Urban Transport Developing Countries

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Urban transport in developing countries

Ken Gwilliama
a
Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK
Online publication date: 26 November 2010
To cite this Article Gwilliam, Ken(2003) 'Urban transport in developing countries', Transport Reviews, 23: 2, 197 216
To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/01441640309893
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TRANSPORT REVIEWS, 2003, VOL. 23, NO. 2, 197216
Urban transport in developing countries

KEN GWILLIAM
Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK (formerly Economic
Adviser to the transport sector of the World Bank)
(Received in final form 16 January 2003)
Based on the recent World Bank urban transport strategy review Cities on the
move, the paper examines the critical differences between the urban transport
problems facing cities in the developing and industrialized worlds. Premature
congestion and deteriorating environmental safety and security conditions are seen as
endemic in the developing country cities. Although the proportion of urban space
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devoted to movement is often relatively low in the developing world, rates of

motorization are seen to be not untypical of those experienced in industrialized
countries at similar average income levels. Hence rather than explaining the
differences primarily in terms of natural endowments, the paper emphasizes the
different and weaker policy and institutional contexts in which urban transport is
typically performed in developing countries. It argues that the industrialized world, and
particularly the multilateral banks and aid agencies, can make their most effective
contribution to development by concentrating on assisting developing countries to
overcome these institutional impediments to successful urban development.
1. Introduction
The aim of this paper is to examine the ways in which, the extent to which and the
reasons for which the urban transport problems of the developing countries differ from
those of the already industrialized countries. For this purpose, the industrialized countries
are taken to be the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
member countries, excluding Mexico, while developing countries are taken to be those
that qualify as borrowing members of the World Bank, including the transitional
economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
The cities of these developing and transitional economies inevitably differ greatly in
economic, political and demographic characteristics. Income differences largely deter-
mine vehicle ownership. The amount of road infrastructure also tends to grow with
income, but at a slower rate than vehicle ownership. Political history inevitably moulds the
structure of cities, the most notable differences being those between former socialist
planned cities, many of which had widely dispersed pockets of high-density residences
served by mass transit, and those where market forces played a greater role in shaping land
use. Rapid population growth tends to be associated with below average proportions of
land space devoted to circulation.
These three variables yield a taxonomy of city types that partly explains the type of
transport systems which they have acquired (table 1). For example, relatively rich
countries are highly motorized and congested, but also more able to afford rail-based mass
transit systems. Where growth has been very rapid, the development of mass transit is less
likely to have occurred. However, former socialist cities that have suffered stagnating
Transport Reviews ISSN 0144-1647 print/ISSN 1464-5327 online 2003 Taylor & Francis Ltd
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/0144164032000068939
198 K. Gwilliam
Table 1. Categorization of city circumstances.
Population growth Income/motorization rates
Low High
Low Singapore ex-centrally

planned market
Dhaka Bangkok, Manila,
Hong Kong
High Samarkand, Moscow, Warsaw, ex-centrally

Almaty, Bishkek Budapest planned market
Dakar, Nairobi Prague, Buenos
Aires
Source: World Bank (2002).

incomes are more likely to have a mass transit system than income alone would suggest.
Dominating all, however, are the influences of city size, which affects average trip lengths,
and density, which determines trip numbers per unit of space. Large, dense cities have the
highest levels of traffic congestion and the worst environmental impacts from road
traffic.
2. How do developing country cities differ?

It may be argued that many of those influences also operate in the industrialized world.
What then are the particular distinguishing characteristics of the developing country
cities?
2.1. Premature congestion

The first is the onset of road congestion at much lower levels of car ownership than
might be expected. Congestion is endemic in the developing country megacities.
Downtown weekday traffic speeds are reported to average 10 km/h or less in Bangkok,
Manila, Mexico and Shanghai, and 15 km/h or less in Kuala Lumpur and Sao Paulo.
Surprisingly, however, this does not occur because developing countries have relatively
higher levels of motorization with respect to income levels than the industrialized
countries. Indeed, most developing countries have less than 100 cars per 1000 people
compared with 400 or more in the richer industrialized countries, and in terms of the
relationship between income and car ownership the developing countries are actually
following a pattern very similar to that followed by the industrialized countries such as
France, the UK, Japan and Spain (figure 1). Only Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and some of
the transition countries have higher car ownership-to-income ratios than experienced by
the industrialized countries. In that sense, the congestion is premature.
Some reasons for this phenomenon are apparent. Population is growing rapidly in
many cities, often through uncontrolled immigration that allows city growth to outstrip the
pace at which infrastructure can be adjusted. Moreover, vehicle ownership and use is
growing even faster than the population, with ownership growth rates of 1520% per year
not uncommon in developing countries.
Urban transport in developing countries 199
Figure 1. Motorization and incomes. Growth of cars versus growth of per capita incomes in
France, Japan, Spain and the UK (1950s95) and relative position of selected other countries in
1995. Source: World Bank (2002).
2.2. Deteriorating environment

The second feature is that unlike most industrialized cities, the developing world
megacities are still experiencing deteriorating environmental conditions (Hughes and
Lovei 1999). World Health Organization (WHO) studies of megacities show that lead
excesses over norm are only very serious in the diminishing number of developing country
cities where leaded gasoline is used. In contrast, excesses in fine particulate matter are
widespread and large. Excess of CO is typically not nearly as great as that of fine
particulate matter. Ambient NO2 concentrations are often below the WHO guidelines but
are on the increase in developing countries, as are those of ozone (figure 2). Significantly
elevated levels of ambient SO2 tend to come from the combustion of coal much more than
from the transport sector.
2.3. Safety and security

