Public Transit Innovations, Equity, and Blind Spots: Examining the Benefits and Unintended Consequences of Investments in Public Transport Projects in Three Global South Cities

Cities in the global South are often characterized as being grossly unequal. A historical lack of efficient public transit is often cited as a barrier to urban opportunities for the poor. Decision-makers now address the adverse effects of decades of disinvestment in transport infrastructure by pouring vast public resources into public transport innovations such as bus rapid transit (BRT) systems and urban gondolas, which are intended to replace or displace privately-provided, sometimes informal transit services. These public transport innovations have been contextualized as pro-poor in scholarly circles and planning discourses because they are expected to improve the quality of life of economically disadvantaged population groups./nTo what extent and under which conditions do such investments accomplish what they promise? Despite increasing interest in transport equity and justice in contemporary urban transport scholarship and the steady growth of investments in public transport, there is surprisingly little empirical evidence detailing how the benefits of recent public transport infrastructure investments are distributed. Moreover, in terms of urban and regional planning, scholarship seldom links questions of moral philosophy with land development patterns and issues with data representation that may bias outcomes from transport policies. Finally, few studies investigate whether and how these public transport investments disrupt the pre-existing private and often informal transport services upon which the urban poor in the global South often depend. What is the role of local actors, social networks, and the state in enabling such adaptation?/nFollowing a three-paper format that employs multi- and interdisciplinary research approaches, this dissertation links public transport provision in the global South with questions of equity and justice. The two first papers address questions of distributive justice from investments in public transport. The first paper draws from a retrospective intercept survey administered after BRT deployments in Barranquilla, Colombia, and Cape Town, South Africa. Our findings suggest that while BRT deployment did not narrow the gap in commute times between low and high socio-economic strata groups in Barranquilla, BRT did narrow the gap in commute times between different races in Cape Town. A critical lesson from this chapter is that BRT route configuration and urban form influence the degree to which BRT can benefit economically disadvantaged populations./nThe second uses Bogotá’s urban gondola as a case study. It uses urban data analytic methods to understand how public transport innovation enables changes in the geography of regional job accessibility in the city that benefit additional groups than those conceived as beneficiaries during the project promotion. I show that extending the reach of Bogotá’s transit network to a marginalized area with available jobs enabled gains in job accessibility far away from where the project was built. I find that the positive accessibility effects of TransMiCable go well beyond its station areas, spilling over to low- and middle-class neighborhoods in other parts of the Bogotá urban region. I also show how methodological choices made when measuring how public transport investment affects accessibility can influence findings; those can, in turn, can be linked to different, often contrasting principles of fairness./nThe third and last paper draws from ethnographic methods, remotely-sensed data, and social media to untangle the market and non-market forces that drive the informal transport sector in the district where the gondola was built. I find that, contrary to my expectations, most pre-existing informal transport services remained unchanged more than a year after TransMiCable opened to the public, while two new informal routes emerged. I explain these findings by considering the socially embedded character of informal transport and the peripheral urbanization process characteristic of many cities in the global South. I find that informal routes in this peripheral district emerged in tandem with the ongoing peripheral urbanization process. Findings also indicate that community-based organizations collaborate with informal transport actors to plan and promote informal transport routes during the early stages of neighborhood development./nTogether these papers critically reflect on the importance of investing in public transit projects sensitive to land development patterns, pre-existing transport services, and the economic and non-economic forces that enable transport networks to deliver more equitable outcomes. I adopt distinct and novel methodological approaches in each study. When combined, these approaches offer a more comprehensive method for understanding the complex relationships between transport, land development, and social networks and their effects on accessibility. By investigating the subject of transport justice in three different papers and cities in the global South, this dissertation offers new insights that contribute to transport scholarship, planning, and policymaking.

Advisor: Chatman, Daniel