Local public transport is organised very differently around the world. While we are used to buses and trains with fixed routes and timetables in this country, people in other countries use privately organised shared taxis and “on-demand” transport much more frequently. Such informal transport systems do offer advantages and are often even more efficient than centrally organised local transport, as researchers have found. What can we learn from this for transport planning?
Public transport is structured very differently around the world. Industrial nations usually have centrally organized public transport with fixed routes and stops. Subways, trams and buses also run according to fixed timetables. In countries in the Global South, on the other hand, people mainly travel using informal transport services with short-term fixed routes, stops and times. There are, for example, privately organized minibuses and shared taxis that run “on demand”. From the outside, the operation of such informal transport services often seems chaotic and not very effective. But is this impression justified?
Local transport systems in comparison
A team led by Kush Mohan Mittal from the Technical University of Dresden has now investigated for the first time how efficient the various global local transport systems actually are. To do this, they compared more than 7,000 formal and informal bus routes across 36 cities and 22 countries. The basis for this was freely available GPS route data from bus routes from the OpenStreetMap service. The scientists also used this to evaluate how well the routes are adapted to local population densities and how many detours are built into the route.
Mittal and his colleagues surprisingly discovered that the routes of informal transport systems are at least as efficient or even more efficient than centralized services. In many places, self-organization of local transport actually leads to a better transport system than the central organization. In countries in the Global South in particular, informal transport systems often cover areas where no publicly organized transport is available – either because there are no bus lines or because they are too expensive for local residents. Such informal services are sometimes organized by civil interest groups, but often also by private individuals who want to earn money from them.
On-demand local transport is also less chaotic than assumed, as the analysis showed. Here, too, more or less fixed routes or travel corridors with a few main stops are formed, as the team found. The routes are more straight in core areas, but at the ends of the lines more detours are taken in order to be able to cover larger areas. The researchers also found this pattern in centrally organized transport systems and across all the cities studied: “Overall, however, informal transport has fewer detours and more uniform routes than centrally planned bus routes. They are therefore more efficient – and profitable even without the extensive subsidies that are common in the Global North,” says Mittal.
Both systems could be improved
Informal transport services are therefore by no means “inferior” to the central public transport system as we know it, but rather offer advantages. In addition to route planning, aspects such as vehicle safety, driver training and pay levels, and the ability to plan and be reliable are also important for good public transport. However, there is not yet enough data available on these factors to be able to compare the transport systems with one another.
According to the researchers, the study nevertheless shows that existing informal systems should not simply be replaced by centrally planned routes. Instead, both systems should be included in future transport planning and each should be made more sustainable. The self-organized services could then become more regular and reliable, while the centrally organized services could learn from the efficient route planning of informal systems, writes the team.
Source: Kush Mohan Mittal (Technical University of Dresden) et al.; Nature Communications, doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-49193-1