The third distinguishing characteristic of developing country cities is a high
incidence of transport-related injuries, both from accidents (the safety problem) and
from criminal behaviour (the security problem). Nearly 1 million people per year are
killed in road accidents, of which about 85% are in the developing and transitional
economies and half in urban areas. In addition, between 25 and 35 million people are
injured in road accidents world-wide, of which up to 75% are in urban areas. Mortality
rates per vehiclewhich are the most reliable indicatorare typically 10 or more
times as high in developing country cities as in industrialized cities. The security
problem is less well quantified or recognized. It particularly affects pedestrians and
cyclists, but also affects people in cars and public transport vehicles. These travel
200 K. Gwilliam
Figure 2. Overview of ambient air quality in selected cities. Subjective assessment of monitoring
data (various years, 1990s). Sources: Data have been assembled by Asif Faiz and Surhid Gautam,
World Bank, from various sources including World Bank project reports, URBAIR reports, WRI
World Resources, a study of seven cities undertaken for the LAC Clean Air Initiative, Indian Central
Pollution Board reports, and unpublished data obtained by direct inquiry from various cities (Sao
Paulo, Santiago, Bangkok).
conditions have impacts much wider than the direct injury and trauma suffered by
victims and their families, who usually have neither insurance compensation nor a
social security safety net to protect them. The very perception of vulnerability
influences the travel patterns of a much wider spectrum of people who avoid vulnerable
modes such as cycling or vulnerable times of travel. The diminishing trip rates now
being experienced in some of the larger South American cities such as Sao Paulo have
been partly attributed to insecurity.
2.4. Declining transport for the poor

Finally, developing country cities experience an unusual degree of skewness in the
distributional effects of transport developments. This is reflected in several ways.
First, as cities have developed, the poor have tended to be marginalized in peripheral
locations or sometimes in inhospitable inner-city locations, with very poor access by the
only modes of transport available to them, walking, non-motorized or public transport.
Second, non-motorized transport, including walking, which accounts for between 25
and 50% of all trips in the major Indian cities (Sachdeva 1998), and around half in major
African cities, is particularly badly served. For example, less than half of the major roads
in most Indian cities have pavements, and those that exist are frequently occupied by street
vendors, encroached upon by shop premises, or blocked by parked cars, motorcycles and
bicycles. Public authority attitudes to bicycles have been similarly ambiguous and some
governmentsmost notably that of Indonesiahave taken positive actions to eliminate
non-motorized public transport.
Finally, the public transport story is rather similar. Though buses are the main
mechanized public transport mode, carrying 6.5 trillion (6.5 1012 ) passenger-km per
year in 3 million vehicles, of which over 2 million operate in cities, the traditional local
monopoly bus operators, whether private or publicly owned, have now mostly collapsed
(Gwilliam 2001). In Africa, they have largely been replaced by a fragmented small vehicle
paratransit sector, while in Eastern Europe and central Asia a similar process of decline is
at various stages of completion (for further details, see Gwilliam 2000). The main
difference in the public transport story is that the decline has often been precipitated by
fare control policies, which were ostensibly devised to protect the poor.
3. Preventing premature congestion

Although the problems of the developing country cities do not result from
motorization occurring at lower per capita income levels than experienced in the earlier
growth of the industrialized countries, their situation does differ from that of the
industrialized nations at a similar stage in their income growth in some respects.
3.1. High spatial concentration of population and income

City size distribution is very skewed, particularly in many Asian and African
developing countries. In Thailand, the capital city is over 40 times as large as the second
city, and this ratio (the primacy index) is above 3 for other highly populated countries
such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. Income and economic activity
distribution is also very skewed spatially. Hence, although countries like Thailand, the
Philippines, Chile and Korea have relatively low national rates of motorization, they have
highly congested capital cities that are on the common track of having much higher
incomes and (contrary to experience in most Western industrialized countries) car
ownership than the national average.
The congestion of the megacities suggests the potential of a wider dispersal of
population. Unfortunately, the major cities have also been the poles of national growth,
and neither the magnitude of agglomeration economies nor environmental externalities are
understood clearly enough to make any universal judgement about how far or fast to push
dispersal. Furthermore, attempts to control concentration, either by land use and
development constraints in the megacities or by inducements to locate outside them, have
had limited impact.1 It is therefore better to concentrate on helping markets to work more
effectively in locating economic activity rather than to engage in strong administrative
202 K. Gwilliam
redirection of it. Improving the quality of intercity transport and communications can
contribute to that, as can the removal of subsidies to the megacityincluding transport
subsidies.2
3.2. Inadequate quantity and structure of road infrastructure

Inadequate road space is another contributory factor. The 1012% of land space
devoted to all forms of road rights of way in the major cities in Asia falls far short of the
2030% common in US cities and with a few exceptions such as Mumbai they have a low
proportion of rail movements. Even if the proportion of space devoted to movement in an
already highly congested city or megacity is low, that does not mean that it can escape its
problems simply by building more roads. Once the city fabric is established it becomes
increasingly expensive and both socially environmentally disturbing to superimpose
substantial additional road infrastructure. Moreover, where congestion is already
suppressing demand, increasing capacity may simply generate such a large amount of
extra traffic that the congestion reduction effects are much less than anticipated.
Thus it is not simply the amount of space devoted to roads but more complex
considerations of the overall structure of the urban transport system that matters. Most
critically, the character and capacity of infrastructure provision needs to be tailored to the
nature and density of the planned or anticipated developments. One of the defining
features of cities widely believed to have been most successful in managing the
relationship between transport and land use, such as Curitiba, Brazil, Zurich, Switzerland,
and Singapore, is the early existence of an integrated land use and transport structure plan
in support of which a wide range of sectoral policies were employed.
The structuring of the road network itself is also very important. Local distribution of
traffic and longer distance trunk movements within and between towns do not mix well,
and a given amount of road space will always give better performance if it is organized
hierarchically to try to separate functions. Some cities such as Bangkok and Manila suffer
particularly badly from the absence of an appropriate structure of local distribution
capacity. So it is the management and use of the space devoted to transport, rather than the
simple proportion of land devoted to roads, that is critical to system performance.
3.3. Weak traffic management

Traffic management has been notably unsuccessful in many developing country cities.
This is partly inherent due to the wider mix of traffic. However, it is also due to the
absence of adequate planning and implementation skills, and to the low status of traffic
management within city bureaucracies. Even where facilities exist, institutional weak-
nesses have limited their effectiveness. For example, overriding of individual traffic
signals by traffic police in Bangkok almost totally undermined attempts to introduce an
area traffic control system.
3.4. Poorly developed municipal fiscal and regulatory institutions

