This has long been neglected by economists and other developmentexperts, including transportation specialists, who have given priority toliteracy, water supply and health measures but have not addressed themobility and accessibility needs of the urba n poo r.M obility is a prerequisite of phy sical access to schools, health and com -munity centres and places of em ployment. The design of specific transportactions to promote the lot of the urban poor is not easy and cannot beexpressed only by a reduced set of indicators, as such actions require anintima te appreciation of the m any interlinka ges. Beca use mo bility is notan end in itself, it is necessary to integrate the location of activities intothe analysis of the transport needs of the urban poor, and thus take intoaccount the interplay between transport and urbanization patterns. Thisstatement is not very original, but it needs to be stressed again and aga in.If we refer again to the distinction between poverty and destitution, apossible recommendation would be that transport policies intended toaddress the movem ent needs of the urban po or should ensure a minimumstandard of m obility, allowing the fulfilment of basic needs and suppo rtingthe fight against destitution, whilst simultaneously maintaining existingsocial network s. The reality of the urbanization process, howev er, meansthat travel conditions should be improved a t a larger scale than the immedi-ate environm ent reachable on foot. This suggests that moto rized mobilityremains an imperative to foster better access to jobs or to maintain a socialnetwork , whatever the quality of infrastructure in residential areas.Strategies for the enhancem ent of public transport and non-m otorizedmo vem ent facilities have to tak e into account the issue of affordability atboth the individual and the collective levels. They a lso need to enco urage


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Poverty and urban mobility: diagnosis toward a new understanding 259multimodal transport management systems in which paratransit coexistswith transport supplied by large enterprises. Whether this leads to thespiral of 'more mobility, more m onetary resources for more co nsumptionof non-basic goods', rather than sustainable outcomes, is ultimately achoice of governance.In co nclusion, it is impo rtant to stress that the difficulties and p ossiblemisunderstandings raised by the tensions between mobility and accessibility,and between poverty and destitution, have not been completely overcome.They are instead inherent to the controversial perspectives on the concept of`development'. The importance of the poverty theme in formal urban trans-port policy objec tives includes, especially, the risk that form al processes ofnegotiation between development agencies and transport policy-makers indeveloping countries can be counterproduc tive to serving the needs of thepoor, and establishing where and when these needs are to be met in priority.

NOTES1. `Destitution' here is a translation from the French word misre. It is a term usedto describe a condition worse than 'poverty' where even the basics for daily life aredeficient.7. In the same year (1997), UN-Habitat organized in Florence (Italy) a conference onurban poverty, including a focus on access to transport among va rious themes.A revised version prepared in 2004 introduced this concern following the results of theSITRASS S tudy a study produced by the French International Society for Transportin Sub-Saharan Africa.Programme d'Amlioration de la Mobilit Urbaine (Programme for Improvement ofUrban Mobility).This point was made by Elong Mbassi from the Municipal Development Programmefor African cities, in a round table meeting at the Codatu X conference in Lom(Godard, 2002b).Cap ability is viewed as the positive freedom `to be' and lo do some thing'.See D iaz Olvera et al. (2008) on the methodological questions of the estimation of trans-port expenditures and household revenues.Illich (19 80) also introduced the neologism of 'conv iviality' to designate the quality ofsocial interaction.

This is well expressed by the title of a recent book by Le Breton (2005): Bouger pours'en sortir. Mobilit quotidienne et intgration sociale, which can be translated as: 'Beingmobile in order to get o ut of difficulties. Daily m obility and social integration'.Unpublished interview.Similar analyses on Eastern Africa cases can be found in J. How e (2000).Amo ngst the variety of data dealing with this topic in cities worldwide, the example ofKarachi gives the same kind of figure with 65 per cent of the home work travel budgetsof two hours and mo re, and 15 per cent of four hours and more (Sohail, 2001).One can also find some elements of discussion in Mitric and Carruthers (2005).This section is partly based on the conclusions of the SITRASS Study report ofConakry and D ouala to which the author contributed (see SITRASS, 2004 a, b).15. Inflexion' here means giving a stronger weight to the consideration of the travel needsof the poor without exclusivity.


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260 Urhan transpon in the developing world16 This is a system that actively seeks complementarities between individual modes andpublic modes, paratransit and form al enterprises, and buses and m ass transport by railor bus rapid transit (BRT).17 See the manual prepared by M. de Langen and R. Tembele (2001), or the guide pre-

pared by Setty Pendakur (2005) for the W orld Bank based on this previous document.18 The Institute for Transport and Development Policy (ITDP) - a US non-governmentalorganization (NG O) - has pledged to supp ort this initiative in many African co untriessuch as Ghana. Senegal and South Africa.

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