Transport And Mobility Futures In Urban Africa

This book provides a collection of insightful conceptual and empirical works that situate transport and mobility challenges in the unique context of individual countries and cities while highlighting commonalities across the African continent. Written from an interdisciplinary perspective, the book covers important themes in transport and mobility including the links between urbanization, urban structure, and accessibility; transport equity and poverty, non-motorized transport, public transport, and the challenges and opportunities of new and emerging transport technologies, and ICT-mediated mobility solutions. Each chapter engages with the normative imperatives that are critical to improving the transport and mobility situations of African urban areas now and in the future.

This book critically explores the relationship between mobility patterns, transport provision and urban development in East African cities. Bringing together contributions on the futures of mobility in urban East Africa, the chapters examine transport provision, mobility patterns, location-specific modes of transport and transformative factors for transport and mobility in the rapidly urbanising region. The book outlines different mobility needs to be addressed in transport planning to serve and shape the respective cities and examines the decision-making process in transport planning and the level of accountability to the public. The contributors show the dialectic between innovation in transport/mobility and urban development under rapid urbanisation and discusses how to practically integrate mobility and transport provision into urban development. This book will be of interest to scholars in urban planning, transport planning, transport geography, social sciences and African studies.

​This book provides a unique perspective on urban mobility focusing on past challenges and future trends. The book enables discussions of pathways towards sustainable and people-centred urban mobility building on existing concepts and introducing novel methods and consideration of future research. In particular, the book provides an overview of trends, design methods, and projects combining foresight and agent-based modelling to better integrate active mobility in Mobility-as-a-Service, assess impacts of automated vehicles in Paris, and compare multiple solutions in Cairo. The book provides a range of multidisciplinary concepts and methods that will be invaluable to both researchers in the field and students taking relevant courses.

What challenges do pedestrians and cyclists face in cities of the developing world? What opportunities do these cities have to provide for walking and cycling? Based on in-depth research conducted in Cape Town (South Africa), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and Nairobi (Kenya), this book explores these questions by presenting work on walking and cycling travel behaviour, the status of road safety in these cities, as well as an analysis of the infrastructure for walking and cycling, and the workings of the institutions responsible for planning for these modes. The book also presents case studies relating to particular opportunities and challenges, such as the development and evaluation of ‘walking bus’ interventions, and the opportunities micro-simulation of pedestrian interventions offers within a data-scarce environment. Non-motorized Transport Integration into Urban Transport Planning in Africa demonstrates that transport and urban planning remains situated in a logic of automobile-dependent transport planning and global city development. This logic of practice does not pay adequate attention to walking and cycling. It argues that a significant shift in both policy as well as political commitment is needed so as to prioritize walking and cycling as strategies for sustainable transport policy in urban Africa. This book will be a key text for practitioners and policy makers working in planning, transport policy and urban development in Africa, as well as students and scholars of African studies, development studies, urban geography, transport studies and sustainable development.

Transport system improvements can have complex and unequal impacts on different sectors of society. Conventional approaches to analysing travel demand and transport system performance developed in the Global North can be ill-equipped to identify and understand the complexities and inequities of cities in the Global South. The book considers the mobilities and immobilities of cities in Africa, Asia and Latin America, through an exploration of the theoretical and methodological entry points we use to understand transport planning in cities. It will be of interest to students, scholars and policy makers of geography, urban studies, urban planning, transport studies and development studies.

This book explores the physical and electronic integration of innovative urban public transport systems in seven metropolitan cities in South Africa and Zimbabwe in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0). The book also highlights how collaborative engagement can improve new transport projects in cities of the Global South. It demonstrates how integration concerns remain in transport infrastructure projects in cities of the developing countries. Consequently, in order to strengthen the emerging and promising economies of these cities, there is a need for efficient, integrated, reliable and affordable public transport systems. The book explains that plans to deliver innovative transport systems in the Global South need to be well coordinated and managed to yield physically and electronically integrated systems.

Public transport systems in contemporary Sub-Saharan African cities are heavily reliant upon paratransit services. These services are defined as informal transportation which operates between the public and individual private spheres. In Africa paratransit is characterized by low quality of vehicles and chaotic management but it also provides cheap, accessible and flexible transport solutions for the urban poor. It is typically poorly regulated and operates as a set of informal businesses. A common result of weak public sector regulation and a fare strategy in which owners claim a fixed daily revenue target and drivers who keep the variable balance as income, is destructive competition and poor quality of service. There is an incontrovertible case for improving the quality, reliability and coverage of public transport systems, and some city governments have attempted to do so by initiating reform projects that envisage the phased replacement of paratransit operations with formalised bus rapid transit systems. In this book the authors argue that there are, however, path dependencies and constraints that limit the possible extent of public transport system reform. Paratransit operations also have some inherent advantages with respect to demand responsiveness and service innovation. Attempts to eradicate paratransit may be neither pragmatic nor strategic. Two future scenarios are likely: hybrid systems comprised of both paratransit and formally planned modes; and systems improved by upgrades and strengthened regulation of existing paratransit services. The business strategies and aspirations of incumbent paratransit operators in three case cities – Cape Town, Dar es Salaam and Nairobi – are discussed, as well as their attitudes towards emerging public transport reform projects. International experiences of hybrid system regulation and paratransit business development are reviewed in order to explore policy options. The authors contend that policies recognising paratransit operators, and seeking contextually appropriate complementarity with formalised planned services, will produce greater benefits than policies ignoring their continued existence.