In the recent process of decentralization of urban transport responsibility to the cities
the expenditure responsibilities of municipalities have tended to expand much more than
the intergovernmental transfer of financial resources. As only a small fraction of the
resources needed can come from the multilateral and bilateral agencies, cities will have to
broaden their financial base, both for capital and current expenditure purposes.
Many municipalities, having seen successful privatization or concessioning of power,
water and telecommunication utilities, harbour hopes that transport infrastructure can be
privately financed. Certainly some existing urban expressways and urban railways have
been successfully concessioned. But the scope for private financing of new roads through
tolls is limited by the need to limit access, while shadow toll systems, as developed in
some European countries, do not help because they leave costs primarily on budget. Pure
private finance of new urban rail projects has not yet been successful in any case in a
developing country.
Both for private sector road and rail investments significant operational difficulties
have also been experienced in cities such as Kuala Lumpur, Manila and Bangkok because
of the failure to integrate the private systems effectively within a comprehensive urban
transport and development strategy. Purely opportunistic finance is thus to be avoided.
Unless the private developments conform to a general structure plan they may impose
unforeseen, and sometimes very significant, contingent costs on the public budget.
Successful accommodation of privately financed infrastructure has hitherto been seriously
hampered by the inadequacy of the planning and regulatory institutions.
4. Improving the environment

4.1. Setting priorities

When evidence of susceptibility to physical excesses is combined with evidence of
health impacts from doseresponse analysis, studies in a number of cities (e.g. Bangkok,
Cairo, Mexico City, Quito and Santiago) have indicated that the greatest damage to human
health comes from exposure to fine particulate matter (particles smaller than 2.5 microns
in aerodynamic diameter, or PM2.5 ) and to lead. Depending on topographical and
meteorological conditions, ozone can also be a health serious problem in large
metropolitan regions, as it is in Mexico City and Santiago. It is on the reduction of these
pollutants that urban transport policy in developing countries should therefore
concentrate.
In this context, urban transport is generally identified as a high-priority sector. It is the
main contributor to the most harmful fine particulate emissions, is responsible for
8090% of atmospheric lead in cities where leaded gasoline is still used, and for
significant contribution to the formation of ground-level ozone. Moreover, while large
stationary sources, often located at a distance from densely populated city centres,
disperse into the higher layers of the atmosphere, vehicles emit near ground level in highly
populated areas. In a study of six megacities, vehicles accounted for only 6% of emissions
in tons emitted but for 32% of population average exposure.3
4.2. Improving vehicle and fuel technology

The first priority clearly is to phase out the addition of lead to gasoline. Although more
than three-quarters of the gasoline sold world-wide today is unleaded, some very large
countries, such as Indonesia and almost the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa, remain to be
converted. Eliminating lead additive from gasoline can also trigger wider environmental
improvement as availability of unleaded gasoline throughout a country is a prerequisite for
the introduction of catalytic converters to reduce other emissions. Care must be taken,
however, that lead is not simply replaced by other octane enhancers which have their own
adverse health impacts.
Sulphur in diesel and gasoline generates emissions of SO2 , which causes acid rain and
contributes directly to particulate emissions, but is particularly damaging because it render
inoperative most of the current technologies for suppressing particulate emissions. It
differs from lead in being an inherent component of the basic fuel rather than an additive.
While it can be reduced by hydrotreating the base fuels, it carries a far higher cost penalty
204 K. Gwilliam
in terms of reforming the refinery processes. Particularly in countries where the carbon
component of vehicular particulate matter remains high, concentrating on sulphur
standards may not be a cost-effective way to mitigate particulate emissions from diesel
engines.
A particular problem in cleaning fuel in developing countries is that many refineries
are owned by the government, which may resist requiring changes in fuel quality that will
increase cost, or will embrace them only while maintaining import protection through
restrictions or high tariffs. In fact, the net cost to society of improving fuel quality by
importing superior fuels may be lower than the costs resulting from use of domestically
manufactured fuels with less stringent specifications. On the other hand, the imposition of
high fuel specifications may not be a cost-effective solution in countries, such as those in
South Asia, where the vehicle fleet is dominated by old, poorly maintained vehicles or
where transport fuels are routinely adulterated.
Many countries pin their hopes of improving urban air quality on the introduction of
alternative fuels. For example, all taxis in Buenos Aires already operate on compressed
natural gas (CNG) and the Indian High Court recently instigated a process of
replacement of diesel by CNG for buses and all pre-1990 auto-rickshaws and taxis in
highly polluted New Delhi. CNG is a relatively clean fuel, available in abundance in
many developing countries such as Argentina, Bangladesh and Thailand. Moreover, city
gas distribution networks already exist in many large cities in Bangladesh, Brazil,
Colombia, Indonesia, Pakistan, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. However,
conversion to CNG has its difficulties. CNG vehicles are up to 30% more expensive to
buy and pay a 3035% energy premium over diesel vehicles. Their range is also
substantially less than that of a diesel vehicle. Moreover, though good retrofit kits (e.g.
in Argentina) work efficiently, many do not. Serious problems were encountered with
bus conversions in New Delhi. Maintenance can also be a problem: of a fleet of 40
CNG buses in Jakarta, half were out of operation in mid-2001 due to maintenance
problems.
Other alternative fuels are even less attractive. Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is
easier to distribute and store than CNG4 and has been effectively used in the conversion
of the three-wheeler tuk-tuks in Bangkok. But LPG must be stored under pressure both
inside the vehicle and in the fuel depots requiring expensive pressurized tanks and special
refuelling equipment. The required investments in LPG distribution and refuelling stations
have not been made in most developing countries. True biofuels (i.e. those without
substantial fossil fuel use hidden in harvesting and processing) would give a real reduction
in GHG emissions, but are still elusive at costs competitive with gasoline or diesel.
Hydrogen fuel-cell buses are already being used in trial projects, including a programme
funded by UNDP, but they are very expensive and unlikely to have early application in
developing countries. Even conventional electric vehicles that have obvious attractions as
urban vehicles, whether powered directly, as in the case of electric trains or trolleybuses,
or indirectly by batteries, as in the case of some buses, small vans and cars, are presently
uneconomic.
For substitutes to be attractive in the developing world, they must not only be seen to
address locally perceived environmental problems, but also to be economically viable at
the individual and national levels. Seen in that light, hybrid diesel/electric vehicles, which
are now being developed with some success and tested in industrialized countries, may
have the best prospects. While their cost is similar to that of a heavy CNG vehicle, they
can give a 30% energy saving compared with a conventional diesel vehicle. With high fuel
prices, they may thus combine environmental and economic benefit.
4.3. Dealing with the high polluters

Poorly maintained vehicles are responsible for a disproportionate share of total vehicle
emissions. Data collected in India in NovemberDecember 1999 during a series of
inspection and maintenance clinics for two-wheelers indicated that minor vehicle repairs
improved fuel economy by an average of 17% and reduced CO emissions by 44%. There
are thus some maintenance and operation practices that would actually combine
environmental improvement with operating cost saving. An example is use of the correct
kind and amount of lubricant in the two-stroke engines that are common in South Asia.
Wide public education campaigns should be undertaken to promote cost-effective
practices.
A well run, uncorrupt inspection and maintenance (I/M) programme should also
reduce emissions significantly. However, designing effective I/M programmes has proved
difficult due to a combination of technical and corruption problems. For off-road testing,
experience from various parts of the world suggests that an I/M system based on
centralized, high-volume, inspection-only centres with computerized emission measure-
ment to minimize tampering and corruption, as in Mexico City, is likely to be more
effective than a decentralized system with a large number of participating private garages
(Kojima and Bacon 2002). Wider use of spot-checking equipment capable of identifying
the main problems from any relevant vehicle-type, and of fixed I/M stations for more
thorough examination and follow-up of vehicles identified, may increase the technical
effectiveness of a control programme while an appropriate system of fees and fines could
make such a system self-financing.
Vehicle scrappage and replacement incentive payments can encourage the early
retirement of high polluters and have been tried in several countries.5 They have been
most successful when directed to buses and heavy goods vehicle markets, as in Hungary,
in which it is common to replace old vehicles with new. In the private car sector where
vehicles are typically changed more frequently for a vehicle of only a slightly newer
vintage, they have been more problematical (Gwilliam 2002).
4.4. Motorcycle problem

Motorcycles pose a very special problem in Asia, both in relatively rich cities such as
Bangkok and relatively poor ones such as Ho Chi Minh. They account for about half the
vehicle fleet in many Asian cities and up to 75% in some cities such as Hanoi. The result is
that some very low-income cities can demonstrate very high levels of personal mobility. In
Taiwan (China) the ownership is already 0.55 per capita. In the long-term this may be
unsustainable as motorcycle owners graduate to cars; in the interim, it has the disadvantage
that because motorcycles offer substantially greater speed and flexibility of movement than
inadequate and congestion-bound bus services while being broadly comparable with them
in cost, they undermine the development of public transport services.
The immediate problem is that motorcycles are dirty and dangerous. In New Delhi, for
example, 45% of particulate emissions and two-thirds of unburned hydrocarbon emissions
in the transport sector are estimated to come from two- and three-wheelers powered by
two-stroke engines. These are estimated to emit more than 10 times the amount of fine
particulate matter per vehicle-km than a modern car, and only a little less than a light
diesel truck (Weaver and Chan 1996). In some countries such as Bangladesh, they use
low-octane gasoline, which is often adulterated with cheap kerosene, causing engine
malfunction. It is also common for the proportion of lubricant in the fuel mix to be two
to three times the recommended level, even though this both increases cost and reduces
performance (Kojima et al. 2000).
206 K. Gwilliam
New motorcycle technology can reduce pollution. The difference in both capital and
operating cost between two- and four-stroke motorcycles is rapidly being eroded, and
Chinese and Japanese manufacturers are already concentrating their sales efforts on four-
strokes. The very large Vietnamese fleet is already predominantly four stroke. However,
new technology does not deal with the problem of the high average age and low
replacement rate of vehicles currently in use. Nor does technology deal with the safety
problem. Although compulsory use of helmets could reduce deaths and injury
substantially, it has hitherto been very difficult to enforce, even in Vietnam where the
problem is most acute. The motorcycle is likely to present the most challenging of all the
transport problems facing Asia in the next decade.
4.5. System management

Given the heavy predominance of old vehicles operating in congested conditions and
the limited prospects for immediate introduction of state-of-the-art technology, system
management, including the elimination of impediments to non-motorized transport, is of
great importance in environmental policy.
It has been estimated that increasing the average speed in city traffic from 10 to 20 km/
h could cut CO2 emissions by nearly 40%. Increasing vehicle speed from 12 to 15 to
30 km/h in Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur was estimated to be equivalent to installing three-
way catalytic converters in 50% of the cars in these cities. Many of the traffic-
management devices used in industrialized countries such as coordinated traffic signal
systems, one way systems, etc. can be used to this end in the developing world.
Unfortunately, as in industrialized countries, this may generate greater car use in the
longer term.
Some forms of traffic management may avoid this effect. For example, traffic-calming
devices, which slow traffic down but do not stop it, may also result in cleaner and safer
traffic. But more generally, experience suggests that traffic management without traffic
restraint is more effective in catering for increased traffic volumes at given speeds than in
securing increased speed or reduced pollution.
Under environmental pressure, many developing country cities have begun to
recognize this. The hoy no circula scheme, first imposed in Mexico City in 1989 and
subsequently modified or extended in other cities such as Sao Paulo and Bogota, excludes
a proportion of vehicles, selected by registration number, on particular days. In the short-
term this has yielded dramatic reductions in traffic volume during the first months of
implementation, but in the longer term it appears to have been undermined as some
households purchase an additional vehicle or retain an old and polluting vehicle that
would have otherwise been replaced to avoid the effect of the restrictions. Further
focusing restraint to exclude all vehicles from particularly sensitive areas (pedestrian-only
city shopping centres or residential areas) is also increasingly being provided for in urban
planning in developing countries.
In some of the very largest cities, buses, which are the transport mode of choice for
the poor, are perceived to be the most significant contributors to pollution. Economic
liberalization of services in cities such as in Lima, Mexico City and Santiago in the late
1980s has been accentuated the problem by contributing to reduced vehicle size, poor
vehicle quality and undesirable operating practices. That is not inevitable, however. For
example, the Chilean government quickly reversed the adverse effects in Santiago by
replacing competition in the market by competition for the market, in the form of a
competitively tendered franchising system using environmental quality of the vehicle as
one of the selection criteria. More generally, buses must be made part of the solution rather
than part of the problem by giving them priority in use of road space. Segregated busways,
common in Brazilian cities, or even more highly integrated priority bus networks, as in
Curitiba, Brazil and Bogota, have already shown themselves able to reduce bus emissions
directly and influence car ownership and use (Gwilliam and Kojima 2002).
4.6. Economic instruments

For the broadest impacts, however, economic instruments still look the most
promising. Studies indicate that in the long run the own-price elasticity for gasoline
consumption is significant enough to make fuel taxation a potential policy instrument for
reducing vehicle usage and kilometres travelled. A World Bank study concluded that a
judicious use of gasoline tax could save the citizens of Mexico City US$110 million a year
more than would an otherwise well-designed control programme with no gasoline tax
(Eskeland and Devarajan 1996).
The best reported experience of strong and consistent use of economic measures is
from Singapore where very strong political action to limit the stock of cars to that deemed
sustainable has been implemented through the auctioning of a controlled stock of
certificates to purchase vehicles as well as by congestion pricing in the central business

district and some of its major freeway accesses (Willoughby 2000). But other cities, such
as Seoul, are now considering road pricing. The existence of a single jurisdiction, with the
ability to use the revenues from vehicle taxation to finance other supporting elements of
a comprehensive policy, seems important to that case.
5. Increasing safety and security

5.1. Incidence of safety and security problems
The nature and composition of accidents and security losses varies substantially
between industrialized and developing countries. Pedestrians account for more than twice
the proportion of those injured in developing as compared with industrialized countries.
Males between the ages of 16 and 54 account for the majority of injury accidents in all
countries. About 15% of those killed in developing countries are children, which is a much
higher proportion than in industrialized countries. Motorcycle and three-wheel motor
vehicle drivers and passengers account for less than 10% of those injured in developing
countries, but up to two-thirds of those injured in some east Asian cities such as Kuala
Lumpur. Public transport passengers, particularly those travelling in the back of a truck or
pickup, are also very vulnerable in many developing countries. Although income data are
rarely collected by the police, recent studies show that the poor are disproportionately
affected.6
The location of accidents also varies significantly between countries. The majority of
urban accidents in industrialized countries occurs at junctions, whilst most urban accidents
in developing countries are reported to occur mid-link. Relatively few occur where there
are any traffic controls, including traffic police. This is partly because in the absence of
effective development control unrestricted access to main roads increases the risk of a
collision. It is also partly attributable to the juxtaposition of motorized and non-motorized
users who are more vulnerable mid-link where speed differences are greatest.
Security problems have a different incidence. Public transport passengers are generally
more vulnerable to physical attack than private car users. Perhaps even more than the
public transport passenger, the pedestrian is increasingly likely to suffer violent attack.
This may occur after dark as part of a robbery or, in the case of women, sexual assault.
It can occur in business or residential districts but is most common in low-income
settlements controlled by gangs in the absence of a police presence.
208 K. Gwilliam
5.2. Information problem

At the heart of the problem of poor safety in developing country cities are a series of
defects of information. First, reliable accident data are sparse and often poorly transmitted
between the police and medical authorities that collect it and the traffic agencies who need
it for system management purposes.
Second, designers of infrastructure and traffic schemes are often unaware of the
implications of their designs. Safety audits of designs are rare despite the fact that
considerable effort has already been put into the preparation of design manuals for safe road
infrastructure.7 At the evaluation level the understandable reluctance to attribute a money
value to savings of life or reduction of pain and grief biases against the inclusion of safety
components in schemes by making safe design appear as an uneconomic luxury.
Third, neither politicians nor the public have safety high on their agenda in contrast to
many industrialized countries where high-level goals are adopted and advertised at the
national level and made operational at local levels by municipal and other highway
authorities. These programmes have been supported by a high level of agreement and
coordination between different authorities under different ministries and with different
budgets. Similar comprehensive road safety programmes can be successful in developing

countries. In the early 1990s, the Asian Development Bank assisted the government of Fiji
to develop a broad-ranging national road safety action plan that reduced road deaths by
20%. A recent comprehensive attack on road safety problems in Brasilia has been
similarly successful.
5.3. Planning and managing traffic for safety

Many industrialized countries have revolutionized their road safety records by
systematic action on infrastructure design (often informed by black spot analysis), vehicle
characteristics (particularly compulsory installation and use of safety belts) and driving
behaviour (blanket speed limits in urban areas and drink and drive campaigns).
Despite differences in traffic composition, good design of road infrastructure can also
help substantially in developing countries. Improvements in road surface and horizontal
and vertical alignment at black spots has proved very effective in a number of cases. Clear
definition and implementation of a road hierarchy can help to match the use and operating
speed of roads to their immediate environment. Proper provision of footways, signal
controlled at grade pedestrian crossings, grade-separated crossings, pedestrian-only areas,
and segregated bicycle lanes and tracks are all effective and, in comparison with most
infrastructure, relatively cheap ways to protect the pedestrians and cyclists who are the
most vulnerable road users (Koster and de Langen 1998).
Traffic management has an even more important role to play. Although many of the
measures taken in industrialized countries to overcome excess driving speed, driving under
the influence of alcohol and inadequate protection of vulnerable persons in accidents remain
relevant, in many poorer countries the real issue is the protection of pedestrians from
motorized vehicles by the provision of adequate pavements, barriers and road crossing
facilities. The Achilles heel of all these policy instruments has tended to be enforcement.
Hence, largely self-enforcing measures, such as the physical separation of directions of
travel, are likely to play a larger role in the short run. In the longer run, however, the
problems are unlikely to be resolved unless the enforcement problem can be overcome.
5.4. Institutional coordination

Road safety is typically a responsibility shared between agenciespolice, traffic and
medicalwithout being the primary responsibility of any one. In particular, there is
evidence that the lack of adequate medical facilities contributes to the high level of
fatalities in developing country cities (TRL and Ross Silcock 2000). Many lives could be
saved if medical attention were provided within the golden hour following an accident.
Emergency service response time can often be improved at modest cost by simple
measures such as strategic positioning of emergency service centres (perhaps first-aid
stations at fuel stations), provision of an emergency telephone number and more
widespread provision of first-aid training. To be effective this approach would need
administrative support in the form of the establishment of a control centre, implementation
of ITS applications for efficient service control, and upgrading of hospital emergency
departments. Usually inhibiting such developments is an institutional black hole into
which responsibility for road accident medical services too often falls. To fill this gap, it
will be necessary at the very least to set up an emergency medical services committee and
create a mechanism, possibly funded by insurance companies, to cover the expenses in
bringing injured persons to hospital.
The more general problem is that of jurisdictional cooperation, particularly as the
police often have such a bad image in developing countries that both citizens and the
international institutions may be unwilling to support them. This has been addressed at
the national level in some countries by the creation of a National Road Safety Agency
directly responsible to the Prime Ministers office such as in Vietnam and India. Even
this has been of limited success because of the difficulty in getting the lower levels of
government to give parallel commitment. However, similar institutional arrangements at
the municipal level, with direct responsibility to the head of the city government, have
been successful in prosecuting urban road safety campaigns in Brasilia.
5.5. Security problem

Increasing criminality in many developing cities is a symptom of a much wider social
malaise. Unfortunately, political and social violence often finds a focus in burning buses
or destroying traffic signals even where there is no transport-related stimulus. While it
affects the transport behaviour of everybody, it is primarily the poor who suffer as
essential trips for work or education cannot take place. Moreover, women are particularly
susceptible to violence and sexual harassment, often by transport staff.
There are also, however, some transport-specific origins of violence. Bus and rail
passengers in apartheid South Africa were allegedly targeted in order to coerce them into
the black-operated minibuses. Minibus passengers were also frequently caught up in
murderous struggles between operators. These types of insecurity are particularly
susceptible to actions to regularize and give legally defensible property rights to operators
of franchised services. Economically motivated policy reform in urban transport
operations may thus have a very significant security payoff. A pure market response to
harassment of women is beginning to emerge in some Latin American minibus and taxi
markets, which provide specifically for vulnerable travellers. But this inevitably
discriminates against those too poor to pay for the special services so that more
administrative solutions, such as gender segregation on vehicles or the use of female
police officers,8 may be necessary.
6. Protecting the poor

6.1. Nature of the urban transport problems of the poor
Poor people make on average only 2030% less trips per capita than the non-poor.
However, the pattern of those trips differs significantly. Poor people typically make only
210 K. Gwilliam
one-third to one-half as many motorized trips per capita as the non-poor. Moreover, in
most poor countries private motorized vehicle trips are restricted to the top quintile of the
population, with the motorcycle extending this down to the middle classes in middle-
income countries. As a consequence, richer groups spend a higher proportion of their
income on transport than most of those with lower incomes in virtually all countries.
However, this does not mean that transport is not part of the problem of poverty. The
low transport expenditure of some of the poor often reflects the fact that they are forced
to accept very precarious living conditions on barely habitable or accessible land in order
to be able to access work. For example, many favellas in Brazilian cities are relatively
close to areas of potential employment, but are unserved by formal transport providers.9
At the other extreme, many of the poor live remotely in order to inhabit affordable space,
and thus incur both high travel costs and long travel times. Twenty per cent of workers in
Mexico City spend more than 3 hours travelling to and from work each day, and 10%
spend more than 5 hours (Schwela and Zali 1999). Such peripheral locations typically
involve exclusion from a whole range of urban facilities, a deprivation only partly
overcome by family or neighbourhood solidarity (Cusset 1998).
Good transport may also assist the poor indirectly by improving their prospects of, and
access to, employment. World Bank research indicates that the incomes of the poorest
quintile of the population vary in direct proportion to national income and there is no
evidence of a lag between increases of overall incomes and the incomes of poor people to
suggest that benefits accrue to poor people only in a prolonged process of trickle down
(Dollar and Kraay 2002). Aggregate level analysis of poverty and growth also indicates
that much previous public social sector expenditure has been poorly targeted, having little
demonstrable effect on either growth or distribution, while, in contrast, policies to
improve market functioning have yielded proportionate benefits to poor people. The most
pro-poor policies appear to be those associated with reducing government expenditures
and stabilizing inflation. Insofar as governments view urban public transport policy as an
instrument of social policy, it is thus important not only to be concerned with the
effectiveness of urban transport infrastructure and service planning and investment in
targeting the needs of poor people, but also to consider the indirect effect of urban
transport pricing and financing policies on the poor through their impact on government
expenditures and macro stabilization.
6.2. Improving physical access

Investment programmes in transport infrastructure can be focused specifically to
benefit poor people in a number of ways:
Concentration of urban road rehabilitation expenditures on major public transport

routes.
Provision or segregation of routes for non-motorized transport (including walking) to
make them quicker and safer.
Road and pavement design to facilitate should be more sensitive to the needs of both
able bodied and disabled persons.
Road investments to improve access to poor or informally settled areas (e.g. the
PROPAV programmes in Brazil).
Use of employment-intensive construction and maintenance, particularly in informally
settled areas (such as in the Hanna Nassif project in Dar es Salaam) (Howe and
Bryceson 2000).
6.3. Stemming the decline of public road passenger transport

In most socialist economies and many mixed economies, public transport has
traditionally been viewed as a basic social service, a minimum supply of which is viewed as
a social imperative. The provision of this basic network of services, usually by bus, has often
been accompanied by extensive fare reductions or exemptions for selected groups.
Maintaining such a basic network is not easy. In many transition economies, the
parastatal companies have declined disastrously as the original sources of finance have
disappeared. Even the employment of a single private operator, either under a
management contract or some form of system concession, as common in post-colonial
Africa, requires continued fiscal support. In most of those countries, the absence of an
adequate fiscal basis for support has also resulted in the gradual disappearance of the
traditional supply (Teurnier and Mandon-Adolehoume 1994).
An alternative approach is to treat transport supply more as a commercial business and
to target subsidies explicitly at disadvantaged groups on a personal basis. This is the
approach being adopted in several European countries, while transfer of responsibility for
social subsidies from the accounts of the transport operators to those of the relevant line
agencies is also being widely advocated as a means of addressing the decline of public
transport service in countries of the former Soviet Union. Competitive tendering of
services has been introduced in some central Asian republics and is now beginning to
occur in some Russian cities.
The more commercial approach has the advantage of a lower fiscal burden as well as
giving clear signals and incentives to operators to adjust services and fares in such a way
as to maintain their equipment in operation, but may involve the loss of internal cross-
subsidy, the abandonment of some social services and increase in fares. In principle, all
these problems can be minimized by good design and administration of the competitive
regime so that the best possible service can be achieved for the resources available. The
difficulty, particularly in developing countries without a firm institutional basis for
strategic transport planning, is that there is no clear channel through which the more
strategic and structural considerations concerning the role of public transport in urban
development strategy, and the response to the various externalities that impinge on urban
public transport, can be addressed.
6.4. Role of mass transit

The poverty impact of investment in mass rapid transit (MRT) has been much more
controversial, partly because rail transport is the mode of the relatively affluent in most
industrialized countries and in many cities in East Asia. Metros may incidentally serve
low-income areas (as in Cairo), but have rarely been designed specifically for that
purpose. The concern is that both the high capital cost of mass transit and the subsidies
that are often necessary to make fares affordable to the poor may pre-empt other important
social expenditures and hence militate against the interests of poor people.
The same is not true in many Latin American cities, where the average income of
rail users is much below the average and very similar to that of bus users. But even
there concerns have arisen about the distributional effects of rail improvements. For
example, in connection with an extension of Sao Paulo metro, it was argued that as
the metro reduces travel time to central areas of the city it will tend to increase land
values, and hence land rents at the newly advantaged locations. Poor people only
capture those benefits if they own the land themselves, and hence acquire the windfall
capital gain, or are protected against charges for the increased value of the land in
property rents.
212 K. Gwilliam
That suggests a more system-based approach to widen the spatial distribution of

benefits. But restructuring of bus services to feed into higher-capacity trunk links (either
rail or bus) will tend to increase the number of multi-leg trips involving separate payment,
which, given the typical flat or very shallowly tapered fare structure, can increase total
fare costs for those (often poor people) living in locations most remote from the MRT
line.10 That effect may be offset by multi-modal through ticketing systems as in Singapore
and Curitiba, but is difficult to achieve when the bus industry is highly fragmented. The
development of informal sector operations is often a response to defects in integrated
service arrangements.
6.5. Improving the treatment of non-motorized transport

NMT is the neglected Cinderella of transport modes. It typically receives little
protection against motorized traffic to which it is physically vulnerable. Even in Chinese
cities, infringement on cycle routes has become common in recent years and bicycle theft
has become common.11
Unfortunately, unless cycle infrastructure networks are sufficiently dense, continuous
and direct, and both links and intersections perceived as safe, the impediments to cycling
will continue to be strong. A comprehensive approach may be embodied in a cycle master
plan, such as recently published for Bogota. Such a plan needs to include the provision of
adequately segregated safe infrastructure, direct routings without major intersection
conflicts with motorized traffic, secure bicycle parking to obviate theft and financially
affordable means of vehicle procurement.
Institutionally, provision for non-motorized transport in urban areas is usually a
municipal responsibility, though the government of South Africa recently established a
national bicycle transport partnership called shova lula to provide assisted finance. Even
secure bicycle parking, which is provided commercially in some industrialized countries,
is difficult to finance in developing countries. Where the mode share of NMT is large, a
special purpose multidisciplinary and interdepartmental team within the municipal
authority to take initiatives, plan and implement interventions may be effective. Where the
share is small, it may be more appropriate to concentrate on ensuring that local officers are
well trained to recognize the implications of their infrastructure or traffic management
plans for non-motorized transport.
7. Policy implications
What has been described above is an excess demand for urban road spacewith
adverse congestion and environmental impactsco-existing with an underfunding of the
very modespublic and non-motorized transport, which could, if appropriately planned
and used, attenuate both congestion and environmental problems. It has recently been
called the fundamental paradox of urban transport.
That paradoxical outcome has three important roots:
Separation of road infrastructure from operations on that infrastructure.

Separation of responsibilities for the different modes of urban transport.
Separation of infrastructure provision from infrastructure pricing.
While some of the characteristics are shared by industrialized country cities, those cities
often have the necessary political mechanisms and capabilities to integrate the policies and
generate the necessary finances to implement them on an integrated basis. Overcoming
those same problems in the developing countries requires both institutional and financial
reform.
7.1. Financial reforms

Given the interaction among modes, there is a strong case for treating the urban
transport system as an integrated whole. In the interests of urban transport integration and
sustainability, developing countries could therefore profitably move towards prices
reflecting full social costs for all modes, to a targeted approach to subsidisation reflecting
strategic objectives, and to an integration of urban transport funding, while still retaining
supply arrangements for individual modes which give high incentive to operational
efficiency and cost effectiveness.
As neither congestion nor environmental impacts are currently subject to direct
charges in most countries, optimizing the performance of the sector as a whole might thus
justify using revenues raised from private auto users to fund improvements in public
transport. The first requirement is that urban transport financing should be fungible
between modes. In a well-managed unitary authority, as in Singapore, it occurs through
the normal budgetary process. In more complex multi-tiered administrative systems,
achieving this flexibility may require the pooling of urban transport financial resources
within an Urban Transport Fund. Under such an organization all local transport user
charges, including congestion charges, as well as any allocations of local taxes or

intergovernmental transfers for transport, should normally be made to the fund. The
existence of an integrated Urban Transport Fund does not depend on any specific tax
source being earmarked for transport, though in order to develop the credibility of the
fund, and particularly to gain political and popular support for the payment of congestion
charges, it is essential that the objectives and scope of an Urban Transport Fund are clearly
defined, that allocations are subject to rigorous appraisal and that operations of the fund
are transparent.
7.2. Institutional requirements

The implementation of such a policy package has significant institutional implications.
In practice, few developing country cities have a strategic land use and transport planning
agency or even a competent traffic management unit. Hence, institutional reform is
required to secure closer coordination both between jurisdictions and between functions,
as well as between private- and public-sector planning and operating agencies.
Jurisdictional coordination may be facilitated through the clear establishment in law of
the allocation of responsibility between levels of government. Formal institutional
arrangements can be made for collaboration where multiple municipalities exist within a
continuous conurbation. The process of decentralization in developing countries may offer
an excellent opportunity to address the problems. In particular, intergovernmental
transfers need to be carefully planned to be consistent with the allocation of responsibility,
but structured to avoid distorting local priority setting. Central government might also
encourage coordination at the metropolitan level, as in France, by making both local
taxation powers and intergovernmental transfers conditional on appropriate jurisdictional
and functional collaboration.
Functional coordination requires a strategic land use and transport plan. Detailed
planning, both of transport and land use, should be aligned with a municipal or
metropolitan structure plan. Coordinated operation is further enhanced by the clear
allocation of functions among agencies, with the more strategic functions being retained
at the metropolitan level. Obligations statutorily imposed on local authorities should be
linked to specific channels of finance (such as direct line agency funding of reduced public
transport fares). Responsibility for traffic safety should also be explicitly allocated, with
an institutional responsibility at the highest level of the local administration. Traffic police
214 K. Gwilliam
should be trained in traffic management and safety administration, and involved in

transport and safety policy planning.
For effective involvement of the private sector responsibility for planning and
operating public transport should be institutionally separated. Technical regulation should
be separated from procurement and economic regulation. A clear legal framework should
be established for competition in public transport supply, either in the market or for the
market. Operations should be fully commercialized or privatized, and the development of
new competitive private suppliers of service encouraged through legal recognition of
associations, etc. The public sector should develop strong service procurement and
contract enforcement skills.
Finally, it is necessary to incorporate private sector financing for transport
infrastructure within the integrated policy framework. Efficiency may be best achieved
through competitive tendering of concessions, which may be supported by public
contributions so long as these have been subject to proper costbenefit analysis. But all
major private infrastructure investments should conform to the general municipal
development strategy.
7.3. Role of the international institutions

That is a long, and very prescriptive, agenda. Most of its elements depend critically not
on new investment or on additional funding, but on institutional and policy reforms,
which, by their very nature, are alien to existing administrators. They may also be
politically difficult to secure. That is where the international institutions may make their
most effective contribution.
Acknowledgements
This paper draws heavily on the recently published World Bank urban transport
strategy paper Cities on the Move, of which I was the primary author. I acknowledge the
contribution of my many colleagues in the transport sector in the Bank. However, the
views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the World Bank, its Executive
Directors or the countries they represent.
Notes
1. For example, the Korean green belt policy for Seoul appears to have produced
perverse density gradients, high housing costs and travel distances, and arguably has
militated particularly against the interests of the poor.
2. For example, it has been estimated that a 1% increase in the share of Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) spent on government transport and communications investments
is associated with a 10% reduction in primacy, i.e. barriers to internal trade reinforce
primacy (Krugman 1991).
3. A study for the World Bank by Radian in Bangkok found PM10 from auto exhaust
to be higher inside houses than outside.
4. LPG requires pressures ranging from 4 to 13 bar compared with 200 bar for
CNG.
5. Empirical evidence from Spain suggests that changes in the I/M programme may
have had considerable effects on trends in first-time vehicle registration (European
Conference of Ministers of Transport 1999).
6. This observation is based on surveys carried out in a recent study by W. S. Atkins
for DFID in Sri Lanka, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Papua New Guinea and India.
7. In 1991, the British ODA (now the DFID, Department for International
Development) funded the preparation of the manual Towards Safer Roads in Developing
Countries, which has been widely disseminated both in the English and Spanish versions.
The Asian Development Bank has funded road safety guidelines for the Asia and Pacific
region, and country-specific road safety engineering manuals have been developed in a
number of countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Kenya. IDB has
undertaken similar work in Latin America (Gold 1999).
8. Female police officers have become effective and have gained a reputation for being
tough and incorruptible in the enforcement of traffic rules in La Paz and Lima. They might
have a wider role in respect of sexual harassment.
9. Similarly, 59% of pavement dwellers in Madras walked to work in less than half an
hour at zero cost (Madras Metropolitan Development Authority 1990).
10. Recent MRT development packages in some Brazilian cities have been subject to
detailed analysis of the effects of changes in bus service structures and integrated ticketing
arrangement on the money and generalized costs of transit for zones with different income
levels.
11. A household survey in Ganghzou in 1995 revealed that each household had on
average one bicycle a year stolen from it, and that 62% of these thefts occurred in
residential areas where the bicycles were both locked and registered with the police.
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Urban transport in developing countries

(Received in final form 16 January 2003)

devoted to movement is often relatively low in the developing world, rates of

Table 1. Categorization of city circumstances.

Population growth Income/motorization rates

Low Singapore ex-centrally

High Samarkand, Moscow, Warsaw, ex-centrally

Source: World Bank (2002).

2. How do developing country cities differ?

2.1. Premature congestion

2.2. Deteriorating environment

2.3. Safety and security

2.4. Declining transport for the poor

3. Preventing premature congestion

3.1. High spatial concentration of population and income

3.2. Inadequate quantity and structure of road infrastructure

3.3. Weak traffic management

3.4. Poorly developed municipal fiscal and regulatory institutions

4. Improving the environment

4.1. Setting priorities

4.2. Improving vehicle and fuel technology

4.3. Dealing with the high polluters

4.4. Motorcycle problem

4.5. System management

4.6. Economic instruments

certificates to purchase vehicles as well as by congestion pricing in the central business

5. Increasing safety and security

5.2. Information problem

budgets. Similar comprehensive road safety programmes can be successful in developing

5.3. Planning and managing traffic for safety

5.4. Institutional coordination

5.5. Security problem

6. Protecting the poor

6.2. Improving physical access

Concentration of urban road rehabilitation expenditures on major public transport

6.3. Stemming the decline of public road passenger transport

6.4. Role of mass transit

That suggests a more system-based approach to widen the spatial distribution of

6.5. Improving the treatment of non-motorized transport

Separation of road infrastructure from operations on that infrastructure.

7.1. Financial reforms

charges, including congestion charges, as well as any allocations of local taxes or

7.2. Institutional requirements

should be trained in traffic management and safety administration, and involved in

7.3. Role of the international institutions

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